10 Movies Where The Director Hated The Source Material
10. Godzilla (1998)
It won't surprise anyone to learn that Roland Emmerich wasn't much of a Godzilla fan when he signed on to helm the much-anticipated - and eventually widely-reviled - 1998 Hollywood adaptation.
In fact, Emmerich only agreed to direct the movie when he was given a wide remit to reinvent the character to his own fancies.
He wasn't fond of the franchise at all, saying, "I was never a big Godzilla fan, they were just the weekend matinees you saw as a kid, like Hercules films and the really bad Italian westerns. You’d go with all your friends and just laugh."
The Independence Day filmmaker also wasn't keen on the monster's iconic - and let's be honest, bloody charming - guy-in-suit look, and wanted to transform Godzilla into something faster and sleeker for his new vision.
So, not really Godzilla, then?
Emmerich co-wrote the screenplay alongside his regular writer-producer partner Dean Devlin, and rather than hew close to the original 1954 Japanese Godzilla, opted to give audiences a cutting-edge reboot.
This extended to making Godzilla a more "plausible" monster, and when the controversial re-design was first unveiled to producers at Toho - the studio behind the original movie - they simply sat silent for several minutes. Yikes.
Despite a successfully enigmatic marketing campaign, the movie released to near-universal critical disdain and under-performed at the box office. Shocker.