20 directors who have lost their touch

There’s no question that the Wachowskis are some of the most visionary filmmakers in Hollywood. This is the duo that created the true classic The Matrix, and had they not directed any other film, their place in the pantheon of great directors would be secured. Unfortunately, they’ve never quite regained the mojo that they had with that film, and many of their subsequent efforts have stumbled with critics and audiences. Fortunately, their TV projects, including Sense8, have proven to be more successful than their big-screen efforts.

Few directors have as much of a flair for big-budget Hollywood spectacle as Roland Emmerich. He has directed such undeniable hits as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. Unfortunately, some of his recent projects leave much to be desired, pouring far too much money into style and way too little into substance. Moonfall, for example, is arguably one of his very worst films; its nonsensical plot and critical derision help to explain why it failed to make its budget back at the box office.

Peter Jackson had already established himself as a noted filmmaker before he pitched The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but it was his adaptation of Tolkien’s works that truly brought him acclaim and international success. Like many others, he ended up being a victim of his own success. His three-part adaptation of The Hobbit was something of a bloated mess, and while his documentaries have been well-received, they still linger in the shadow of his epic trilogy. For better or worse, he will always be best remembered for directing The Lord of the Rings.

In the early 2000s, Bryan Singer was one of the biggest names in Hollywood. This is the man, after all, who directed the first two X-Men films to wide acclaim and box office success. His career was derailed when accusations of numerous sexual assaults emerged, leading to his disgrace. Even before that, however, it was clear that his films were not up to his higher standards, and X-Men: Apocalypse is undoubtedly one of the weakest films in the entire series.

Robert Rodriguez has one of the most confounding careers in Hollywood. This is the director, after all, who made his name directing such films as From Dusk till Dawn and Planet Terror. However, somewhere along the line, he became better known for directing the various films of the Spy Kids series. While there’s obviously nothing wrong with these films per se, they are definitely up to the high standards and expectations that he had already set, and many of his fans wish that he would return to his roots.

Sam Raimi is a director known for his love of the grotesque and humorously horrific. He was remarkably prolific up until the 2010s, when his output slowed significantly. Notably, Oz the Great and Powerful failed to make much of an impression either among critics or at the box office. Even his venture in the MCU — Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — was far more of a product of the Marvel machine than it was a Raimi film (for all that it did have some moments of his love of the grotesque).

For much of the 2000s and into the 2010s, Judd Apatow was one of those comedy directors who could do almost no wrong. This is the man, after all, who gave the world such classics as The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. Although he continues to be a force as a producer, his directorial efforts haven’t lived up to his own standards. One of his most recent films, for example, was The Bubble, which bombed critically and has almost vanished from public consciousness. 

For much of the 1990s, Kevin Smith deserved his reputation as the king of the stoner film. This was thanks to both the nature of said films, including Clerks, as well as his appearance as the character Silent Bob. Like many other directors from that decade, he has struggled to recapture his mojo in the 2000s and 2010s, and though most of his films still have his trademark sense of humor, they don’t feel as much a part of the zeitgeist. 

After starting as an actor, Ron Howard transitioned into directing and became a highly regarded director. However, while he has produced a number of hits in his time, including A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code, the 2010s and 2020s have been less than kind. Even he wasn’t able to really save Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the same can be said of Hillbilly Elegy, which became a paint-by-the-numbers story. It’s hard to shake the feeling that many of his most recent projects are the result of him running on autopilot rather than attempting to be a visual artist.

There’s no question Zack Snyder has a powerful visual imagination, as some of his most striking films, including 300, amply demonstrate. However, it has to be said that some of his more recent projects, including both parts of Rebel Moon, illustrate how taking that too far can have negative consequences for cinematic storytelling. There’s no question that his films continue to have a visual flair, but they far too often sacrifice style for substance, leaving the viewer frustrated by a lack of solid or compelling storytelling.

J.J. Abrams has experienced success in film and TV, and he is particularly notable for his nostalgic mode of filmmaking. While he has always had one foot in the past and has borrowed stylistically from several directors, notably Steven Spielberg, recent years have shown that he sometimes lets his adherence to the past hobble his storytelling. Nothing illustrates this more than The Rise of Skywalker, which feels like a retread of Return of the Jedi, up to and including a head-scratching return of Palpatine.

While Disney was experiencing a downturn in the 1980s, one of their former animators, Don Bluth, was breathing new life into animation. Films like The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, and The Land Before Time showed that there was still a lot of magic left in the traditional 2-D approach. Throughout the ‘90s and into the ‘00s, Bluth really struggled, and with the exception of Anastasia, which took a page from the Disney princess book, he never fully recovered the level of success he’d had in the earlier decade.

The 1980s and 1990s were very friendly to Rob Reiner, who is responsible for some true classics of the period, including The Princess Bride and This is Spinal Tap, to say nothing of When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men. His most recent dramatic films, including Shock and Awe, have failed to please either critics or audiences. At the very least, he has held his own when it comes to documentaries, and one can but hope that he might yet rediscover his genius for making fiction films again.

Guy Ritchie is strongly associated with masculinity and the crime film. However, while he retains his sense of visual style, some of his more recent efforts have run aground on the shoals of Hollywood spectacle. While the live-action Aladdin made a lot of money, it was mostly a paint-by-the-numbers retread of the original film, and King Arthur featured a lot of spectacle but little narrative coherence. His more recent movies have seen him returning to form, so it can be hoped that he will get his mojo back.

Ridley Scott is a remarkably versatile director, capable of producing compelling films in a wide variety of genres. His Gladiator and Alien are paradigmatic examples of the epic and sci-fi film, respectively. It has to be said, though, that many of his 21st-century projects, including Exodus: Gods and Kings and Gladiator II, simply don’t measure up to their predecessors. It’s hard to escape the feeling that Scott is coasting on some of his recent features, relying too much on his past laurels rather than trying to do anything new or compelling.

M. Night Shyamalan is arguably one of the most inconsistent directors of his generation. While some of his films are undoubtedly genius — most notably The Sixth Sense — but others are deeply frustrating and uneven. Even those of his recent films that are tautly woven and compelling, such as Trap, end up falling apart when the plot is examined too closely. He might be an undeniably stylish and compelling director, but he leans too often on twist endings, with decidedly mixed results. 

For quite some time, Oliver Stone was one of those Hollywood directors who excelled at examining history and its traumas, particularly as these revolved around war. Throughout the 21st century, however, he has shown that he has lost his touch a bit. His biopic about Alexander the Great was a bit of a mess, released in multiple forms, and he hasn’t regained his mojo in his subsequent projects. His most recent film, Snowden, is just a bit too safe, and it’s a far cry from some of the director’s other heavy-hitting projects. 

Francis Ford Coppola is truly a giant in the world of Hollywood filmmaking. If he had just made The Godfather and its sequels, this would have been enough, but he has made many other films. However, the 21st century has been a decided mixed bag for this auteur, with his latest film, Megalopolis, failing to gather either critical praise or significant box office success. Instead, it is a bit of a sprawling vanity project, with an incoherent narrative that suggests that the director is a bit too in love with his own vision. 

Robert Zemeckis had a string of significant hits in the 1980s and 1990s, including such famous comedies as Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as well as the drama Forrest Gump. Like many other directors, however, his career experienced a downturn, and he has focused too much on CGI films such as The Polar Express and Beowulf. Arguably, the nadir of his career has been the live-action remake of Disney’s Pinocchio, which is a failure of a film in almost every way.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Tim Burton emerged as a truly one-of-a-kind director. His macabre sensibility was a true delight, and it was like almost nothing else in Hollywood. Unfortunately, the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s haven’t been especially kind to his work and, with a few exceptions, he seems to have become a mere caricature of his former self. One exception to this downward trend is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but even this is a sequel rather than an original work.