(Credits: Far Out / Philip Romano)
Mon 30 March 2026 16:45, UK
A lot of blockbuster movies don’t make much sense, if they’re even supposed to, but very rarely will the director come right out and admit it, but Ron Howard has always been an honest fella.
We’ve all sat there, watching an expensive and effects-heavy film for two hours without even once considering the plot. Even if you do, then trying to piece it together can often be a fool’s errand, so sometimes, it’s easier just to sit there and let the spectacle wash over you without giving it much thought.
Howard has made a few of those pictures, with the Da Vinci Code trilogy prime among them. Tom Hanks was underselling quite how nonsensical the globetrotting adventures were when he called them “hooey,” but that wasn’t the first time the filmmaker had made something that doesn’t stand up to narrative scrutiny.
Due to the technical challenges and the potential safety issues involved, the two-time Academy Award winner was adamant that as soon as he’d wrapped shooting, he never wanted to do anything like Backdraft again. Which is fair, when the pyrotechnics and practical effects were constantly teetering on the verge of disaster.
While the film went off without a hitch, earned three Academy Award nominations for its sound, sound effects editing, and visual effects, and cleared $150 million at the box office to establish itself as an explosive crowd-pleaser, even the guy who directed it knows that the story has some gaping holes.
To be fair, that was clear from the beginning when the opening scene reveals the bizarre decision to cast Kurt Russell as his own character’s father in a flashback, which instantly stretches the suspension of disbelief. That wasn’t his issue, though, but rather the way Russell’s onscreen sibling settles into the story.
Having spent his life growing up in his brother’s shadow, William Baldwin’s Brian swaps firefighting for investigation when he becomes the assistant to Robert De Niro’s fire inspector, which leads to the unravelling of a top-level conspiracy. It’s hokum, even for Hollywood, and Howard knew it.
“For me, the storyline doesn’t hold true,” he acknowledged. “A rookie fireman is not going to get involved solving a crime. It just doesn’t make any sense.” The easiest way to explain that leap of logic is ‘because it’s a movie’, but someone who made films about mermaids, aliens giving old people the gift of youth, and Val Kilmer as a fantasy swordsman calling it out makes it sound like it really bothered him.
Nobody watched Backdraft for its engaging plot. Instead, audiences turned up to see a stacked ensemble cast and plenty of explosive action sequences, and on that front, it delivered, regardless of Howard’s issue with one of its storytelling anchors.
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