10 Directors Who Didn't Understand Their Own Movies

4. McG - Terminator Salvation

While it's tempting to say that Terminator Salvation director McG didn't really understand the Terminator franchise as a whole, it's also clear he had no idea what sort of movie he was really making with this widely-loathed third sequel.

On paper, Salvation certainly sounded like a refreshing tonic after the underwhelming, overly goofy Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

McG promised fans the future war movie they'd been asking for since T2, and also that the silly humour of T3 would be jettisoned. And let's face it, it was easy to be convinced by the note-perfect casting of Christian Bale as John Connor.

Yet the film we got was the most charmless and bland - if not quite the worst - of the whole lot. Sure, we didn't see anyone wearing Elton John sunglasses, but we also didn't get to savour the delicious dark humour of the first two Terminator movies.

There was no levity whatsoever, the visuals were washed-out and dull, and the characters were flat cardboard cut-outs, such that not even Bale could save the sinking ship.

McG's mistake was thinking that the core fanbase wanted to see a humourless, relentlessly gritty war movie which prefaced action sequences over character development - or that anyone demanded a crude digital puppet of Arnold Schwarzenegger when he wouldn't sign on.