Joe Johnston is such a specific filmmaker. He comes from an effects background, meaning his early work is characterized by visual effects and genre elements. When he has veered from that course to make more personal projects, he hasn't enjoyed the same kind of success. Here are some of the essential films of his (admittedly limited) filmography.
1. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)
Joe Johnston's debut as a director showcases a lot of what he does so well, combining impressive visual effects with an emphasis on story and heart. Rick Moranis plays an absent-minded inventor who accidentally shrinks his kids (and the neighbor kids) down to miniature size; they then have to traverse an adventure in the backyard to be restored to their original size. This is a pretty good family adventure film, one that doesn't insult the intelligence of either kids or adults, but the effects are the big sell here, which Johnston (a former effects artist himself) executes pretty brilliantly using a combination of techniques. It's interesting that he wasn't the first choice to direct this one, as the movie began its life as a Stuart Gordon project. This would be a recurring theme in Joe Johnston's filmography.
2. The Rocketeer (1991)
Still my favorite of all Joe Johnston's films and the one I suspect for which he'll be best remembered because it's his most special. His sophomore outing behind the camera is an adaptation of the Dave Stevens comic book about a 1930s stunt pilot (Billy Campbell) who finds a jet pack and uses it to become a superhero. Alan Arkin and Jennifer Connelly also star, while Timothy Dalton steals the entire movie as a Hollywood star and secret Nazi back when you had to keep that kind of thing secret. This is the kind of thrilling pulp adventure for which Joe Johnston seems perfectly suited, a movie we only got because Batman was a hit and everyone wanted the next Batman. This was probably never going to be that (it was famously a disappointment at the box office) but I wish it would have been because maybe Joe Johnston could have made another Rocketeer movie.
3. Jumanji (1995)
Joe Johnston's bounced back after the box office disappointments of both The Rocketeer and The Pagemaster (for which he directed the live action segments) with this massive family hit about a jungle adventure board game that comes to life and spills out into the real world. Because Johnston is relying on a lot of digital effects for the first time, I don't think they work nearly as well as his past and later efforts (dem monkeys) The story is fun enough, though, and it's better family entertainment than the later legasequels if only because it's not afraid to be dark and a little scary (Kiki Dunst almost dies!), qualities that were quite common in these kinds of movies in the 1980s when Johnston was coming up but which have been completely sanded out of family movies these days.
4. October Sky (1999)
This one feels like Johnston trying to break out -- the one I would swear was a longtime pet project if I didn't also know that the book on which its based came out only a year before the movie. Jake Gyllenhaal stars in this adaptation of Homer Hickam's 1998 memoir Rocket Boys as a kid who stars a rocketry club with his friends. I suspect Johnston's career might have taken a different direction had this one been a bigger hit. It's mostly beloved now but only did ok at the box office in 1999.
5. Jurassic Park III (2001)
When your nostalgic coming of age period piece doesn't totally connect with audiences, you go back to working for the Big Guy and become the first non-Spielberg filmmaker to make a Jurassic Park sequel. That would be noteworthy in and of itself, but what makes JPIII stand out is that it's just about the only sequel in the entire misbegotten franchise that bothers to be its own thing and have its own personality. Johnston isn't trying to do a massive scale summer blockbuster, but instead a throwback to the kind of stripped-down B-movies that would have been made with stop-motion in the '30s and '40s. On that level, he succeeds. The characters (save for a returning Alan Grant) aren't great and the movie fails to be about anything more than just OMG RUN but it achieves its modest goals and Johnston once again proves to be workmanlike, dependable, and good with effects-driven entertainment.
6. The Wolfman (2010)
I swear I want to like this movie. It's a period monster movie in love with being a monster movie and a totally straightforward attempt to make the wolfman horrifying after years of more comic approaches. The cast is solid, the scenery is gorgeous, the wolfman makeup is awesome. I'm just not sure it ever stood a chance of succeeding once original director Mark Romanek quit prior to production and Joe Johnston inherited a mess, plus a great deal of studio interference that included reshoots, new endings, and shitcanning the work of Oscar-winning makeup effects designer (and basically the inventor of the practical werewolf transformation) Rick Baker in favor of some CG bullshit. There are great elements here that don't quite add up to a great movie, but it's not for lack of trying. It wouldn't be the last time that Joe Johnston was brought on to "fix" the work of another filmmaker.
7. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
There was a real lack of imagination on Marvel's part back in 2011 to hire a guy who had made one retro period superhero movie to make a retro period superhero movie, but it turns out that Joe Johnston was exactly the right person to bring Captain America to the screen for the first time. I'm guessing The Rocketeer helped him get this gig, because it does a lot of things that The First Avenger is trying to do only on a larger scale. Yes, it does the period setting, but the two films also share an optimism and a sincerity that feels pure and genuine. Fifteen years later, this remains one of the best of all the Marvel movies.
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