I don't think Verhoeven is in quite the same category as a "hack". He has offered up one of the better Philip K. Dick translations (not an easy task to say the least). Beyond that the Director should not be confused with the Writer or the Producers. Very different tasks. And if you think a director has much say in what a movie ends up being look at the fight over Brazil and also look up how many directors take their names off of movies after they are filmed. ("Where the Wild Things Are" is a new example of this: photography is done but the studio doesn't like Jonze's version and so its currently in reshoots/production *ell)

What I'm getting at is that the director has little to nothing to do with the content of a movie. Rare cases are the exception.

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---"Why do things have to suck so bad?" a friend once asked me.
"Because space is a vacuum and that's a lot of suck." I replied.
(Actual quote)---