10 Times Film-Makers Ruined Their Own Damn Movies

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Donnie Darko
20th Century Fox

Nobody sets out to make a bad movie but as any avid film fan will tell you, there’s more bad than good out there in the world of film. Even movies that show promise or are bolstered by big budgets and stellar casts can fall short of the mark.

Often, it’s a consequence of studio interference, or misjudged casting or any other of the myriad ways a film can fail but more often than not nobody else is to blame than the captain of the cinematic ship himself – the director.

Some of the movies about to come under the microscope never even stood a chance. Though armed with brilliant, or at least mostly entertaining, concepts and all the right ingredients to be a hit, their directors laid them to waste even before they saw the light of day usually because of ego, inexperience or poor decision-making or a combination of all three.

Others were nigh on perfect as they were but then came the dreaded Director’s Cut that proved to be the cinematic equivalent of taking a big, steaming dump all over the original film.

Sometimes, directors only have themselves to blame.

10. Jan De Bont Based Speed 2: Cruise Control On A Dream

Donnie Darko
20th Century Fox

After the commercial success of action flick Speed, 20th Century Fox were only too happy to give the go ahead for a sequel and though original Speed screenwriter Graham Yost came up with some pretty entertaining ideas – including one about a plane that can’t ascend above 10,000 feet but happens to be in the Andes, one of the world’s highest mountain ranges – director Jan de Bont had a better idea.

De Bont had been plagued by a recurring dream about a cruise ship crashing into a Caribbean island but rather than putting it down to eating too much cheese before bedtime, he insisted his dream vision form the basis of Speed 2 and had its writing team work backwards from his idea.

The thing is, a slow-moving cruise ship travelling at a few knots per hour doesn’t really have the same appeal or thrill as a speeding bus rigged with a bomb and the movie puttered along with all the excitement of a canal boat excursion on the Norfolk Broads.

And that fateful final scene de Bont dreamed up himself? It took roughly a quarter of the movie’s $110 million budget to film – then one of the most expensive stunts ever filmed – but failed to help Speed 2 scrape back much at the box office.

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