Joe Johnston

The Man Who Drew Outer Space

Joe Johnston did not set out to direct movies when he walked into the offices of a company that did not yet exist. George Lucas hired him to shape a universe that only existed in his head and in some sketches by Ralph McQuarrie. His training in industrial design helped him understand that a spaceship must look used to be believable.

In 1977, Joe Johnston was employee number 43 at Industrial Light & Magic. He designed Boba Fett's helmet and the look of the starships that defined the original Star Wars trilogy. But his technical ambition demanded more space.

Technique was always his language.

In 1989, Disney handed him a script about shrunken kids and a budget of $18 million. That movie was titled Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Johnston used his visual effects know-how to create a giant world where ants were friends and bees were war machines.

Nobody expected that success.

The film grossed more than $220 million worldwide. This result allowed him to shoot The Rocketeer in 1991. It was a difficult production because the studio did not trust a hero without a face. Although it is now considered a cult classic for its Art Deco style, audiences of the time turned their backs on it at the box office.

Surviving Dinosaurs and Board Games

In 1995, he shot Jumanji with a Robin Williams who was at the peak of his career. Johnston had to deal with digital effects that were still in their infancy. The computer-generated animals had to interact with real actors in a destructible physical environment.

But the real challenge came in 2001 with Jurassic Park III. Steven Spielberg handed him the reins of a franchise that seemed worn out. Filming began without a final script and with constant changes to the third act. Johnston managed to finish the film while staying within a budget of 93 million despite the initial narrative chaos.

And the gamble paid off.

The film was successful enough to keep him on Hollywood's list of reliable directors. In 2004, he shot Hidalgo with Viggo Mortensen. It was an epic production in the desert that showed his ability to handle large-scale logistics without losing focus on the story of a man and his horse.

The Craftsman of Nostalgia

In 2010, Universal Pictures called him in to rescue The Wolfman. The original director left the project just weeks before filming was set to begin. Johnston accepted the job but faced a grueling edit and a monster design that changed several times during post-production.

In 2011, Marvel Studios wanted a classic style to introduce Captain America. Johnston was the right man for the job because he knew how to shoot adventure films with a 1940s feel. In Captain America: The First Avenger, he used digital technology to shrink the body of Chris Evans during the first half hour of the film.

That technical decision let audiences empathize with the character before he became a super soldier. The film grossed $370 million and laid the aesthetic foundations for the first phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In 2014, he shot the low-budget thriller Not Safe for Work. It was a radical change of scale after decades of handling hundreds of millions of dollars. The project went largely unnoticed and ended up premiering directly on digital platforms with hardly any promotion.

In 2018, the production of The Nutcracker and the Four Realms paid him for an extra month of work to supervise the editing and shoot new scenes after Lasse Hallström left the project.