From Wanting Their Movie Erased From Film History, To Apologising To An Entire Nation – 13 Directors Who've Talked About Their Professional Regrets

"I should have just said no because all of a sudden I was making something I criticised myself: a sequel."

We all have our regrets in life, and directors and writers aren't immune to having them either! Whether it's a small detail they'd change if they had the time over, or a whole movie they want erased from existence, Hollywood has its fair share of wistful auteurs.

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Here are 13 directors and writers who've expressed regret over a movie...

1. Peter Rabbit

Sony Pictures Releasing

Director Will Gluck had one regret about Peter Rabbit, and it was one that caused him and Sony to issue a public apology. It was the scene in which the rabbits shoot a blackberry into Tom McGregor's mouth, knowing he is allergic. Tom then uses an EpiPen before collapsing.

The scene angered people. One man, Sam Rose, whose child has a serious food allergy, told The New York Times: "I'm pretty sure [author] Beatrix Potter will be turning in her grave about now. Allergies are often not taken seriously enough anyway. To have them trivialised on the big screen by such a popular character is immensely disappointing."

The director and a representative from the studio issued an official apology, saying: "Food allergies are a serious issue. Our film should not have made light of Peter Rabbit's arch-nemesis, Mr. McGregor, being allergic to blackberries, even in a cartoonish, slapstick way. We sincerely regret not being more aware and sensitive to this issue, and we truly apologise."

This is the scene:

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2. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Columbia Pictures

Steven Spielberg has previously opened up about having to rush this film because Columbia insisted it had to be out by Christmas, 1977. He mentioned that the whole company was at stake, so he had no choice but to release the film as it was. The release left the director unsatisfied, so a year and a half later, he went back and asked the company if he could finish the film with the cuts and reshoots he wanted.

"They said to me, 'We'll give you the money… if you show the inside of the mothership. Give us something we can hang a campaign on.' And so I compromised and had Richard Dreyfuss walking inside the mothership."

Showing the ship, however, was also a regret for Stephen. He said: "I never should have done [that], because that should have always been kept a mystery, the inside of that ship."

Take a look:

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3. Che

20th Century Fox

Director Steven Soderbergh went into the project with a "pretty significant sense of dread", mainly because of the lack of funding and time needed to complete it properly. The whole film wasn't even his idea, and he was less enthusiastic about it than star Benicio Del Toro, who brought Steven the plan for the film in the first place. In fact, the whole shooting process ended up reflecting the dread the director felt. 

Admitting that he wished he'd never done the movie, Soderbergh said: "I don't know how to describe it. It took a long time to shake off. It was just such an intense four or five months that it really … You know, for a year after we finished shooting I would still wake up in the morning thinking, 'Thank God I'm not shooting that film.'"

Here's the trailer:

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4. Independence Day Resurgence

20th Century Studios

Director Roland Emmerich was NOT happy with the film Independence Day 2, mainly because he felt like he went against what he stood for by making a sequel, something he criticised about Hollywood. Roland initially wanted to make a film "exactly like the first", but when Will Smith pulled out, they had to create a new script that Roland described as "cobbled-together." 

Of making the film, he had this to say: "I should have just said no because all of a sudden I was making something I criticised myself: a sequel."

Have a look:

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5. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Paramount Pictures

Director Nicholas Meyer has a number of negative thoughts about this movie, largely because he found it somewhat naive in terms of the allegory between the US and the USSR. There was, however, one particular scene that made him uncomfortable, and it concerns Spock:

"The scene where Spock is doing the Vulcan mind meld on Valeris to get information sort of looks like waterboarding to me, and doesn't make me very happy to see it."

Take a look at the scene:

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6. Fantastic Four

20th Century Studios

There isn't a specific thing director Josh Trank doesn't like about Fantastic Four, it's more like the entire movie. His regret over the film is so stark, that he replied "gladly" to a tweet asking to donate to a GoFundMe to erase the movie from cinema history.

Neither the making of the movie nor the movie itself brought any joy to Josh because he was not on board with the vision at all. Indeed, he is said to have "fucking hated every second of it."

Here's the trailer:

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7. Black Panther

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Ryan Coogler, director of Black Panther, can't have regretted too much about what became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, but there was one aspect he wasn't happy about. It was the decision to kill Andy Serkis' character Klaw that irked him. He said:

"I like Klaw. I was bugged by having to do that. It's tough when you have to kill characters off and I really did love that character."

Although Ryan loved the character and Andy, he explained that he just needed to move a character on: "It's one of those things where when you've got so many people in a movie, some of them have to go."

Here's the scene:

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8. Titanic

20th Century Fox

While James Cameron has stated that he would probably make the exact same film if he did Titanic now, he has also acknowledged that he may have handled the death of Murdoch in the wrong way. First Officer Murdoch, who was a real person, was shown in the film shooting a passenger and then himself during the chaos, something that there is no strong evidence of happening.

The director admitted he was thinking more as a screenwriter than a historian at this point, and overlooked what Murdoch's family may thought about it: "I think I wasn't as sensitive about the fact that his family, his survivors might feel offended by that, and they were."

Here it is:

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9. Pacific Rim Uprising

Universal Pictures

Steven DeKnight has opened up about his regrets over this movie, and while some of them were just small technical things fans wouldn't notice, there was one aspect that fans certainly did. When fan-favourite Mako Mori shockingly died in the second film, the way her character was treated angered fans, as it was mainly used as motivation for the male protagonist. Seemingly, Steven DeKnight felt like he didn't do the right thing here, either:

"There are things in the movie that will always bother me that no one will ever notice. And then there are things, like giving Mako's death more weight, that I think people do notice."

Here's the scene:

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10. Alien 3

20th Century Studios

David Fincher has made his feelings pretty clear about Alien 3. He even said, "A lot of people hated Alien 3, but no one hated it more than I did." The whole filming process put David off of the movie, and he certainly doesn't have fond thoughts about the final edit itself:

"I had to work on it for two years, got fired off it three times and I had to fight for every single thing. No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me."

At least he learnt something during the process, even though the lesson wasn't necessarily a fun one: "So I learned on this movie that nobody really knows, so therefore no one has to care, so it's always going to be your fault."

Here's the trailer:

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11. Assault on Precinct 13

Turtle Releasing

Back in the days when things were seemingly more lax, John Carpenter snuck a scene into Assault on Precinct 13. The scene was the one where a young girl gets killed with a gun, and one which the MPAA said they'd have to give the movie an X-rating for. Resultantly, Carpenter and the film's distributors gave them the film with that scene cut, while releasing it with the scene still in it.

Looking back on the scene, John admitted it wasn't the best idea: "I don't know how clever it was. We had a scene where a little girl gets killed with a gun, and it was pretty horrible at the time - explicit. I don't think I'd do it again but I was young and stupid."

This is the scene:

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12. Midnight Express

Columbia Pictures

Writer and director Oliver Stone had to make a formal apology, which came decades after his Oscar-winning film – a film that seriously offended the whole nation of Turkey with brutal depictions of prison conditions.

The film was criticised by Turkish people, with one such criticism reading: "Whenever you said you were from Turkey, Americans would automatically say, 'Oh yes, I've seen Midnight Express. Isn't that the place where they cut the hands off people who are caught stealing?"

On his return to the country, Stone admitted to "over-dramatising" the script. 

Here's the trailer:

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13. Rocky IV

United International Pictures

Sylvester Stallone admitted that he regrets killing Apollo in Rocky IV, saying: "If I had to do it again I never would have killed Apollo." At the time, he thought he needed the death to have that impact in the film, but he since called it "foolish." 

He believed that, if he'd have instead been physically injured and unable to fight, Apollo would have opened up a whole new side of his character.

While it would have been an interesting development, the death of Apollo was probably necessary for the follow up Creed films anyway!

Here's the scene:

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What other movie details (or entire films) have directors and writers regretted? Let us know in the comments below!