Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of Jo Nesbø's novel "The Snowman" landed on Friday with some of the worst reviews any movie has gotten this year, its Metacritic score of 24 even bested that of the critically reviled "The Book of Henry" (31) which all but cost its director, Colin Trevorrow, the "Star Wars" gig for Episode IX. What "The Snowman" will do to Alfredson's career remains to be seen, but his filmography is a little more impressive than Trevorrow's, having helmed one of the very best horror movies of the last twenty years, "Let the Right One In," and quite possibly the best John Le Carré adaptation ever with "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy."
All this to say that Alfredson won't be going quietly into the night with "The Snowman" disaster at his hands. While promoting the film it seems that he's been doing more damage control than any kind of, you know, promotion. Addressing the negative reviews this film has gotten not just in North America but overseas as well, Alfredson has basically been warning people that the version of "The Snowman" that he wanted to put out just wasn't filmed: “Our shoot time in Norway was way too short. We didn’t get the whole story with us and when we started cutting we discovered that a lot was missing,” Alfredson told the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK.
Martin Scorsese was originally supposed to direct the movie but left the project and instead opted for an executive-producer credit. According to Alfredson production on "The Snowman" had to be sped up, despite the fact that everything wasn't ready in pre-production “It happened very abruptly, suddenly we got notice that we had the money and could start the shoot in London,” with Alfredson mentioning that about "10 to 15 percent of the script wasn’t filmed," the director went on to add that there are many holes in the film because of the missing scenes “It’s like when you’re making a big jigsaw puzzle and a few pieces are missing so you don’t see the whole picture.”
This is clearly damage control on the part of Alfredson, he doesn't want his career in Hollywood destroyed by this movie and is trying to clear things up. When you don't shoot 15% of a completed screenplay there will no doubt be problems to your movie. It's dumbfounding to think that any producer would let this happen, no matter the time constraints. The fact that they released the damn thing is even more dumbfounding as it shows a total lack of respect for the audience. I'm sure this isn't the last we hear of this "saga" as more stories will no doubt seep through in the coming weeks about the turbulent production of this film.
[The Independent]