10 Film Directors Who Went from Great to Terrible

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Ignacio Weil

Entertainment - November 8th 2025, 17:00 GMT+1

Megalopolis 2024 — Francis Ford Coppola

Coppola’s recent career feels like the cinematic equivalent of a brilliant mind trapped in an echo chamber of his own legend. *Twixt*, *Youth Without Youth*, and finally *Megalopolis –* each one more grandiose, more perplexing, more disconnected from the audience he once mesmerized. *Megalopolis* was meant to be his swan song, a visionary epic decades in the making, and instead it’s a beautiful mess: fascinating, indulgent, and utterly lost in itself. There’s something tragic and noble about watching a once-great director refuse to compromise, even as the coherence slips away. | © American Zoetrope

Cropped gladiator 2000 — Ridley Scott

Somewhere between *House of Gucci*, *Napoleon*, and *Gladiator II*, Ridley Scott turned from a visionary perfectionist into Hollywood’s most determined workaholic. The man who once crafted the cool, austere perfection of *Alien* and *Blade Runner* now seems allergic to subtlety – or editing. His recent epics look magnificent, sure, but they often feel like beautifully wrapped leftovers, reheated too quickly. *Gladiator II* should have been a grand return to form; instead, it plays like a self-aware sequel that mistakes bloat for brilliance. Scott’s energy is admirable, but at this point, you can’t help but wish he’d trade quantity for a touch of that old precision. | © Paramount Pictures

Cropped Beetlejuice Beetlejuice — Tim Burton

Tim Burton’s recent output feels like a director haunted by his own aesthetic. From *Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children* to *Dumbo* and now *Beetlejuice Beetlejuice*, he’s been circling the same gothic sandbox with less and less sand to play with. His latest outing isn’t disastrous – it’s fun, nostalgic even – but it’s also a case study in creative stagnation. The oddball spark that once made his films feel anarchic now flickers under layers of formula and self-reference. Burton hasn’t lost his eye for the fantastical, but he’s lost the nerve to let it truly get weird again. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

Roman Polanski the palace — Roman Polanski

Once the architect of taut psychological nightmares, Roman Polanski now seems content directing tonal free-falls. *Based on a True Story*, *An Officer and a Spy*, and *The Palace* have all tried – and mostly failed – to recapture the sly intelligence that made his earlier films so sharp. His latest, a misguided farce about the elite behaving badly, feels like a bad dream of *The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie*, only without the charm or the bite. The man who made paranoia poetic now just seems… confused. It’s an uncomfortable sight: a legend circling a genre that no longer wants him. | © RP Productions

Woody Allen

There’s something melancholy about watching Woody Allen drift into autopilot. *Rifkin’s Festival*, *A Rainy Day in New York*, and now *Coup de Chance* all share the same glossy detachment – like postcards from a once-great artist who’s run out of stories but refuses to stop writing. His latest film, while pleasant and immaculately framed, feels airless, a self-parody without the wit that once fueled it. The neurotic pulse of *Annie Hall* and *Crimes and Misdemeanors* is long gone, replaced by mechanical irony. It’s the cinematic equivalent of jazz elevator music: smooth, familiar, and utterly uninspired. | © Gravier Productions

Until Dawn 2025 — Michael Cimino

It’s hard to think of a steeper cinematic cliff than the one Michael Cimino fell off after *The Deer Hunter*. His follow-up, *Heaven’s Gate*, remains Hollywood’s cautionary tale about what happens when ambition devours restraint. By the time *Until Dawn* rolled around, Cimino was directing with the confidence of a man still convinced he was saving cinema – even as the audience had long moved on. There’s a strange poetry in his downfall: the same obsessive eye that once captured haunting Americana now stumbling through hollow grandeur. *Until Dawn* isn’t terrible, just tired – a final whisper from a director who burned too bright, too fast. | © Menahem Golan Productions

Cropped the hobbit battle of the five armies — Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson’s transformation from scrappy horror genius to CGI overlord is one for the books. After the near-perfection of *The Lord of the Rings*, he seemed destined for mythic status – then came *The Hobbit* trilogy, stretched thinner than Elven bread. The magic gave way to motion capture and corporate fatigue, every frame polished yet oddly lifeless. As if that weren’t enough, *Mortal Engines* (which he co-wrote) proved that even his imagination can sputter when unmoored from purpose. It’s not that Jackson lost his touch; it’s that he buried it under green screens and good intentions. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith — George Lucas

George Lucas didn’t just build a galaxy far, far away – he accidentally built a monument to creative overreach. The prequels were supposed to be his grand return, but somewhere between wooden dialogue and digital overload, Lucas forgot that emotion can’t be rendered in 3D. Later, dabbling as a writer and producer on smaller, equally baffling projects (*Strange Magic*, anyone?), he seemed trapped by his own myth. The tragedy isn’t that Lucas lost his storytelling touch – it’s that he mistook technology for imagination. Watching his later work feels like revisiting an empire long after the rebels have won. | © Lucasfilm

The Wachowskis

There’s something strangely poetic about *The Matrix Resurrections*: a film about creative exhaustion that accidentally proves its own point. Once the architects of cinematic cool, the Wachowskis went from redefining sci-fi to chasing the ghost of their own revolution. Films like *Jupiter Ascending* and *Cloud Atlas* hinted at their ambition, but by the time Neo was rebooted yet again, the magic had flatlined. *Resurrections* is clever, self-aware, and visually stunning – yet it feels like an echo, not an evolution. The Wachowskis didn’t sell out; they just got stuck in their own code. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

Cropped Darling Companion 2012 — Lawrence Kasdan

How the writer of *The Empire Strikes Back* and *Raiders of the Lost Ark* ended up making *Darling Companion* remains one of cinema’s gentler tragedies. Kasdan’s late-career work is the kind of middlebrow fluff that plays at film festivals you forget you attended. The same man who once captured the electricity of human connection now seems content with stories about lost dogs and mild marital tension. His later writing credits (*Solo: A Star Wars Story*, for instance) only add to the melancholy: proof that lightning rarely strikes twice. Kasdan didn’t lose his craft – he just misplaced the spark. | © Werc Werk Works

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Every cinephile has that one director they used to worship – the visionary whose early work made you believe in the magic of movies – only to later watch their career nosedive like a flaming stunt car. Sometimes it’s fame, sometimes it’s ego, and sometimes it’s just the curse of too many sequels. Whatever the reason, it’s weirdly fascinating (and a little heartbreaking) to see once-great filmmakers lose their spark.

But hey, this isn’t a hit piece – it’s a cinematic autopsy with love. We’re looking back at ten directors who soared high and then… well, let’s just say the landing didn’t go as planned. Whether they got lost in big-budget chaos, creative exhaustion, or their own mythology, these are the cautionary tales of Hollywood’s fallen geniuses.