10 Directors Who Slammed Their Own Movies

5. Mathieu Kassovitz (Babylon A.D.)

THUMB Michael Bay
20th Century Studios

Vin Diesel movies that don't have the words "fast" or "furious" in the title generally tend to struggle, and his 2008 sci-fi flop Babylon A.D. was no different.

Audiences hated it, critics hated it, and director Mathieu Kassovitz hated it too, and though you'd expect him to keep those feelings to himself until the movie had finished its theatrical run... he didn't.

Pulling a move that would later be replicated by Michael Bay (who we'll get to later), and Tom Holland in the run-up to Uncharted, Kassovitz started bashing his own film before it had even released, branding it "pure violence and stupidity", which, to be fair, is actually a good description of most Vin Diesel movies.

Kassovitz then added that Babylon A.D. was like "a bad episode of 24", and unsurprisingly, he hasn't been invited to direct a big-budget Hollywood movie since.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.