Over the last 40-plus years Jerry Bruckheimer‘s producing career has gone through four phases. Phase #1 was his solo run from ’72 through ’84 (Thief, Cat People). JB’s successful partnership with Don Simpson (Flashdance to Dangerous Minds), lasting 11 or 12 years, was Phase 2. The five-year-long Phase 3 (from Simpson’s death in January ’96 until Pearl Harbor) was Bruckheimer’s solid-gold period, a time when “produced by Jerry Bruckheimer” meant elite, sharply-written, sirloin-steak guy movies like The Rock, Con Air, Enemy of the State, Armageddon, Remember the Titans, Gone in Sixty Seconds and Black Hawk Down.
It gives me no pleasure to note that Phase 4 (’01 to ’14) has mostly been a “fuck it, go for the corporate family-entertainment money” period. Bruckheimer could man up and return to Phase 3, but it’ll never happen. Jerry knows it, I know it, we all know it. Alan Moore‘s famous remark about how “in our lifetime, we will see Johnny Depp playing Captain Crunch” was obviously a direct comment about the attitude that Bruckheimer adopted in the 21st Century.