Top 5 Movie Directors Who Used to Be Awesome But Now Suck

By James K on July 31st, 2010

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It’s hard as hell to get your $10 or $12 or $15 worth at the movies these days, what with all the slickly packaged but dramatically devoid reboots and remakes contaminating the country’s multiplexes. But even so, we know that Hollywood has a nasty little cocaine habit it needs to fund somehow, so you can see how these pictures have their appeal to executives. What’s worse is going into the theater with high expectations for your favorite director’s latest masterpiece and coming out thinking that your time and money would have been better spent trying to convince a stripper that you want to marry her.

Your blood pressure’s already high enough from all the beer, red meat and salt in your diet. You don’t need to make it any worse by watching a crappy movie made by someone you thought was good. So do your heart a favor and avoid anything directed by these five has-beens:

#5: Francis Ford Coppola. A staggering run in the 1970s that included The Conversation, Apocalypse Now and the first two installments of The Godfather earned him a reputation for excellence that was, back then, well-deserved. But, by the 1980s, he’d begun wasting his talents on forgettable films like Peggy Sue Got Married and Tucker: A Man and His Dream. In 1996, Jack pretty much did him in as a director. He’s thankfully been pretty quiet since.

#4: Bryan Singer. The Usual Suspects was sweet. Then they drove a dump truck full of money up to Singer’s house so he’d direct the X-Men franchise. Sure enough, laughable yawners like Superman Returns soon followed. Okay, he gets a mulligan for Valkyrie, but does anyone expect Excalibur or X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2 will turn out to be anything but more turds on Hollywood’s cultural dung heap?

#3: David Fincher. Se7en is a nail-biting thriller. Fight Club was one of the best movies of the 1990s, but then Fincher hit the panic switch with Panic Room and it went downhill from there. Abutting the passable Zodiac were Paula Abdul and George Michael music videos (yee-ha) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, one of the most overrated films ever made. Now he’s made a movie about Facebook. Gee, how does that end? Does Mark Zuckerberg get rich?

#2: Tim Burton. This guy certainly had his moments with flicks like 1989’s Batman and the offbeat hits Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands. But soon, Mark Wahlberg was falling in love with female apes. Next thing you know, Johnny Depp is in a musical–an experiment that worked only thanks to the millions of teenage girls who’d pay to watch 90 minutes of Johnny Depp reciting T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” Now Burton’s working on Frankenweenie. That has “must-see” written all over it.

#1: M. Night Shyamalan. The debacle called The Last Airbender might make him too easy a target, but this egomaniac deserves it. The Sixth Sense was brilliant, but every single thing he’s crapped out since has gotten progressively worse, even after 2006’s Lady in the Water made that seem impossible. Please stop paying to see this guy’s movies. It’s the only way they’ll stop letting him make them.