10 Directors Who Slammed Their Own Movies
"Pure violence and stupidity" could be describing most Vin Diesel movies, to be fair.
Movies can take up years of a director's life, from those early days of hashing out a story and thinking about actors, all the way through to the press junket, the premiere, and a potential second round of promotion when the flick hits home media.
Avatar 2 started shooting in 2017, and director James Cameron spent many years prior to that in pre-production. Though that's not a typical case, it's clearly very important for directors to choose their projects carefully, lest they spend the next four or five years toiling away on something they just don't care about.
But even if a director does take the time to choose the perfect project? There's no guarantee they'll be pleased with the outcome.
In fact, some directors have even publicly slammed their own movies, occasionally going so far as to outright disown them. Sure, making films is complicated, and that final cut might not pan out as intended - but all the same, labelling your movie "a piece of crap" probably isn't the best idea...
10. James Cameron (Piranha II: The Spawning)
James Cameron has made some of the greatest movie sequels of all time in Terminator 2 and Aliens, but a followup that audiences, critics, and the man himself aren't too fond of is 1982's box-office bomb Piranha II: The Spawning.
Though it was Cameron's feature debut, he's distanced himself from the project in the years since, even stating "I don't feel it was my first movie". This is because he was fired midway through production, thus unable to finish the film himself. Understandably, he considers the far-superior Terminator his actual feature debut.
What's more, Cameron hasn't been afraid to talk about how badly Piranha II turned out, once labelling it "horrible", while discussing its troubled production:
"Technically, I have a credit as the director on that film. However, I was replaced after two-and-a-half weeks by the Italian producer. It was like, 'Oh, man, I thought I was doing a good job.' But when I saw what they were cutting together, it was horrible."
You can't blame the man for feeling that way, but in the end, he at least got the last laugh, with two of his movies (Titanic and Avatar) ranking in the top three highest-grossing releases in the history of cinema.