9 Famous Film Directors Who Have Lost Their Touch (That We All Pretend Are Still Awesome)

8. Robert Zemeckis

Robert Zemeckis is another legendary filmmaker whose legacy can be felt throughout the history of modern cinema. He's responsible for such timeless classics as the Back to the Future trilogy, Forrest Gump, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but somehow lost his spark somewhere in the 2000s. His last great film was 2000's Cast Away starring Tom Hanks, which made a whopping $233 million at the box office. Things started to go downhill when he fell in love with motion capture, making The Polar Express in 2004 before founding a mo-cap production company with Disney chairman Dick Cook in 2007 called ImageMovers Digital. He then made Beowulf and A Christmas Carol, before stating that all of his future films would be done in 3D using motion-capture. Luckily, he backed off of when ImageMovers Digital closed down in 2011, after the abysmal flop that was Mars Needs Moms (a movie he didn't direct, but produced) and returned to live action with Flight, a movie that's not great, but a step in the right direction for Zemeckis. Like Lasseter, there's no denying that the man has been invaluable when it comes to pushing the envelope in Hollywood and embracing new technologies. But it's a shame that he spent so long working on films that were too reliant on motion capture and failed to live up to some of the greatness he'd displayed early in his career.