TSPDT

Key Production Countries: USA, UK
Key Genres: Comedy, Action-Adventure, Action, Drama, Thriller, Crime, Family, Buddy Cop Film, Adventure, Comedy Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Key Collaborators: Stuart Baird (Editor), Mel Gibson (Leading Actor), J. Michael Riva (Production Designer), Danny Glover (Leading Actor), Joel Silver (Producer), Eric Clapton (Composer), Michael Kamen (Composer), Darlene Love (Character Actress), Traci Wolfe (Character Actress), David Morse (Leading Actor), Joe Pesci (Leading Actor), Jeffrey Boam (Screenwriter)

"Richard Donner directed episodes of television series before making his first feature film in 1962. After more television he made a couple of film flops in Britain, and then worked mainly on Kojak and television movies until the unexpected success of The Omen, a Satanic thriller rather than a horror film, launched him into the big time. Superman, The Movie, with its remarkable special effects and fine acting, confirmed his success; but a legal row over the sequel led to another director, Richard Lester, being assigned to Superman II (1980)." - The Illustrated Who's Who of the Cinema, 1983

"Richard Donner was the classic studio director and an action blockbuster maestro, the Michael Curtiz of the VHS age; he was the great inventor, or reinventor, of so many Hollywood genres and styles. When Hollywood invented the “franchise property”, Donner was at the centre of things. His macho Lethal Weapon movies with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover were far from enlightened on sexual politics. But they gave a black man equal billing with a white man in a top-flight Hollywood movie: rare in 1987 and rare even now… The story of Richard Donner is the story of Hollywood from the 1980s onwards: horror, superheroes, action and franchise properties. Donner gave all of it a human touch." - Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian, 2021)

"With few exceptions, Donner's filmography is a slog through slick, sickly formulae; hollow and meretricious, his movies are a case study in soulless blockbuster bloat, frequently distinguished by the rancid sentimentality of their endings (the denouement of his 1988 Dickens update Scrooged may provide the most ghastly example). Matters weren't always so dire. After a decades-long apprenticeship in television, Donner established his box-office clout with epochal back-to-back hits: many a 1970s childhood is indelibly marked with any number of chilling set pieces from his solid Exorcist cash-in The Omen (1976)… and Superman (1978) is a deft and properly respectful celluloid treatment of the comic-book franchise." - Jessica Winter (The Rough Guide to Film, 2007)

"Over his six-decade career, Richard Donner made movies that endured. With Superman, he ushered in the modern superhero film. With The Goonies, he redefined childhood adventure. He worked across genres, always using the word “verisimilitude” as his mantra; he maintained that the key to a great film was to be truthful, honor the source material, and take it seriously. If a character happened to be able to fly, so be it." - Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (2021)

"A superior technician, he has done well with crowd-pleasing movies, especially action spectacles." - The Film Encyclopedia, 2012

"Dick had such a powerful command of his movies, and was so gifted across so many genres. Being in his circle was akin to hanging out with your favourite coach, smartest professor, fiercest motivator, most endearing friend, staunchest ally, and - of course - the greatest Goonie of all" - Steven Spielberg

"After all the movies I had made and all the money I had made the studios, I did one little unsuccessful picture and nobody wanted to hire me. I was the old fart." - Richard Donner