After breaking out in a huge way thanks to the critical and commercial success of 2012’s Chronicle, Josh Trank’s next career move almost saw him hit the self-destruct button on his entire career. The problems that plagued the infamous Fantastic Four reboot have since become the stuff of legend, resulting in one of the worst comic book movies ever made and Trank’s reputation as cinema’s latest directorial wunderkind seemingly flushed down the toilet.
The filmmaker also ended up getting fired from Star Wars for his troubles, although that happens to a lot of people these days under Kathleen Kennedy’s stewardship, with many wondering if Trank would ever be able to escape from Director’s Jail. However, the 36 year-old has now returned from the wilderness with crime biopic Capone that sees Tom Hardy tackling the latest in his long line of strange accents, and the early reviews have been tepid to say the least.
Unsurprisingly, Hardy is getting a lot of praise for yet another transformative performance, but the overall reactions have been a little less enthusiastic, with Capone currently sitting on a middling Rotten Tomatoes score of 39%. In a recent interview, Trank admitted that he isn’t surprised that his comeback vehicle isn’t receiving universal acclaim, but he remains immensely proud of the movie nonetheless.
“I don’t want to say I’m not surprised. It was hard to tell what the reactions were going to be, because from where I stand, I love the movie deeply. There’s nothing anybody could tell me about this movie that would make me feel any less of the amount of love that I have for it.The bad reviews on Fantastic Four, for me, were not talking about anything that I felt I had a connection to, because it was a lot of stuff that I didn’t have anything to do with. But with the worst reviews of this movie, they do feel like a mirror, but in a way that doesn’t make me feel ashamed. I’m not worried about a Rotten Tomatoes percentage or anything.”
Trank certainly seems to have returned from his enforced sabbatical from Hollywood as a more confident and mature filmmaker, a far cry from the guy that was prone to lashing out on social media around the time Fantastic Four was released. He’s talked about the experience a lot in recent interviews, too, and while Capone isn’t perfect by any means, it marks the first step on the road to recovery for a career that still has a whole lot of promise and potential.