The Films of David Fincher, Ranked From Worst to Best

With 'Gone Girl' opening this week, it's time to bring David Fincher's career into focus.

David Fincher started his career as one of the most acclaimed music video directors in the world, shooting for Madonna, Aerosmith and Michael Jackson, among others. In the thirty years since his first video (Rick Springfield's 'Dance This World Away') he's become not only one of the most visually accomplished filmmakers in the world, but also Hollywood's most skillful director of thrillers and procedurals. His own obsessiveness as a filmmaker (he's known for requiring dozens of takes before he's satisfied) bleeds over into his films, most of which are methodical, pitch-black looks at how compulsion and misanthropy lead to isolation, alienation, or even oblivion.

READ MORE: 'Gone Girl' is the Film of the Year For Reasons That May Surprise You

Fincher's latest film, 'Gone Girl,' just debuted to mostly glowing reception at the New York Film Festival, a week ahead of its wide release this Friday. In anticipation, Indiewire has ranked Fincher's earlier films from worst to best.

9. 'Alien 3' (1992)

The story behind 'Alien 3' - talented fledgling filmmaker gets opportunity of a lifetime, only to be rushed into production and second-guessed all the way - is more interesting than the film that hit theaters. Fincher has since disowned it, but many fans of the 'Alien' series hold up the longer Assembly Cut (based on a rough cut Fincher worked on) as vastly improved. The longer version does salvage much of the first half, which is given more room to develop Fincher's interest in social alienation and isolation, not to mention how male institutions and societies view the very presence of a woman as a threat. But while the film's nihilistic, anything-can-happen approach is initially thrilling as major characters are killed without warning, it backfires in the second half, in which most of the major players are gone (in their place: Monster Food Dude and Guy About to Be Eaten) and the first half's hushed intensity devolves into an overextended, monotonous chase. The Assembly Cut is worth seeing, but more as a clearer portrait of the movie Fincher wanted to make than a wholly satisfying film in its own right.

8. 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' (2008)

Received by many as Fincher's one blatant case of awards baiting, 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' is a bit more comprehensible as a part of his filmography now than it was upon its release. While the most obvious draw is the technical challenge of making Brad Pitt age backwards, 'Button' is notable for how its protagonist's bizarre condition forces him to let go rather than fixate like most Fincher leads; a more traditional Fincher lead is Button's love interest Daisy (Cate Blanchett), whose compulsions and desires (first for a dance career, then for a life with Button) would have made her a stronger center and a better lens to view Button's strange tale through. Unfortunately, Eric Roth's script spends too much time on Button's picaresque adventures, in which a miscast, dully wide-eyed Pitt is whisked from here to there without much of a reaction to or perspective on anything he sees, whether it's a major world event or the death of a loved one (bizarre, considering how that should serve as a reminder of his own mortality). And while Fincher's downbeat, darkly lit aesthetic makes sense for this more melancholic take on a 'Forrest Gump'-style fable, the combination of a heavy tone, epic pretensions and a lumpy, episodic approach eventually grows draining.

7. 'Panic Room' (2002)

After a run of major achievements like 'Seven' and 'Fight Club,' some Fincher fans found the home invasion thriller 'Panic Room' a bit wanting. It's not totally unmerited: while the film does play with Fincher's pet interest in isolation, it isn't dealt with as more than a setup for a series of set-pieces. That said, those set-pieces are spectacular, with Fincher's immaculate manipulation of space, sound design and cross-cutting heightening the tension in the film's cat and mouse game. And what David Koepp's script lacks in thematic and emotional resonance it makes up for in narrative economy, with every scene giving Jodie Foster's resourceful mother and Forest Whitaker's conflicted thief something to do that reveals more about their characters. The film is also notable for an impressive early performance from Kristen Stewart as Foster's daughter, proof that - 'Twilight' aside - she's a major talent. 'Panic Room' is a minor work, but it's a perfect movie to catch ten or fifteen minutes of on cable and marvel at on a technical level.

6. 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' (2011)

Fincher has a knack for taking questionable source material and spinning it into gold, but never is this more apparent than in his adaptation of Stieg Larsson's bestseller. The key difference between Fincher's take and the Swedish version from two years earlier is the way they process information. Where the dull 2009 film treats the exposition as stuff it needs to slog through in order to get to the whys of the case, Fincher is more interested in the process of sorting through the information than the mystery itself. Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist's shared obsession is in the search, not the find, and when the mystery is solved, their commonalities end, along with their relationship. Salander (played in a galvanizing performance by Rooney Mara) is a flip side to Mark Zuckerberg, a quieter savant who tries to find a human connection in Blomkvist, only to face rejection once the case is done. Fincher can't totally overcome the novel's weaknesses - for the first hour, it feels like two thematically similar but separate movies smashed together, and the Bond villain speech the villain gives can't help but feel musty - but he twists the narrative from a rape-revenge thriller to a story about how unsatisfying that revenge is, not to mention a look at the essential but limited reach of analog research and the frightening, near-limitless power of digital (possibly Fincher's own statement about his switch from film to digital).

5. 'Fight Club' (1999)

Fincher's landmark satire of consumerism, nihilism and hypermasculinity has undergone a strange journey in 15 years, from financial and critical disappointment to cult status to generational statement to a movie embraced by the alpha males it lambasts. That last bit isn't terribly surprising: for about 90 minutes, Fincher makes self-isolation, youthful nihilism and beating the shit out of people seem like the most liberating thing in the world, particularly when you're guided by an impossibly charismatic Brad Pitt and Edward Norton at the peak of his run as the 90s' reigning wiseass. But 'Fight Club' is awfully canny in showing how seductive fascistic (in the guise of anarchic) movements can be before taking a step back and showing the terrible consequences and pure insanity of it (pun intended) and the need for moderation. In a way, it's one of Fincher's most optimistic movies, as Norton's protagonist is able to break from his toxic worldview. 'Fight Club' is occasionally a little too pleased with its own cleverness (that's a product of its eternally smug original author Chuck Palahniuk), but Fincher's technical playfulness, particularly with how he uses editing to give peeks into the narrator's head, make that satisfaction pretty well-deserved.

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