10 Filmmakers Who Defended Their Terrible Movies

Tom Hooper's Cats is one of the most miscalculated big-budget releases of the last few years, with its bizarre human/cat CG hybrids proving so laughably distracting that they derailed the entire movie.

From the moment we got our first glimpse of these monstrous creations in the film's first trailer, it was clear that Cats was in trouble, with the internet reacting in bemused horror at the sight of famous actors like Judi Dench and Jennifer Hudson adorned in some of the most disturbing special effects we've ever seen on film.

In fact, the reaction to the trailer was so negative that Hooper had to come out and defend it, explaining that the CGI was "at an early stage", since the movie had only finished filming a couple of months before the trailer debuted.

But then... the finished product came out. Well, we say "finished" but even that wasn't quite true, as the movie received a day-one patch to improve its visual effects. However, those visual effects were so misguided that no amount of patching could fix their underlying problems, and they were a big reason why Cats bombed at the box-office, was destroyed by critics, and is now remembered as a laughing stock.

Still, trooper Hooper felt compelled to defend a project he was apparently very passionate about. On the movie's commentary track, he explained that he simply had to use this "digital fur technology" because it allowed him to capture live dance, while also preserving his actors' facial expressions:

“I wanted to kind of create a covering of fur that was better than what a costume could do. But still be one-to-one with the real bodies, so that the way we captured the dance was utterly faithful to the way they did the dance."

To this day, Hooper is locked in director's jail for crimes against felines, and as far as we can tell, he's the only person on the planet with nice things to say about this terrible movie.