Tim Miller
Tim Miller is a director, born 1964.
Miller came to directing from the technical side, as an animator and visual effects artist who co-founded the studio Blur, which is unusual and shows in the work. He thinks in shots that have to be built rather than found.
Deadpool in 2016 was his first feature and it looks like a film made by someone who knows exactly what each frame costs: modest where it can afford to be, precise and expensive only in the set pieces, with a structure that hides its budget by rearranging its own timeline. Terminator: Dark Fate followed in 2019 and is a more conventional studio object, competently staged and burdened by a franchise that had already been rebooted past the point of interest.
His real home is Love, Death and Robots, the animated anthology he created, which has won three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Short Form Animated Program. The format suits him exactly: short, varied, driven by images, and free of the obligation to make a hundred minutes cohere. Secret Level in 2024 applies the same anthology model to video games. He also appears on screen once, in Vulgar in 2002, which is the sort of credit that only exists because someone was standing nearby.
Movies (3)
TV (2)
Where to start with Tim Miller
The place to start is Love, Death & Robots, and you can start anywhere inside it. The episodes run from a few minutes to half an hour, the animation styles change completely between them, and the hit rate is high enough that a bad one costs you nothing.
Deadpool is the feature to watch next, still the sharpest thing he has directed and much more carefully built than its reputation as a joke machine suggests. Secret Level is the newer anthology and worth it if you have played the games it draws on, less so if you have not.
Terminator: Dark Fate is the one to leave for last. The action is well made and the film around it never justifies itself.