There is a belief that a good script automatically makes for a good movie and a bad script treatment instantly leads to a bad movie. While that is often the case, it is not automatically true. There have been some rare instances where a good script actually does contribute to a bad movie.
This can happen for a variety of reasons. Factors like studio meddling, bad acting, or bad direction can overshadow whatever strengths can be found in a movie's writing and pull everything else down with it. Heavy re-writes as well on an already strong script can weaken it, too. This has all led to certain movies failing to live up to their script's potential.
10 Frank Darabont & Kenneth Branagh Had Different Visions Of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Frank Darabont wrote the screenplay for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and once called it "the best script I ever wrote and the worst movie I've ever seen" to Creative Screenwriting. The reason being that unlike his take on movies like Shawshank Redemption, Darabont didn't direct Frankenstein.
Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in the movie. Clearly, his vision differed from Darabont's, leading to a poor reception from a fair share of critics, including Darabont himself. "It’s kind of like the movie I wrote, but not at all like the movie I wrote," Darabont continued. "It has no patience for subtlety. It has no patience for the quiet moments. It has no patience period. It’s big and loud and blunt and rephrased by the director at every possible turn."
9 Assassins Is Nothing Like The Wachowskis' Script
Four years prior to becoming household names after directing The Matrix, The Wachowskis sold a screenplay for the movie Assassins, which went on to star Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas as rival assassins in an intense high stakes game of cat and mouse. Their original screenplay had a much darker tone filled with symbolism, compared to the more by-the-numbers, generic actioner the movie wound up being.
The reason is that once Superman's Richard Donner was on board as director, Brian Helgeland was asked to rewrite the script completely from page one to craft something more suitable and digestible for mainstream audiences. It hardly resembled the original script to the point that The Wachowskis tried and failed to get their names removed from the project.
8 8MM Failed To Live Up To Se7en's Expectations
Following the massive success of David Fincher's Se7en, the screenwriter of that movie, Andrew Kevin Walker, was able to sell his next screenplay. 8mm is about a private investigator who is hired to investigate a wealthy woman's husband's murder and the mysterious film found in his safe.
However, to Walker's chagrin, the movie was heavily re-written once Batman Forever's Joel Schumacher came on board to direct. The hype surrounding the screenwriters' follow-up to Se7en was massive, launching the project to reach the top box office spot, but the meddling behind the scenes led to mostly negative reviews.
7 X3 Suffers From Bombastic Ideas & Poor Direction
Both Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn have a strong pedigree of good screenplays under their belts. In many respects, their collaboration on X-Men: The Last Stand can be considered a good script. There are great themes illustrated and oftentimes, superbly written dialogue throughout the movie. The script's biggest flaw is that it has too many ideas to contain in a 104-minute runtime.
The movie as a whole, however, suffers far greater flaws. Namely, due to the poor direction from Rush Hour's Brett Ratner, who is out of his element as an action choreographer and bit off far more than he could chew trying to carry the substance of the script.
6 Natural Born Killers Is Quentin Tarantino's Worst Movie
Natural Born Killers is a rare instance of a movie that Quentin Tarantino wrote but didn't direct. He sold the script to producers Jane Hamsher and Dom Murphy, who then sold the script to Warner Bros. for Oliver Stone to direct. In doing so, the studio also had Stone, Richard Rutowski, and David Veloz heavily rewrite the script to the point that Tarantino himself doesn't recognize it.
Tarantino has publicly disowned the movie, claiming it doesn't illustrate his original vision, while critics lambasted the movie for the most part (though it's become a cult classic among fans) by those who thought the satire wasn't clever and the picture as a whole too violent. On the bright side, Tarantino used the money from selling the script to fund his directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs.
5 Unbroken Wastes An Incredible Story
The story of Louie Zamperini and the trauma he endured as a prisoner of war (among other anomalies in his life) is inspiring enough to warrant its own story, hence the making of Unbroken. It's hard to imagine a screenplay by The Coen Brothers to ever produce a bland movie, but perhaps the fact that they're not behind the camera as directors is what befell the movie's fate.
Instead, Angelina Jolie is in the director's chair and while she's done competent work in the past, her directorial work on Unbroken carries a bland aesthetic that doesn't do the story justice. Jack O'Connell gives his best shot at an incredible performance, but it isn't enough to carry a movie whose incredible story is told in a by-the-numbers, cheesy fashion.
4 Caligula Is Nothing Like Its Original Script
Caligula had all of the ingredients to become a celebrated, award-winning classic. The talent was certainly there, with Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren starring in lead roles (giving magnificent performances, no less) and most relevantly, National Book Award-winning author Gore Vidal penning the script.
Instead, the movie was critically panned by critics upon release and rarely gets spoken of to this day. The political satire and general narrative penned by Vidal was largely ignored in favor of producing explicitly adult scenes, upon input from Penthouse founder and the movie's producer Bob Guccione, with whom Vidal frequently butted heads with on the set.
3 The Director Was BloodRayne's Downfall, Not The Writer
BloodRayne is so bad that it seems preposterous to think that it ever had a good script, but alas, the screenwriter who wrote the movie was the same one who wrote critically praised movies like American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page.
For those wondering how writer Guinevere Turner's track record for well-written movies went downhill, one can only look squarely at Uwe Boll, whose track record as a director (which also includes other poorly adapted video game movies, like Postal and Alone in the Dark) is far less impressive. Boll poorly translated Turner's words off the page and into the trash pile where this movie belongs.
2 Psycho Remake Proves Copying & Pasting Doesn't Always Work
When Psycho was released in 1960, it went on to endure an outstanding legacy as a bonafide classic. When Psycho was remade by Gus Van Sant in 1998, it was critically lauded as a terrible movie. This is particularly interesting because the remake is a shot-for-shot copy of the original.
In theory, what worked in 1960 should still work in 1998, but the flaws of the second-go-round all lie in the execution. The acting and direction for Van Sant's version lack the same visual appeal, intrigue, and subtlety displayed by Alfred Hitchcock in the first movie.
1 Joss Whedon Was Run Off The Set Of Buffy
No, not the TV show. Everyone knows that the show went on to become a massive success, but the movie that preceded it was far less celebrated. In fact, reviews at the time leaned more towards bashing it completely. This is particularly disappointing because apparently, the script was originally just as good as the show ended up being years after the fact.
There was a conflict between Whedon and the studio, the latter of whom worried that his humor could be too abstract for mainstream audiences. Several scenes were either re-written or cut entirely, leading to Whedon leaving the production out of frustration.