The only thing better than the feeling of walking out of the cinema completely satisfied with your viewing experience, eager to see what the auteur of the spectacle you’ve just watched will do next, is the satisfaction of finally getting to see their follow up and it turn out brilliant. Think of Duncan Jones’ Moon, followed by the even better Source Code. Or of anything by Christopher Nolan.
Sometimes you’ll be disappointed; for a period, David Fincher appeared to be alternating great films (Seven, Fight Club, Zodiac), with remarkably average fare (The Game, Panic Room, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). A lot of amazing directors have poor films on their resume and likewise, there’s plenty of bad ones (I could say Michael Bay, but that might be a little too obvious a choice), who are yet to come close to critical praise. Then there are the poor directors who at one point or another appeared to have got it right, but it turned out to be a pure accident. These are the directors who consistently lead viewers on; to this day they are heralded as great, but once you strip away the praise there exists only one bright spot on a very poor back catalogue.
So here are five of the worst, ones who are still riding the success their one good film after numerous disappointments. If I’ve learnt one thing compiling this list, it’s that if you had your first big hit back in 1999, you may have been best finding a different career.
Spoilers for all films on the list, but mainly in the third entry.
Honourable Mention: Tim Burton
Tim Burton has not made what could be called a good film in well over a decade and yet every new movie gets the pre-release plaudits of a great. Possibly the most overrated director of all time, some of Burton’s so called classics are anything but; Edward Scissorhands is incredibly twee, rather than gothic and in the wake of Nolan’s trilogy his Batman looks as crazily camp as Adam West’s.
However, he has had some success. Beetlejuice, Ed Wood and a couple of others are good films and are the reason he doesn’t quite make the list; he isn’t just a one-hit wonder, at least in the literal sense. What he is, is a director who had a career that began with a signature style and worked to some degree, but then, through refusal to change, it became stale and his films became boring. He’s worthy of a mention because his success came at a short period of the late eighties and early nineties and as time has gone by it has been revealed his amazing filmmaking prowess is as false as Sweeny Todd’s shaving skills.
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10 Comments
I don’t know if they’re “flukes” as much as directors that blew their wad too early.
I think the Wachowskis and Singer have enough potential to make more great films. They’re relatively young.
I can’t help but feel that Singer blew his wad too early, those X-men films were adequate but very flat…. Valkyrie was a snooze fest and Superman returns was a dud….
Much like McG or Joe Johnston, if I see him attached to a film I almost immediately write it off.
Never really liked Tim Burton, none of his films are that good with Edward Scissorhands being the one exception
I’m personally not a fan, but there’s plenty of people who consistently big him up with reference to his early work.
For me, the Burton Batman is better than the Nolan one, especially in Batman Returns.
The second Nolan film was good but generally I found them a little silly. You can’t sombrely ponder the problems of existence in a shadowy dystopia while wearing tiny little bat ears.
Donnie Darko.
The problem with articles like this is the writer is usually trying to pass off his/her own personal tastes in film as something more factual than opinionated. Personally, not only did I think Source Code was completely forgettable and just downright inane (and I LOVE sci-fi action), but it didn’t hold a candle to the vastly superior Moon, and I think/hope any critic worth his salt would agree. I’m curious if the author has actually seen The Game, Panic Room, or TCCoBB or is just going by their Metacritic score on IMDb to label them ‘disappointingly average.’ Good list. Terrible lead in.
This website is made of loads of different writers with their ownn opinions. Any list is going to be heavily based on the writers opinions and on a wedsite like this it’s not a bad thing.
I thought Soruce Code was one of the few good things to come out of 2011, which was quite a poor year overall. Moon was more cerebral, but Source Code was so incredibly constructed. And I’ve seen all of Fincher’s work and was underwhelmed when I saw the three films in question, hence the mention in the intro.
I’m glad you enjoyed the list. With the opening, I opted to focus on individual films to give a sense of how directors work can vary, in contrast to the one-hit wonders who are on a downward trajectory, which is why my opinion featured heavily in it.
M Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable is an excellent movie with a slightly disappointing ending (that was supposed to get a sequel). I think it’s better than The Sixth Sense which is also a great movie. So Two hit wonder there.
Given that STAR WARS was one of the two or three biggest film phenomenons of all time, Lucas’ other films are easily overlooked or dismissed.
However, AMERICAN GRAFFITI is, for some people, a better film in some respects (not me, however). But, for me, THX-1138 is probably just as revolutionary as STAR WARS, and incredibly predictive of the future (televised violence, pill-encouragement, marketing, and electronic religion). The sound design alone helped make aspects of STAR WARS possible. It’s a challenging film for sure, and not a particularly warm film, either. But his skill in it and the success of what he was trying to do are undeniable.
The prequels sucked, of course.