15 Terrible Movies By Great Directors

If you're ever having a bad day or feeling like you're not good enough, remember that Steven Spielberg has made some pretty bad movies. That's not to disparage the Beard. He's an iconic director and a huge reason for Hollywood's astronomical success in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. Indeed, he belongs on the Mount Rushmore of great filmmakers — but he's far from perfect. Yes, even Steven freaking Spielberg is not immune from making a bad call now and again. Somehow, every time he seemingly hits a low point, like immediately after 1990's "Hook," he bounces back with a vengeance, namely the one-two punch of "Jurassic Park" and Best Picture winner "Schindler's List."

He's not the only one. James Cameron, Ron Howard, Peter Jackson, and George Lucas proudly stand atop this list of 15 great movie directors who made terrible films. As you keep reading, remember that we do this out of love and respect. Many of these pictures are considered awful because we know the talent involved is capable of so much more.

"Star Wars: Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace" proudly bears the title of Most Disappointing Movie of All Time, but, somehow, George Lucas managed to top that oozing pile of poo with "Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones." Released three years after fans convinced themselves that "Phantom" was an aberration, "Clones" ups the spectacle but once again crashes and burns where it truly counts — story and character.

Sure, a handful of third-act set pieces threaten to push this overstuffed production into something resembling watchable cinema. Unfortunately, for every solid action beat arrives three or four moments where wooden characters recite wooden dialogue, heroes stumble upon bizarre plot points — we still don't get the whole Master Sifo-Dyas/Clone Army stuff — and grown men ride atop giant, tick-shaped cows to impress their ladies.

Remarkably, "Clones" only managed to ruin Hayden Christensen's career, while Portman and Ewan McGregor escaped (mostly) unscathed.

In hindsight, Lucas should have stepped aside and allowed a better director to steer his legacy in a positive direction. As is, the "Star Wars" prequels mortally wounded his beloved franchise long before Mickey Mouse gutted it for good. 

In 1989, Steven Spielberg concluded "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" with our iconic hero (Harrison Ford) literally riding off into the sunset, perfectly capping one of the all-time great movie trilogies. Alas, the financial appeal of a fourth chapter proved too great for Spielberg and chum George Lucas to pass up, resulting in the colossal turd known as "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

Not even the Holy Grail could save this wholly unnecessary entry in the "Indiana Jones" franchise, a listless, cynical cash grab Spielberg clearly directed over a flip phone while fishing aboard his yacht in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Where's the youthful vigor and energy that catapulted "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to fame and glory? Here, Indy's dashing heroics are grounded by a clunky script, a batch of bland, CGI-fueled set pieces, and a rotating wheel of eye-rolling antics designed to delight 5-year-olds or mentally unstable apes. Take your pick of the worst: The now-infamous nuke-the-fridge gag, Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf) swinging through the forest with a bunch of monkeys, or the bit where a poorly rendered extra-terrestrial telepathically blows Cate Blanchett's head off — yeah, this movie sucks.

An early chase sequence set at a college briefly captures the magic that made this franchise great, but the rest of the picture deserves to be buried deep inside the Well of Souls next to the equally awful "Dial of Destiny."     

After proving to the world that he was the greatest director of his day with pictures like "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now," Francis Ford Coppola seemingly grew tired of all the praise and decided to go in the complete opposite direction and make a film almost nobody liked — "Jack." Released in 1996, when Hollywood had no idea what to do with Robin Williams, this bizarre comedy stars the legendary actor as a young boy who grows four times faster than usual. Subsequently, on his 10th birthday, the kid looks like a fully grown man but is still prone to the misadventures of youth.

Do you see where this is going? It's a giant excuse for Williams to unleash his manic brand of comedy. He does his best to elevate the material (and even stayed at Coppola's ranch to prepare for the role of Jack) but too often feels like an untethered bundle of energy in dire need of direction. He deserved better.

Poor Rob Reiner. From 1984 until 1992, the man could do no wrong in the director's chair. Then, following a string of stunning successes, namely "This is Spinal Tap," "Stand by Me," "The Princess Bride," "When Harry Met Sally ...," "Misery," and "A Few Good Men," he crashed and burned hard with the dreadful 1994 dramedy "North." 

Panned by critics and ignored by audiences despite featuring a star-studded cast that included a pre-"Lord of the Rings" Elijah Wood, Jon Lovitz, Jason Alexander, Alan Arkin, Dany Aykroyd, Kathy Bates, and Bruce Willis, "North" tries to be a whimsical fantasy about acceptance and self-discovery without the whimsy or self-discovery. Everything here feels contrived, manipulated, and cloying, a massive contrast from Reiner's best works, which got by on easy charm and clever humor. Here is a case of a director who thought he was immune to bad judgment. Reiner never fully recovered from this abomination.

Before directing classics like "Aliens," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," and "Titanic," James Cameron directed "Piranha II: The Spawning," a wholly unnecessary followup to Joe Dante's classic B-movie. Gorier, more serious, and not nearly as much fun, "Spawning"  certainly ups the ante and increases the body count. The only memorable aspect of the picture is a beach attack sequence in which hundreds of people flee from a hoard of winged killer fish. That's right, they fly now.

The cast, consisting of Tricia O'Neil, Steve Marachuk, Lance Henriksen (who would go on to work with Cameron in "The Terminator" and "Aliens"), and Leslie Graves, does what they can with a paint-by-numbers screenplay and bland human drama. Look closely and you might see some of Cameron's directorial traits, notably vast underwater sequences and plenty of ambition. None of it amounts to much, and there's plenty of debate regarding Cameron's involvement in the troubled production. Still, even the greats gotta start somewhere, right?

Yes, even the Coen brothers aren't averse to producing trash. Hence, "The Ladykillers," a curiously flat remake of the similarly titled 1955 British comedy. Except where that picture had the great Alec Guinness leading the charge (and almost dying as a result), the 2004 version relies on a woefully miscast Tom Hanks to save the day. We love Hanks as much as the next site, especially in crowd pleasers like "Saving Private Ryan," "Apollo 13," and "Forrest Gump," where he can display his natural charm and everyman sensibilities.

"The Ladykillers," on the other hand, is too dark and mean-spirited a vehicle for an actor like Hanks, though he tries his damnedest to hold the shenanigans afloat with a Foghorn Leghorn accent that grows tiresome after the first five minutes. Co-stars Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, Tzi Ma, and Ryan Hurst don't add much either.

Honestly, the only thing keeping this manic picture afloat is Irma P. Hall, whose naive Marva Munson adds a touch of class to the proceedings, and the terrific gospel music soundtrack executive produced by T Bone Burnett. All else can be tossed in that wood chipper from "Fargo."

When "Beverly Hills Cop III" hit theaters, it was seen mainly as another misfire from a down-on-his-luck Eddie Murphy. Everyone seemed to ignore the fact that John Landis directed it. Yeah, the guy who made "The Kentucky Fried Movie," "National Lampoon's Animal House," "The Blues Brothers, "An American Werewolf in London," and "Trading Places" somehow helmed this tepid action-comedy that jettisons all the fun from the previous two pictures — including fan favorite John Ashton — in favor of a more traditional, straight-forward police thriller.

Keep in mind, "Beverly Hills Cop III" was released just six years after "Coming to America" and less than a decade after "Three Amigos!" Though to be fair, Landis helmed the just-as-bad "Oscar" with Sylvester Stallone three years before. So, maybe the writing was already on the wall.

Here's a fun exercise for you kids: watch "Trading Places," also starring Murphy, followed by "Beverly Hills Cop III" to get a gist of just how far this mighty duo had fallen by the mid-'90s. 

Chances are, you've never heard of Ron Howard's "The Dilemma," a dark comedy that was unceremoniously released in January, only to fade into obscurity. How do you muck up a film starring a red-hot Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Jennifer Connelly, Winona Ryder, Channing Tatum, and Queen Latifah? What must have looked like comedy gold on paper crashed and burned somewhere during the production process, resulting in a mean-spirited, disjointed affair that makes Howard's "The Grinch" look like a master class in comic filmmaking by comparison. 

Ouch.

Really, it's curious as to why Howard decided to follow up "Frost/Nixon" and "Angels & Demons" with "The Dilemma." Did he need a change of pace following a super serious character drama and a big-budget blockbuster? The film's premise is rather bland. A man named Ronnie (Vaughn) discovers that the wife (Ryder) of his best friend Nick (James) is having an affair and must decide how to break the news. That's it. That's the plot. Honestly, there's not enough here to fit a 20-minute sitcom. The real dilemma is whether or not fans of the immense talent behind this fiasco should take the time to watch it.

Our advice: watch "Wedding Crashers," "Parenthood," and an episode of "The King of Queens" instead.

How bad is "Dark Shadows?" Consider that Tim Burton also directed the awful 2001 remake of "Planet of the Apes," 2010's atrocious "Alice in Wonderland" and whatever the hell "Dumbo" was, and we still chose it as his worst movie. What's strange is that the material feels perfect for Burton's sensibilities. A big-screen adaptation of the creepy late-'60s TV show "Dark Shadows," this 2012 misfire squanders the talents of Johnny Depp, Eva Green, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Helena Bonham Carter with a dumb, meandering plot, an inconsistent tone, and shallow pop culture references.

Sure, the production design is on point, and Seth Grahame-Smith's script occasionally hits a clever note, but this is a far cry from "Beetlejuice," or "Sleepy Hollow," for that matter. Burton eventually regained his footing with the Netflix series "Wednesday" and the sequel film "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" a decade later, but "Dark Shadows" (and most of his aughts productions) nearly buried him alive. 

Clint Eastwood has always been hit or miss. He either makes a legendary classic like "Unforgiven," or forgettable thrillers like "Blood Work." There's rarely an in-between. Even with those expectations, "The 15:17 to Paris" is a terrible effort by the icon, with bland direction and a lackadaisical tone undermining the suspense.

Based on the true-life event in which three Americans prevented a terrorist attack aboard a train traveling to Amsterdam in 2015, this sluggish thriller spends far too much time on pointless backstories designed to pad the runtime flesh out the characters. This approach might have worked had Eastwood cast actual actors. Instead, he cast the people who participated in the episode, namely Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos, as themselves and kind of shot himself in the foot. No offense to that trio — they're genuine heroes — but their acting taints what should have been a spellbinding look at a remarkable true story in the vein of Eastwood's 2016 picture "Sully." 

John Carpenter always toed the line between B-movie art and trashy cinema but decided to dive headfirst into the latter in the 1990s, helming a series of mostly forgettable films like "Memoirs of an Invisible Man," "Village of the Damned," "Escape from L.A." and "Vampires." Still, even those movies have their charms and are at least watchable despite being leagues removed from Carpenter's classic '80s pictures.  

"Ghosts of Mars," on the other hand, is pure garbage.

Released in 2001, this schlocky horror fest stars Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube, Jason Statham (with hair!), and Pam Grier as police officers battling, well, the ghosts of Mars. Produced on a modest budget, the film's effects (even by early 2000s standards) are awful, the dialogue absurd, and the action is only mildly engaging. It may have its followers, and one could argue that "Ghosts of Mars" isn't far removed from Carpenter's previous efforts. However, for us, the film leans too heavily into camp and never rises above mediocrity.

In 2003, director Peter Jackson unleashed "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King," a colossal blockbuster that swept the Academy Awards and cemented the saga atop a short list of perfect trilogies. That should have been the end of the tale. Like Spielberg and Lucas, Jackson couldn't resist milking more from his beloved franchise, and turned his sites on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit." Okay, but for whatever reason, he split the short children's story into three massive three-hour pictures, padding the epic runtime with subplots ripped from Tolkien's Appendices. What should have been a robust adventure transformed into a nine-hour slog, capped by the atrocious "Battle of the Five Armies."

This herculean finale tries desperately to capture the spirit and magic of "ROTK" but quickly devolves into tedious action sequences marred by dodgy CGI and a severe lack of dramatic depth. It's never entirely clear which five armies are fighting or why. The point of the story seemingly revolves around something called the Arkenstone, a thingy hidden inside the dragon Smaug's layer, but you won't get the resolution of that plot thread unless you watch the R-rated Director's Cut, which succinctly sums up this pointless exercise. 

Thankfully, Amazon's "Rings of Power" was so putrid it made fans look back fondly on "The Hobbit" series. So, yay?

"Spider-Man 3" broke Sam Raimi. Sure, he made the terrific "Drag Me to Hell" a few years later, but he has since become a director-for-hire, beginning with the uninspired would-be franchise starter "Oz the Great and Powerful." Starring a miscast James Franco as the wonderful Wizard of Oz, this nonsensical, albeit colorful misfire gives Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" a run for its money as the most overstuffed CGI fantasy of the mid-2000s. Did anyone involved actually watch "The Wizard of Oz?" Also, why does Hollywood keep trying to make "The Wizard of Oz" a thing? It's a classic, no doubt, but very much of its time when 90% of the moviegoing population believed in witches.

Pulling ideas from "Wicked" and 1985's "Return to Oz," "Oz the Great and Powerful" does the thing that most tentpoles do: Tell the story set before the actual story the filmmakers want to tell. Stop playing coy Hollywood and get that "Wizard of Oz" remake out of your system already. And for God's sake, give Raimi another shot at "Spider-Man," at the very least, to get his career back on track.

Somewhere between "Signs" and "Lady in the Water," M. Night Shyamalan got lost along the way, transforming from the "next Steven Spielberg" into a flash-in-the-pan talent with more bad than good lining his portfolio these days. Really, we could pick any one of "Lady in the Water," "After Earth," "Old," or "Trap" as his worst picture, but even they aren't embarrassing enough to top 2008's "The Happening."

Billed as Shyamalan's first foray into R-rated territory thanks to a wild amount of gory suicides — a man lies down in front of his lawn mower — this stunning achievement in cinematic incompetence packs all of the director's worst tendencies into 90 minutes of pure, unintentional hilarity. Even Mark Wahlberg looks embarrassed — and he starred in "Max Payne." 

Still, change "The Happening" into a black-and-white film and pretend it was made in the 1950s; it fits snugly between Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space" and Dick Powell's "The Conqueror" as a quasi B-movie classic.

What the hell happened to Robert Zemeckis? The man who directed classics like "Back to the Future," "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and "Forrest Gump" had already stumbled in his bid to turn motion capture into an art via "The Polar Express" and "Beowulf." Still, he clapped back at critics with the brilliant "Flight," only to hit rock bottom with 2022's wooden, live-action remake of "Pinocchio," which might go down as the absolute worst of Disney's modern-day updates. It was so bad the Mouse House dumped it on Disney+ and has since denied its existence.

Making matters worse, Guillermo Del Toro's "Pinocchio" was released the same year and earned accolades and Oscars, while Zemeckis' version fell face down in a pile of horse dung. No, really, that's an actual scene from the movie and an apt metaphor for this atrocious turkey. Moreover, Tom Hanks looks like a total jackass as Geppetto, delivering a bizarre performance that likely causes the once bankable star to weep while clutching his multiple Oscars — a reminder of better times long ago. And don't get us started on Monstro's strange design, which transforms the great whale into an AI-rendered abomination.

Next time, Zemeckis, let your conscience be your guide and steer clear of this nonsense.