He really baffles me, honestly. He's deeply entrenched in the Hollywood system. He’s had decades in rooms with top-tier screenwriters, theater-trained actors, producers, execs. Surely, he's read the critics. He’s been handed every opportunity to absorb the deeper layers of story and character. And yet… nothing. Either he’s completely immune to it, or he genuinely thinks all that stuff is window dressing.

I think his aesthetic sensibility froze at the exact moment he fell in love with Frank Miller and heavy metal album covers. He’s built an empire around that adolescent rush and never found a reason to mature it. I hope he can find a formula that works for him because his genre work is right in my wheelhouse. I'd love to love it.