Daily Inspiration Quote by Jan de Bont

Jan de Bont is giving away a working director’s trick: sell the spectacle, but smuggle in the mess. Coming from a filmmaker associated with high-concept, high-velocity Hollywood (the kind of movies where the premise is practically the poster), the line reads less like a therapeutic affirmation and more like an aesthetic justification. Complexity isn’t being defended as a moral good; it’s being pitched as a performance upgrade. If the audience can glimpse contradictory impulses - fear under bravado, tenderness under competence - the machine runs smoother. The movie feels less like a contraption.

The phrasing is tellingly modest. “Some of that complexity” signals control, not chaos: de Bont isn’t arguing for messy, meandering psychodrama. He’s advocating for calibrated human texture that keeps archetypes from flattening into action-figure silhouettes. “Shows through” implies it’s already there beneath the surface of plot mechanics; the director’s job is to let it leak out at the right moments, like steam from a pressure valve. The payoff is pragmatic: “advantageous.” Not “beautiful” or “true,” but useful.

The subtext is also defensive, aimed at a familiar critique of mainstream action cinema: that it’s loud, slick, and emotionally hollow. De Bont counters with a production-floor philosophy. In a blockbuster ecosystem built on speed, stakes, and clarity, a flash of interiority becomes a form of glue. It earns audience investment, raises tension, and makes even the most engineered set piece land with the feel of consequence rather than mere choreography.