No-one deliberately sets out to make a bad movie. But sets can be difficult, studios can interfere and critics can be harsh. The Director's Guild of America even has an official fake name 'Alan Smithee' that directors use if they want to have their name taken off a film and can prove they'd lost creative control.
Sometimes, though, a director breaks cover and publicly disowns or apologises for his or her own movie. Here are 6 times directors have thrown their film under the bus.
1. Josh Trank - Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four was critically panned and underperformed at the box office. The shoot was no less troubled, with rewrites and reshoots ordered by Fox, and rumours of erratic behaviour by director Josh Trank.
Trank expressed his dissatisfaction on Twitter, saying, "A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would've received great reviews. You'll probably never see it. That's reality though." He deleted the tweet but the damage was done. Later he'd be bumped as director of one of the Star Wars standalones.
2. David Fincher - Alien 3
It was his feature debut, part of a massive franchise with a huge budget, and he had no time to prepare – Fincher was brought in as a replacement at the last minute – so it's perhaps not that surprising that he disowned the project. Fincher has been quite open about the experience and was the only director not to take part in the Quadrilogy boxset release.
"I had to work on it for two years, got fired off it three times and I had to fight for every single thing," Fincher said. "No-one hated it more than me; to this day, no-one hates it more than me."
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3. Michael Bay - Armageddon
He's made plenty of movies that critics didn't love and he isn't usually one to apologise. So it's perhaps surprising that Michael Bay spoke out against not-his-worst movie Armageddon.
Talking to the Miami Herald, he said, "I will apologise for Armageddon, because we had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. It was a massive undertaking. That was not fair to the movie. I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us.
"It was terrible. My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked 'What do you do when you're doing all the effects yourself?'"
In Defence Of... Michael Bay, Hollywood's action movie king
Later, on his forum he said the comment was taken out of context, though:
"What I clearly said to the reporter, is I wish I had more time to edit the film, specifically the third act. He asked me, in effect, what would you change if you could in your movies if you could go back. I said, I wish we had a few more weeks in the edit room on Armageddon.
"And still today Armageddon, is still one of the most-shown movies on cable TV. And yes, I'm proud of the movie. Enough said."
Enough? We could stand to hear a bit more.
4. Joss Whedon - Avengers: Age Of Ultron
On the press tour for Avengers: Age Of Ultron a somewhat burnt-out Joss Whedon made a couple of remarks about clashing with Marvel over certain scenes, using the phrase, "That's when it got really, really unpleasant."
Whedon is a fan favourite though, and reactions, according to Whedon, were along the lines of "Well it's OK, it could be better, but it's not Joss' fault."
Whedon later made up with Marvel and disowned his own disownership, citing exhaustion and explaining that he was being down on himself and not the movie or the studio.
"I think that did a disservice to the movie, and to the studio and to myself," he said at a live event at the Tribeca Film Festival. "Ultimately, it wasn't the right way to be, because I'm very proud about it."
5. Steven Spielberg - Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
Shia LaBeouf said that he and Spielberg "dropped the ball" on Indy 4, Harrison Ford called him a "f**king idiot" and LaBeouf apologised.
Spielberg himself had a couple of less-than-positive things to say, too.
"I sympathize with people who didn't like the MacGuffin because I never liked the MacGuffin. George [Lucas] and I had big arguments about the MacGuffin," he told Empire. "I didn't want these things to be either aliens or inter-dimensional beings. But I am loyal to my best friend."
Although nuking the fridge was his idea and he didn't apologise for that…
6. Tony Kaye - American History X
American History X was Tony Kaye's first movie, and he's since admitted to bad behaviour and "falling apart" after the shoot. Kaye was banned from the cutting room, then let back in again, worked on an edit for a year, then wasn't allowed to release his cut.
Kaye got the film removed from the Toronto film festival, started communicating with New Line through ads in Variety, and very openly tried to have his name first replaced with Alan Smithee and then with Humpty Dumpty.
He's more sanguine now – check out his amazing retelling of the full story in The Guardian.
