Well I certainly had high hopes for Vin Diesel’s “Babylon A.D.”, mostly because it’s been a while since we got a good ol fashion post-apocalyptic action adventure. That was before I read this interview with the film’s director, Mathieu Kassovitz, who calls the final cut of the film “pure violence and stupidity”. Ouch. He goes on, too! And no, the Fox studio isn’t going to be too happy with their French director. If this isn’t the last time the two work together, I’ll eat my hat, which will be kind of hard, as I don’t even wear a hat.

Here are the choice bits from Kassovitz’s savaging of “Babylon AD” to AMC:

“It’s pure violence and stupidity,” he admits. “The movie is supposed to teach us that the education of our children will mean the future of our planet. All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters… instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24.”

Hey, dude, a bad episode of 24 is better than most crap on TV nowadays. But I digress.

Kassovitz goes on to further bury his Hollywood career:

Kassovitz points to the studio, “Fox was sending lawyers who were only looking at all the commas and the dots,” he says. “They made everything difficult from A to Z.” The last stroke, Kassovitz says, was when Fox interfered with the editing of the film, paring it down to a confusing 93 minutes (original reports were that 70 minutes were cut from the film; Kassovitz says the number is closer to 15).

“I should have chosen a studio that has guts,” he says. “Fox was just trying to get a PG-13 movie. I’m ready to go to war against them, but I can’t because they don’t give a s–t.”

Oh my. So what Mathieu is telling me is that I should skip this movie, right? Way to promote your film, Mathieu!

Look, even if your movie sucked because of studio interference, you shouldn’t be going out in public and savaging it the way Kassovitz is doing here before the movie is even released. You’ve basically pissed on the hard work of all your actors and crew because you had a hissy fit and didn’t like how the studio took the film away from you. Way to go, dude. I’m sure your actors and crew, who will probably not get their movie seen by as many people now, will thank you for convincing people not to bother seeing their work.