12 Great Directors Who Helmed Terrible Movie Remakes

Cast your gaze upon the vast filmographies of the world's greatest and most famous movie directors, veterans who have been in the business for decades, and you'll usually find at least one fully-fledged remake in there somewhere.

It's almost as if, by Hollywood law, big name directors are forced to helm at least one remake at some point in their career, and although it occasionally works out (Scorsese's take on Cape Fear, anyone?), the results frequently leave a lot to be desired...

So why do Hollywood's best and brightest always come around to the remake project? Years and years of great original works, and then an awkward rehash that nobody really wanted, usually in their prime. 

Is it out of respect for the medium, for a particular film or filmmaker who originally inspired them to go out and pick up the camera? Is it something that each director simply needs to get out of their system?

Whatever the reason, these 12 otherwise talented filmmakers really shouldn't have bothered wasting their time with such incredibly lacklustre duplicates...

After scoring major hits with Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg did that thing that so many directors do when they realise they're get old; he attempted to re-establish himself as a "serious artist."

Instead of jumping into bed with another Indy movie, Spielberg entered a new phase of his career, waving goodbye to the giant sharks and aliens and, you know, fun, in favour of more seriously-minded films like The Colour Purple and Empire of the Sun. Then, in 1989, he re-teamed with his Jaws star, Richard Dreyfuss, for Always.

As a remake of Victor Fleming's 1943 drama A Guy Named Joe, Always abandoned the film's original World War II setting and brought events into the present, with the lead character - once a fighter pilot - now positioned as a deceased aerial firefighter who returns from the dead. It's easy to see why Spielberg, long fascinated with aerial combat since childhood, adored Fleming's original film and set about with a remake.

Always is one of Spielberg's least inspired pictures, though - a melodramatic flight of fancy that highlights all of his worst traits as a filmmaker. It fared okay at the box office, but critical opinion was muted.

Afterwards, Spielberg went back to the Indy franchise for the third time, and entered a new, more appropriate period of productivity in which he split his time between both "entertainments" and prestige pictures. Phew.