00:00It's so easy for moviegoers to take for granted just how damn difficult it is to get even the worst
00:05movie made.
00:06No matter how bad a film might be, there's someone, somewhere, who worked extremely hard on it.
00:12And for many directors, a gig is a gig.
00:14A film might not have the greatest script, but if it pays decently and keeps them in the life to
00:19which they're accustomed, that's not so bad, right?
00:21Yet that hasn't stopped filmmakers periodically piping up, getting uncommonly honest, and even straight up announcing that they regret one
00:29of their past ventures.
00:30So with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, here with films directors regret making.
00:36The Game, David Fincher.
00:38Though few are going to hold up The Game as one of David Fincher's better movies, by any metric, it's
00:43a taut, solidly crafted thriller.
00:45Yet Fincher, ever the famous perfectionist, has serious misgivings about the film's third act.
00:50Enough that he even wishes he followed the advice of his wife and producer, and didn't direct the movie at
00:56all.
00:56In a 2014 interview with IndieWire, Fincher said,
00:59In hindsight, my wife was right.
01:01We didn't figure out the third act, and it was my fault because I thought if you could just keep
01:05your foot on the throttle, it would be liberating and funny.
01:09Though the game's ending, where it's revealed that Nicholas's entire harrowing ordeal was indeed a stage game,
01:14is certainly the film's most polarising aspect,
01:17there are still many fans who are very, very happy that a director as skilled as Fincher was the one
01:23to make it.
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01:41Fifty Shades of Grey, Sam Taylor-Johnson
01:442015's big-screen adaptation of hit erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey cycled through a bevy of named filmmakers
01:51before landing with on-the-rise director Sam Taylor-Johnson.
01:55The film was ultimately panned by critics, and Taylor-Johnson received a Worst Director Razzie nomination for her work.
02:02Yet her filmmaking was certainly totally competent, if unsurprisingly unable to elevate an atrocious script.
02:08Though the director was reportedly paid over $2 million for her work and initially approached to return for the two
02:14sequels,
02:15she opted to walk away due to her difficulty working with the series' author E.L. James.
02:20In a 2017 interview with The Sunday Times, Taylor-Johnson revealed that while she couldn't quite bring herself to say
02:26out loud
02:27that she regretted the experience, that's basically what she feels in retrospect.
02:31The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2, Frances Lawrence.
02:35Frances Lawrence was hired to direct the entire two-part adaptation of The Hunger Games series' final book, Mockingjay,
02:42with both movies being shot back-to-back.
02:45But even before Part 1 was released, many questioned the necessity of splitting a book the same length as its
02:51two predecessors in half,
02:52beyond the obvious money-grubbing reasons, of course.
02:55And indeed, once Part 2 came out, the most common criticism of the duology was that the split was unnecessary,
03:02and Mockingjay could have been easily adapted as a single film.
03:05Lawrence kept quiet about this for years, but while recently promoting his Hunger Games prequel,
03:10The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, he confirmed to people that he regretted making Part 2,
03:15rather than simply producing Mockingjay as one movie.
03:18He said,
03:24Ironically, perhaps the most vocal criticism of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is that its ending is rushed,
03:30with some suggesting it might have actually benefited from a two-part split.
03:34Oh, the irony.
03:36Che, Steven Soderbergh.
03:38Though few will hold up Steven Soderbergh's two-part Che project as one of the director's better movies,
03:43it's certainly a laudably ambitious, sober-minded effort topped by a terrific performance from Benicio del Toro as the titular
03:50revolutionary.
03:51Both films prove bitterly divisive with critics,
03:54and Soderbergh has since spoken extensively about how personally draining the back-to-back production was,
04:00enough that he wishes he never actually made the movies at all.
04:04In a 2009 interview with The Guardian, he confessed,
04:26The interviewer also, point-blank, asked Soderbergh if he wished he hadn't made the film,
04:31and he replied with a clear, emphatic,
04:33Yeah.
04:34Transformers The Last Night, Michael Bay.
04:37Michael Bay doesn't really come off as a director who regrets anything he makes,
04:41and yet he's been incredibly candid about overstaying his welcome in the Transformers franchise,
04:46and continually accepting paychecks, even when his creative juice for the franchise was basically used up.
04:52In an interview with Unilad while promoting his most recent film, Ambulance, Bay said,
05:09Given that Bay revealed his net worth was sitting at around $500 million in 2016,
05:15the man clearly doesn't need Transformers-sized paydays to keep himself going,
05:20and if Ambulance proved nothing else, it's that he can deliver superior results on a smaller canvas and tighter budget.
05:26David Lynch's 1984 adaptation of Dune may well be one of the most disappointing films of all time,
05:35an intermittently enthralling yet oft-leden blockbuster which was quite obviously put through the executive mangle,
05:41enough that Lynch effectively disowned it.
05:43A big sticking point for Lynch is that he didn't have final cut on the production,
05:48and despite knowing the risks this presented, he signed on regardless.
05:52Though Lynch evidently doesn't like talking much about Dune,
05:55enough that he even vowed to never watch Denis Villeneuve's new adaptation,
05:59he has admitted that he shouldn't have made it,
06:01and since then, he has been adamant about having final cut on all of his projects,
06:06and with Dune's immediate follow-up, Blue Velvet,
06:09Lynch even agreed to slash his salary in half and drastically lower the film's budget to make that happen.
06:15Green Lantern, Martin Campbell.
06:17Martin Campbell is one of those reliable journeyman directors every studio wants to have on their speed dial,
06:23because if you give him a great script, he'll deliver spectacular results,
06:27and even if not, he'll do his damnedest to elevate mediocre material.
06:31But it's tough to picture anyone salvaging 2011's risible DC superhero film Green Lantern,
06:38which from the ground up just seemed like an egregiously ill-advised project.
06:42A $200 million budget for a movie based on a superhero general audiences weren't terribly familiar with,
06:49and one that dared to render Ryan Reynolds' lantern suit entirely in post-production,
06:54risky doesn't even begin to describe it.
06:57Green Lantern went on to flop critically and commercially.
07:00Its legacy cemented as something of a punchline once Reynolds' career rebounded with the Deadpool movies.
07:06Campbell, who hadn't directed a film as CGI-reliant as this before, seemed out of his depth,
07:11and in a 2021 interview with Screen Rant admitted that he shouldn't have made it.
07:16He said,
07:17The film did not work, really.
07:19That's the point, and I'm partly responsible for that.
07:21I shouldn't have done it.
07:23Superhero movies are not my cup of tea, and for that reason, I shouldn't have done it.
07:27But directors always have to carry the can for the failures.
07:30What do they say?
07:31Success has many fathers.
07:32Failure has won.
07:34And that's me.
07:35G. Lee, Martin Brest.
07:36G. Lee is one of the most infamous flops of all time, a stonking box office failure which also won
07:42six Razzie awards,
07:43including Worst Director and Worst Screenplay for filmmaker Martin Brest.
07:48The director effectively had his career torpedoed by G. Lee's catastrophic failure,
07:53and he hasn't directed anything in the 20 years since and has maintained an extremely low profile,
07:59though in a recent Variety interview finally broke his silence about the film.
08:03While Brest was reluctant to even speak the movie's name aloud, preferring to call it the G-movie,
08:08he said of his experience making the film,
08:11Extensive disagreements between the studio and myself got to the point where post-production was shut down for eight months
08:17while we battled it out.
08:18In the end, I was left with two choices, quit or be complicit in the mangling of the movie.
08:23To my eternal regret, I didn't quit, so I bear responsibility for a ghastly cadaver of a movie.
08:29Brest additionally revealed, as many suspected, that he struggled to get subsequent scripts off the ground,
08:35and so rather than spend years fighting to get them made, he decided to quit the industry altogether.
08:40The Impostors, Stanley Tucci.
08:431998's The Impostors, the second directorial effort from Stanley Tucci,
08:47while receiving broadly positive reviews from critics, was a box office flop.
08:52In a 2021 interview on Variety's Award Circuit podcast,
08:56Tucci spoke irreverently about the film's failure and his own regrets with making it as not only director,
09:02but also writer, producer and star.
09:04He said,
09:05Every now and then, someone will come up to me and say they loved the second movie I made,
09:09which was called The Impostors.
09:10They say,
09:11It's my favourite movie of all time, and then I accuse them having escaped from an asylum.
09:16Sure, the movie wasn't a hit and certainly a comedown from his acclaimed 1996 debut, Big Night,
09:21but Tucci's still being pretty damn harsh on himself here.
09:25It's not like he made Geely, right?
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