Michael Bay isn't shy about admitting a mistake. Well, sort of.
Back in 2011, the blockbuster director told Empire magazine that the 2007-2008 writers' strike was partially responsible for "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" being "crap."
"We made some mistakes," Bay said. "The real fault with [Transformers 2] is that it ran into a mystical world. When I look back at it, that was crap. The writers’ strike was coming hard and fast. It was just terrible to do a movie where you’ve got to have a story in three weeks."
Last week, Bay issued another almost-mea culpa, this time for the 1998 hit "Armageddon":
“I will apologize for 'Armageddon,' because we had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. It was a massive undertaking," Bay told Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald when asked about his hyper-kinetic editing style. "That was not fair to the movie. I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us. It was terrible. My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked 'What do you do when you’re doing all the effects yourself?' But the movie did fine."
On his website, Bay later clarified that he was not apologizing for "Armageddon" and that his comments were taken out of the context. "What I clearly said to the reporter, is I wish I had more time to edit the film, specifcally the the third act. He asked me in effect what would you change if you could in your movies if you could go back. I said, I wish we had a few more weeks in the edit room on 'Armageddon,'" Bay wrote. "And still today 'Armageddon,' is still one of the most shown movies on cable TV. And yes, I'm proud of the movie. Enough said."
Indeed. Still, that got us thinking: If a director like Bay, who's surely accustomed by now to seeing his movies critically denounced, can fess up to some mistakes, it's probably best that others do as well. Naturally, we'll take it upon ourselves to do it for them -- or at least we'll recommend they step forward themselves and own up to these respective travesties, if they haven't already.
With that, here are 17 directors who need to make amends for their less-than-stellar efforts. Thankfully, most of them have more than made up for the blunders. Consider the apologies accepted, auteurs.
