2. Jean-Luc Godard
Nobody will ever doubt or question Jean-Luc Godard's influence on cinema. His legacy is there for all to see and it is filled with great pieces of work such as his iconic debut A Bout de Souffle, the playfully entertaining Bande a Part and the provocatively ambitious Weekend. Godard always looked for new ways to express himself through the medium of film, and whist his movies can be abstract, nearly all of them were deeply personal. A radical in both his movies and politics, and when both were mixed, the results were majestic. Godard has the reputation he has for a reason and directors ranging from Martin Scorsese to Wong Kar-Wai and Pier Paolo Pasolini to Paul Thomas Anderson cite him as an influence. Being an experimental filmmaker, not everything is going to work, there's nothing wrong with that, but some time over the last 20 or so years, Godard appears to have completely forgotten what made him so revered. Godard has always shown contempt for conventions and his films have always bordered on narcissistic pretension, but his recent work, in particular Film Socialisme have given the detractors ammunition to fire with. Film Socialisme was a complete disaster in every way imaginable. It's an attempt at a film essay apparently, but it is so tedious and has such contempt for its non-French speaking audience, it's just impossible to care. Godard hasn't made a good film for a very long time now and Film Socialisme even tested his most hardcore of followers meaning it's probably time to call it a day. At the grand old age of 82 and with 38 films to his name, nobody would blame him either.