Is there anything more disappointing than seeing a director you love suddenly put out an awful movie? Well, yes, theres lots of things - Syria, Badgers, your biscuit falling in your tea - but for the sake of this article lets say there isn't. Even the best directors deliver a bad film every now and then, but no matter how minor a cock up it can still be pretty worrying; what if all their previous success was just a fluke? Or has their reputation (and ego) grown to the point where everyone around them is a suck up, afraid to go against their gospel word? Whatever the reason a bad film can open the floodgates for a dire career trajectory. Have you heard from Joel Schumacher since Batman And Robin? Thought not. Today Ill take a look at ten of these once greats and look at what went wrong when they delivered an uncharacteristically poor entry into their filmography. And, more importantly, if they managed to pull their career back afterwards.
Honourable Mention - Tim Burton
Tim Burton would initially seem like an obvious choice for this list; he used to be an incredibly revered director but has slowly slipped down in audiences estimations after a string of repetitive adaptations of already kooky material. But has his quality dipped or are we just bored of him now? His style is interesting the first couple of times you see it, hence his continued popularity - theres always new generation of teenagers to find him dark and brooding - although its hard to find anything, other than the budget and CGI levels, that makes his current output incredibly different from his early work. There have been some shockers, but, for me at least, nothing has come as a quality shock against the rest of his career.