10 Terrible Films That The Wrong Person Got Blamed For

Filmmaking is an innately collaborative process: the director is normally the creative face the public get to see, but behind that you have producers keeping studios happy, writers trying to give something meaning and catering staff dealing with obnoxious actors. Everyone’s important.

Until the film is a success, at least.

If the critics adore it or audiences just can’t enough, the director is immediately ascended to the level of genius, maybe bringing a heavily-involved actor along for the ride. Awards notice occasionally give the smaller players a chance to shine, but for the most part it’s an individual heaped with praise for the group’s work.

Likewise, when a film fails, you can guarantee it’ll all be made out to be the fault of one person. More often than not the director’s the unlucky one, but the honour can realistically fall on anyone not quick enough to distance themselves from the project. Most of the time it’s justified – no one has shed a tear watching John Travolta spend over a decade trying to recover from his pet disaster Battlefield Earth – but sometimes a bystander to the whole thing becomes the poster child of failure.

Normally it’s the fans, hungry for blood that a promising idea was ruined, who pick their victim. And sometimes they get it wrong, like in these ten cases, where a movies failure wasn’t (all) the labelled person’s fault, despite what everyone said.

10. Damon Lindelof – Prometheus

Who Else Was To Blame: Ridley Scott.

When the announcement that Michael Green is currently working on Prometheus 2 hit, many sci-fi fans were quick to celebrate the fact that Damon Lindelof wouldn’t be returning for the sequel. This is the first time a project bearing Green Lantern’s writer has been celebrated, but at least the fans have found the root of the Alien prequel’s problem; its major scripting problems.

But the screenplay wasn’t all Lindelof’s; the project originated with Ridley Scott and had its early drafts written by Jon Spaihts. It was at this stage that much of the plot’s overarching themes were nailed down; the engineers, their creation of humanity and plans for destruction were present from the start. It was only when Spaihts struggled on a later draft that Lindelof came on board, where his big influence was reducing the prevalence of references to the Alien series.

Lindelof made some fan enemies (fanemies?) with the ending of Lost, where he and co-writer Carlton Cuse didn’t info-dump the answers on the audience, even though all of the solutions are there though. Thus when Prometheus had a similar approach, leaving the motivations of the engineers ambiguous (probably in hope of the sequel that has reignited the whole debate), people assumed that was all him.

Though Lindelof certainly made some questionable changes, you can’t blame the whole thing on him.

9. Brett Ratner – X-Men: The Last Stand

Who Else Was To Blame: Matthew Vaughn.

The X-Men franchise has some balls. Whereas Spider-Man will hit the reboot button the moment things get a little bit sloppy, Xavier’s lot continue slogging through in the established continuity, treating every misfire as a lesson to be learned from. While that approach has lead to us having to suffer through two standalone Wolverine films, it also allows to get the highly ambitious Days Of Future Past.

The first time the series faltered was with the final film in what was then the X-Men Trilogy. Bryan Singer, who had brought the first two films to life in genre-redefining fashion, left for the ill-advised Superman Returns, leaving the directorial space of the third movie open. Cut forward two years and the The Last Stand arrives with Brett Ratner at the helm to a barrage of fan hate.

Ratner is typically more Bay than he is Singer, so it’s easy to conclude that he was the cause of all the problems that sunk what should have been a triumphant conclusion of the Dark Phoenix saga. But that isn’t the case; before Ratner the film passed through the hands of Matthew Vaughn, who would later direct First Class. It was Vaughn who cast Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut and who made massive headway on forming the story.

Maybe it’s a good thing he’s not helming Days Of Future Past.

8. George Lucas – Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

Who Else Was To Blame: Steven Spielberg.

George Lucas had a shocking first decade of the 21st Century. Previously widely revered as a great director despite only having directed three movies, his Star Wars prequels, while initially well received, suffered a major fan backlash.

Things only got worse when the magnetic aliens and CGI monkeys of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull appeared; this was another childhood-ruining turn only less severe than Star Wars only because it was one film, rather than three.

The difference this time around was that unlike on Star Wars, where he did have total, undeniable, complete creative control thanks to surrounding himself with adoring yes men, on Indy 4 he was only a part of the creative process. A bullying part of that process yes, refusing to back down from the misguided view that the natural progression from saving religious artefacts was to showdown against aliens, but a part nonetheless.

As with the original Indiana Jones films, Lucas’ credit was for story. From on set footage we know he was more involved than that suggests, but at the end of the day someone – be it director Steven Spielberg or writer David Koepp – had the power to change what didn’t work.

After all, the idea for the film might have been pretty weak, but so was Temple Of Doom and that turned out pretty damn well.

7. Zack Snyder – Man Of Steel

Who Else Was To Blame: David S. Goyer.

Zack Snyder has had the career ascension of a top-tier director despite never having made a truly great film.

One constant through his work partially explains this; aside from the smug vanity project Sucker Punch, they’re all adaptations. And out of all of them, he’s only credited as a screenwriter for 300. He’s a man who works well within the studio system, and though there’s an individual, if marketable, style to his films, he thrives as part of a team.

And yet when Man Of Steel flew into cinemas last year to responses varying from “meh” to “that was so bad even Batman couldn’t save it,” Snyder took the brunt of the blame. It’s a side effect of the trademark sheen his movies all share: they all look alike, so everything in there must be his.

Except in Superman’s case, there’s a lot more wrong than the action (which is all Snyder). David S. Goyer’s script is merely a retread of his own Batman Begins with Bruce replaced with Clark: all of the beats, right down to the narratively opportune flashback, are here. However, as Goyer was a strong force behind The Dark Knight Trilogy he has a free pass.

Maybe that goodwill will run out come the sequel.

6. Sam Raimi – Spider-Man 3

Who Else Was To Blame: Avi Arad.

Sam Raimi shouldn’t be able to walk away from the Spider-Man 3 debacle unscathed. Although we’ll soon see that he wasn’t responsible for some of the film’s more erroneous moments, his version of what transpired to be his last in the series would have been a step down from the incredibly assured Spider-Man 2 with or without the meddling of others.

You see, it was Raimi’s idea to introduce the plot twist that it was Sandman who had actually killed Uncle Ben, negating Peter Parker’s journey in the first film. That, along with the plan to give Harry Osbourne’s Green Goblin a redemptive end, already makes the film feel incredibly contrived. Not ‘quick, rush a reboot out’ bad, but still not great.

The honour of pushing it over the edge goes to Avi Arad, the film’s producer, who suggested Raimi introduce Venom (and by extension the dancing) to the film. As Arad was also a high-up in Marvel at the time, that decision is likely less to do with the film’s quality and more about how to bring as many Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery to a new generation as possible.

Kind of like The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

5. Jean-Pierre Jeunet – Alien: Resurrection

Who Else Was To Blame: Joss Whedon.

This Alien film managed to pull the amazing double trick of both ripping off (oh shock, a character we thought was human is actually an android) and ruining the logic of (wait, that’s a… human alien?) the original. It was so dumb it retroactively made everyone warm a little to Alien 3 (a film director David Fincher has always distanced himself from to avoid inclusion on this list).

Much of the blame falls on the film’s director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, whose clearly held a lot of influence on the film – Brad Dourif playing chicken with a Xenomorph is right up Jeunet’s street – but the real fault is shared between the screenwriter, who envisioned a lot of the goofier scenes, and 20th Century Fox, who enforced bringing back Ripley as a clone.

That Fox had a hand in it is no surprise – it was the studio’s involvement that neutered the initially promising Alien 3. What is somewhat shocking is that it was Joss Whedon who wrote the script.

That’s right, Avengers mastermind and geek God Whedon was behind Alien: Resurrection. It’s a sickening moment whenever his name pops up when we’re watching the film. Which isn’t that often

4. Joel Schumacher – Batman & Robin

Who Else Was To Blame: Everyone involved.

As discussed on this very site earlier this week, the misguided, dumb, camp, punny Batman & Robin is viewed as a necessary evil so we could get Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. Following on from the already awful Batman Forever, the gothic styles of Tim Burton’s films were well and truly gone in place of locations that were closer to toy playsets and vibrant colours that only served to highlight those infernal bat-nipples.

Try not to get too angry though; since the film’s franchise-redefining release, its director Joel Schumacher has been relegated to low budget, easily ignorable fare. Serves him right.

Well it would if Batman And Robin was just a director messing up; in reality it was a culmination of unbelievable hubris from all involved. Warner Bros. had forced out Burton for the third Bat-flick to ensure the hero didn’t become too dark for the lucrative child audience, slowly upping the toy quotient.

And writer Akiva Goldsman has admitted that with Batman he was completely out of his comfort zone, happy to throw pun after pun into the mix. Yet Warner eventually turned the series into a cash cow and Goldsman would go on to win an Oscar for penning A Beautiful Mind. Doesn’t seem fair now, does it?

From his filmography Schumacher clearly has little directorial skill beyond being susceptible to studio demands, but he didn’t need to become a singled-out fan hate figure he will forever be.

3. Peter Jackson – The Hobbit Trilogy

Who Else Was To Blame: Guillermo Del Toro.

With Legolas threatening Thorin and Smaug getting a proper showdown against the Dwarves of Erebor, we’ve reached the tipping point where Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth becomes totally distinct from the land in J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved novels. So much was before release made about the transformation of The Hobbit into an epic trilogy and based on the first two films it seems our worries have become reality; it’s stretched beyond belief.

And, just as with Lucas and Star Wars before, fans have been quick to point the finger directly at the director. And it’s fair to a degree; since The Lord Of The Rings Jackson has certainly shown he’s a very different man to the one who made Heavenly Creatures; whether his source is a ninety minute creature feature or a character-based novel his films have become lengthy CGI-glazed extravaganzas that miss the whole point.

It was, after all, his decision to boost The Hobbit from an already questionable two films to three. But the fact it had already reached a point where it wasn’t a single movie suggests something had already gone wrong. Originally Guillermo Del Toro was going to be the one bringing Bilbo’s journey to life and although his version would have no doubt been a little more practical, he still made the choice to split the book in the first place.

2. M. Night Shyamalan – After Earth

Who Else Was To Blame: Will Smith

Figuring out who took the brunt of the blame for After Earth is a tricky task. The film, a hodgepodge of poorly thought out ideas presented in an illogical manner, all brought to life by rote acting, had two key players who were equally as culpable for bringing it to the screen. But as we’ve discovered, people want one person at fault, so was it M. Night Shyamalan’s direction or Will Smith’s general managing of the project that sunk the film?

Ultimately, it was M. Night who got it worse of it. In decline to the point where his career is more of a joke than Nicolas frickin’ Cage, Columbia Pictures were smart enough to keep him completely absent from the marketing; after The Last Airbender his name was marked by even the most forgiving cinema-goer. When you’ve got that sort of form, it’s not hard to imagine that he’d produce another dud.

But if you trace the big problems with the film back through the production, it’s Smith, not Shyamalan who is at fault. Turning a nice, low-budget idea into overblown sci-fi? Smith. All that pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo? Smith (and writer Gary Whitta). Casting his untalented son as the lead? Smith. Heck, even hiring Shyamalan was Smith’s idea.

Thankfully, even though the extent of his involvement isn’t as widespread knowledge as it should, the whole After Earth ordeal has a dint on both Smith’s popularity and ego, so he didn’t get away scott free.

1. Elizabeth Banks, Kristen Bell, Halle Berry, Leslie Bibb, Kate Bosworth, Gerard Butler, Josh Duhamel, Anna Faris, Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Hugh Jackman, Johnny Knoxville, Justin Long, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Liev Schreiber, Seann William Scott, Emma Stone, Jason Sudeikis, Uma Thurman, Naomi Watts and Kate Winslet – Movie 43

Who Else Was To Blame: Peter Farrelly.

Movie 43 could only have been made worse if people had actually gone to see it, but thankfully audiences heeded critical planning and their own common sense to steer clear of last year’s abominable ‘comedy’.

Attempting to have people aghast at its gross-out comedy, the only thing people were shocked by was the ensemble cast that would make Wes Anderson blush. So much talent starring in unfunny, vulgar sketches made for a cringe-inducing hour and a half, and although no one’s career was seriously damaged (being in the film at all was punishment enough), a lot of blame rested on the actors, who without the film wouldn’t have existed.

Except if you listen to director Peter Farrelly (half of the brother-duo that brought you films varying from There’s Something About Mary to The Three Stooges), no one really wanted to be in it; over multiple years he called in favours, and tricked or otherwise blackmailed the stars to appearing.

Don’t be angry at the cast. Pity them.

Who else has been unfairly blamed for bad films? Let us know down in the comments.