Celebration of the auteur has become a method of strengthening an exploitative labor relation; creative expression becomes a reified commodity—a brand rooted in arbitrary aesthetic idiosyncrasies—that producers distribute to directors (by hiring them on to a project), who themselves then appropriate the labor and creativity of their crew to implement the (often impoverished and clichéd) stylistic “vision” producers demand. If the directors’ stylistic idiosyncrasies stay market-viable and replicate the experience of their previous films, the producer allows them “creative freedom”: “Artistic expression” thus becomes an owner-controlled means of production.
As long as Christopher Nolan keeps selling tickets, he’ll be given money to make entertaining but imaginatively-impoverished films like Inception: But it’s important to note that while he wrote and directed Batman Begins, he also acted as producer on The Dark Knightand Inception. None of these movies are very good, but the latter two are more idiosyncratically managed (although about as artistically innovative as a Michael Bay film). As the producer, he actually had the power to make meaningful decisions; as a developed brand, his executive producers and the studio allowed him to flex his legs. Though he wrote and directed both, Inception is treated as an expression of his vision as an “auteur”, while Batman Begins is a historical footnote.
On the flip side there’s Shyamalan: As soon as his brand diminished sufficiently, (Lady in the Water and The Happening lost some angry producers a lot of money) he stopped being an “auteur” and instead worked on the completely-surprise-free based-on-a-cartoon young-adult property Avatar: The Last Airbender.