10 Filmmakers Who Blamed Audiences For Movie Failures
There's being bitter about a poor performance, and then there's this.
The success of any movie cannot come down to the input of just one person. Though there are, of course, situations where an actor carries the rest of the cast, to say there were contributions from no one else would be wildly unfair.
There are countless people who put their hard work into every single feature, with every moving cog, no matter how small, becoming incredibly important in the overall machine. Similarly, when a film fails, it is usually impossible to find just one sole reason.
This doesn't mean people haven't tried. Whenever a film fails - either financially, critically, or both - there will be an inquest into why, and on occasion, those who made the picture will look to pass the blame. Not to the actors, not to the script or any other aspect under their control, but to the audience.
Imagine making a movie and deciding it was the fans' fault it didn't do as well as you wanted it to. No internal questions, no honest reflection about what you could have done better, just a flat-out buck passing to the people who had absolutely no hand in the making of the feature whatsoever. Some of the biggest directors in the world have done it.
10. Ron Howard - Solo: A Star Wars Story
Star Wars is a strange franchise. It's one of the biggest in the world, in terms of pop cultural impact and longevity. Though it has seen something of a renaissance since The Mandalorian first released, there are genuinely more bad Star Wars movies than good.
Of all of them however, there is only one Star Wars outing that can be classed as a box office bomb. At less than $400 million, Solo: A Star Wars Story brought in $100 million less than the next lowest box office number from a galaxy far, far away, which released 35 years earlier (Return of the Jedi).
Solo was infamously plagued with issues all throughout production, from Alden Ehrenreich reportedly struggling on set, to a change of directors after 90% of the movie was shot, to making a feature about a backstory that no one really wanted or needed to see.
Still, Ron Howard blames the poor performance on the audience letting their feelings for The Last Jedi - released just six months earlier - cloud their judgement. Star Wars fatigue certainly may have been an issue, as well as online trolls who plague far too many cinematic releases, but it seems naïve to put all of the blame for the flop on these two issues.