Only The Creator Does It Right / Film

• A.I.: Artificial Intelligence was originally a Stanley Kubrick project which he shelved in favor of other projects. Steven Spielberg directed the film after Kubrick's death and many critics and Kubrick fans attacked the film and Spielberg for ruining a Kubrick masterpiece (which he consciously shelved and handed to Spielberg anyway). Weirdly enough, the elements of the film that are most attacked, namely the ending weren't Spielberg inventions at all, but created by Kubrick himself.
  • This trope was invoked from the moment the movie was conceived by Spielberg and Kubrick towards each other. Kubrick didn't think he had the heart to pull it off and believed Spielberg was the better man for the job, while Spielberg didn't think he had the artistic finesse and insisted Kubrick should direct. The two might still be volleying the idea back and forth to this day if Kubrick hadn't passed away.
• Jurassic Park III is held by some to be the worst film in the Jurassic Park franchise. Incidentally, it was the one film of the original trilogy Steven Spielberg did not direct, as well as the first not even nominally based on a Michael Crichton novel. That said Jurassic World was far better received, and it was likewise not directed by Spielberg (but he apparently was more present this time around).
• Out of the Batman Film Series, the first two directed by Tim Burton were considered the best. And for very good reasons.
• In a more literal application of this trope, when Zack Snyder stepped down from Justice League after completing principle photography and working on postproduction Joss Whedon was instated to complete the film. Many people believed Whedon would improve upon it, but the resulting product was wildly seen as lackluster. Several years later after a fan campaign (based around tons of Missing Trailer Scenes and deleted content surfacing), Snyder was given the resources to complete the film he intended to make and release Zack Snyder's Justice League, which received a much more positive reception.
• The first two parts in the X-Men Film Series were directed by Bryan Singer, while the third one, X-Men: The Last Stand, was helmed by Brett Ratner, and is considered by many fans to be a huge step down in quality. X-Men: First Class, which was produced and co-written by Singer, was much better received. Ultimately cemented with X-Men: Days of Future Past by having Singer back in the director's chair and getting an overwhelmingly positive reception, with many calling it the best in the franchise so far. X-Men: Apocalypse, however, proved to be much more divisive in comparison to Singer's previous efforts. A few later directors have managed to receive praise alongside Singer, though: Matthew Vaughn gets a share of credit for directing First Class and co-writing Days of Future Past, and many blame his lack of involvement in Apocalypse as the problem. Meanwhile, James Mangold received praise for the darker, morally-greyer Wolverine films (The Wolverine and especially Logan).
• On a related note, any non-Marvel Studios films featuring Marvel characters are regarded by most supporters of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as inferior and bastardizations of the source material, and that only Marvel Studios can treat them right:
  • There are mixed opinions regarding this when it comes to the X-Men films. On the one hand, Marvel has done well with the MCU and having the X-Men film rights would open them up to crossovers that both sides could benefit from. On the other hand, some feel that Fox (or at least the directors listed above) hasn't done badly with their X-Men films, and that the franchise's "oppressed minority" metaphor works better when there aren't a bunch of other superhumans running around. Fox also eventually made some darker entries in the series such as Logan, which have been critically acclaimed but just wouldn't tonally fit within the MCU. Following the acquisition of Fox by Disney, debates have sprung up about how much creative involvement should be given to the people who worked on the X-Men films at Fox. Of course, the MCU has numbers on its side since the most successful "FoX-Men" movies (X-Men: The Last Stand in the US, X-Men: Days of Future Past worldwide) are in the middle of the pack compared to the MCU films. With that in mind, Fox's final film before the acquisition, which became the worst reviewed film of the franchise and the worst box-office performer, may have ended the debate in favor of Disney/Marvel permanently. But even so, relations between the franchises were at least good enough for the MCU to have two Fox-based actors returning, WandaVision had a Quicksilver imposter played by the character's Fox-series actor and Patrick Stewart reprised his role as Professor Xavier in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Following them, Hugh Jackman also announced that he would be returning as Wolverine in Deadpool 3, which will be part of the MCU.
  • In the case of Daredevil, its MCU revival as a Netflix TV series was received much better than the Fox movie, reinforcing the view. The same goes for Season Two's reinvention of the Punisher, with Jon Bernthal's portrayal receiving high praise when previous incarnations failed, even earning him his own spinoff show. Elektra Natchios, also added in season 2, didn't quite the same universal praise as the Punisher, but still was a much better response than her own movie got.
  • Whilst the The Incredible Hulk is the lowest-grossing film in the MCU, as well as one of the least acclaimed, most people agreed that it was still superior to the 2003 film directed by Ang Lee. When Edward Norton was replaced by Mark Ruffalo, this sentiment only increased, though the complicated licensing employed by Universal combined with two underperforming films means that a solo film with Ruffalo is unlikely.
  • With the Fantastic Four's film history consisting of an unreleased Ashcan Copy, a below-average 2005 film and its sequel and a 2015 reboot that bombed outright, fans are naturally excited for a reboot in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that was announced in 2019. Tellingly, when Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness introduced Reed Richards as a member of The Illuminati of Earth-838, none of the previous actors would reprise the role (unlike Patrick Stewart as Professor X or Anson Mount as Black Bolt), and he was instead portrayed by Ascended Fancast John Krasinski.
  • This was a common sentiment when James Gunn was suspended from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Gunn's irreverent bathos-flavored directorial style was responsible for turning the Z-list Guardians into Household Names. Internally, a number of Marvel directors like Taika Waititi were so supportive of Gunn that they refused to take over the film as director. Subsequently, Gunn was rehired as the executives at Marvel and Disney couldn't find a replacement director who could do the franchise justice.
• Steven Spielberg turned down offers to direct Jaws 2. Most people feel that the sequels get worse with each subsequent film.
• Several people in the Godzilla fandom find any of the movies not directed by Ishiro Honda to be inferior. Similarly, some fans automatically dismiss the 2014 Godzilla, not on the grounds of its own merits or flaws, but because it is not from Toho.
• Became an issue on the set of Aliens. In addition to being a perfectionist, James Cameron was also hated by the British crew for not being Ridley Scott. Fan reaction to the film, however, was more enthusiastic.
• Cameron ended up on the opposite side of this trope after Terminator 2: Judgment Day. None of the following Terminator films (each done by a different director) has earned the respect that the first two had, even if Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared in two of the non-Cameron films. Tellingly, when Cameron finally returned to write Terminator: Dark Fate, not only did he declare everything between Judgment Day and it non-canon, but the resultant film — while not devoid of criticism — was considered by even its biggest detractors to be a massive improvement over the Cameron-less movies.
• Alfred Hitchcock directed Psycho, and died before the sequels and the critically derided 90s remake were released. The universal opinion is that the first film was undoubtedly the best, and only Hitchcock understood the subject and execution.
• Richard Donner directed Superman: The Movie, and got fired halfway through Superman II. His cut of the sequel, which emerged in 2006, is generally considered better than the theatrical cut by Richard Lester. Of course, in this case it wasn't the name. There was a push to go Lighter and Softer that would culminate in the now disowned Superman III, and the Donner cut has less of the slapstick that was forced upon them.
• There was discussion of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Continuity Reboot without Joss Whedon. The original film was seen as a mild Cult Classic at best but the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show was vastly more successful, due to Whedon having direct control after he had little for the movie. Thus any movie reboot that didn't have Whedon involved was seen as doomed on arrival.
• Most fans of A Nightmare on Elm Street will tell you that the best installments are the ones that Wes Craven was involved in. He wrote and directed the original and Wes Craven's New Nightmare and co-wrote the third film Dream Warriors, the first and third films being considered essential viewing for anybody interested in the franchise and New Nightmare, Craven's metatextual commentary on the series and what it represented, seen as a return to form after a string of bad sequels. The consensus on the rest of the series ranges from divisive (Freddy's Revenge, The Dream Master, Freddy vs. Jason) to outright bad (The Dream Child, Freddy's Dead, the 2010 remake). Craven himself seems to agree, with a joke in Scream (1996) serving as a Take That! to the Nightmare sequels.
• The Saw movies released after the departure of creators Leigh Whannell and James Wan as writers (they were involved in the following movies up to Saw 3D, but only as executive producers) are highly regarded as significantly inferior to the first three movies, with the frequent exception of Saw VI.
• Highly debated among fans of Star Wars:
  • The very first film, A New Hope, is highly beloved, but many fans believe that George Lucas is a better writer and producer than a director (or vice-versa). They argue that The Empire Strikes Back was much better than A New Hope in part because Lucas took a more hands-off approach and left it in the hands of other writers and directors, and the weaknesses of Return of the Jedi stem from the fact that Lucas was too involved in the production. Likewise, the prequels suffer from the absence of many of the key collaborators in the original films. In the case of Star Wars, it takes the form of We Love the Creation, but He Doesn't Do It as Well as Others Do. Bear in mind that Lucas was always involved with Star Wars. According to star Mark Hamill, the famous plot twist of The Empire Strikes Back was exclusively Lucas' own invention and the first Star Wars film was entirely his vision, which he had to fight to convince his cast and crew to believe in.
  • While The Force Awakens was overall well-received, this trope was still played straight by fans who felt insulted at the very existence of the film because Lucas wasn't involved with it at all and thought it borrowed too much from the original trilogy, to the point of feeling like it undermined and even negated the originals. J. J. Abrams was painted as a pretender to the throne who mistakenly believed his fan fiction could ever "count" the way the Lucas-made films do.
  • The cycle repeated itself with The Last Jedi, except with Abrams in Lucas's position and new director Rian Johnson in the position Abrams used to be in. While most critics approved of the film, it proved to be highly divisive among fans and received criticism for shaking too many things up in the franchise, and reinforcing the feeling of pointnessless that The Force Awakens had imparted upon the original trilogy. It actually made many fans look forward to Abrams's return for The Rise of Skywalker.
  • Then The Rise of Skywalker was panned by critics and at best highly divisive once again with the fans, with Abrams getting the brunt of it from Johnson fans for his treatment of stuff from The Last Jedi, while at the same time some who didn't like The Last Jedi for its treatment of stuff from The Force Awakens welcomed Abrams's approach, and those who didn't like The Force Awakens and thus the premises of the entire sequel trilogy to begin with continued to criticize all three movies for making the original trilogy (let alone the prequels) feel pointless and fruitless, making for a very messy, very broken intra-Fandom Rivalry.
  • It got to the point that Simon Pegg, a noted Prequel detractor and part of the cast of The Force Awakens, has said that the newer Star Wars films aren't the same without Lucas' involvement.
  • Wisecrack Edition discussed this phenomenon in light of the polarizing fan reception to the Disney-era Star Wars movies. They argued that, very much like a political leader, George Lucas was able to claim legitimacy as the creative mind behind Star Wars since he created the franchise and personally approved the creation of many beloved Expanded Universe works. However, the new Disney management at Lucasfilm began facing a legitimacy crisis after the buyout of Star Wars following several controversial decisions like decanonizing the old Expanded Universe and producing rather polarizing films without the creative involvement of Lucas. Subsequently, many die-hard fans, many of whom became content creators themselves, began to see the new Lucasfilm as illegitimate and began producing works to voice their discontent.
  • Cracked would argue that a big reason for the mixed reception to the Sequel Trilogy was that, unlike Lucas, Disney didn't devote as much time and effort to Worldbuilding as he did, noting that as divisive as the Prequel Trilogy was, it still painted a clear picture of what the trilogy was about and what the characters' motivations were, whereas the Sequel Trilogy didn't and thus the stakes and motivations weren't as clear.
  • On the whole, the Sequel Trilogy was so divisive that it made many fans reexamine Lucas' work, especially with the Prequel Trilogy, more favorably.
• The first Die Hard film is directed by John McTiernan. All of the sequels are contested, to some extent. Die Hard with a Vengeance, the only sequel directed by McTiernan, is the least contested.
• The Bourne Series: Zig-Zagged with My Real Daddy, as one may argue that the Bourne series has two daddies with directors Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass. With The Bourne Identity, Liman gave the film a unique style, but it was Greengrass who would flesh it out in its sequels The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, with Liman still involved as executive producer, garnering even greater acclaim. But when Greengrass turned down the offer to direct The Bourne Legacy, Matt Damon left with him, saying he wouldn't do any more movies without him, and Liman left too. This is part of why Legacy hasn't been as well-received as its predecessors. Though it should be noted that Tony Gilroy wrote all four films (and directed Legacy). Damon and Greengrass finally reunited to make Jason Bourne, which received mixed reviews, as well.
• Until the release of the fifth film, fans of the Scream series viewed Kevin Williamson, the writer of the first two films, as the only person who could get the characters right. Scream 3 was written by Ehren Kruger due to Williamson having commitments to other projects, and is nowadays seen as the worst film in the series, and while Scream 4 saw Williamson come back to the series, Kruger was also credited for rewrites, and many fans blame the film's weaker moments on him. Worst of all was the TV adaptation, which neither Williamson, Kruger, nor the films' director Wes Craven had any creative involvement in (barring a producer credit for Craven), and which was lambasted by fans. As noted above, however, this started to die down with the fifth film, which had an all-new creative team (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett of the filmmaking collective Radio Silence) due to Craven's passing in 2015 with Williamson credited only as executive producer, yet was well-received as a return to form after a long Sequel Gap and which quickly earned a sequel.
• Ridley Scott himself has expressed this sentiment regarding the Alien series, saying he now regrets his departure from it and intends to assume full creative control to prevent films that contradict the new post-Prometheus canon, like Alien vs. Predator, from being made. The fans, on the other hand, are unsure on whether Prometheus and Alien: Covenant are actually taking the franchise on a better path. It is well worth noting and remembering, though, that Scott directed the original film but he did not create the actual story or the titular creatures; that honor belongs to screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ron Shusett.
• The only one of the sequels to National Lampoon's Vacation to be written by John Hughes was National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which is widely considered to be the best of the series.
• Of the various continuations to The Exorcist, the only on to have original author William Peter Blatty's involvement was The Exorcist III, which is considered the only worthy successor to the original.
• Shane Black was only involved with the first two Lethal Weapon films. The first is widely considered a classic and the second is hailed as the be the best of the sequels. The third and fourth films are somewhat divisive.
• Zigzagged with the Halloween franchise. Fans were overjoyed with John Carpenter's return for Halloween (2018) (as executive producer and co-composer), which ignores every film in the franchise except the original. Indeed, the film was largely seen by critics and fans as a return to form for a franchise that had seen numerous questionable sequels and a polarizing reboot. However, many forgot that Carpenter was also involved in Halloween II (1981) (as co-writer, producer, and composer) and the notorious Halloween III: Season of the Witch (as producer and composer), both of which also involved Debra Hill, who co-wrote and co-produced the original film with Carpenter. Despite even this, Halloween II is often seen as one of the better original sequels, and Halloween III: Season of the Witch is slowly gaining a cult following among fans of '80s horror, who view it as underrated. That said, the 2018 film’s two sequels, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, retained Carpenter but wound up very divisive affairs.
• La Llorona: Not one specific person, but an entire ethnic group. The myth of La Llorona comes from Hispanic culture, and this film is almost universally considered better than The Curse of La Llorona and any other American La Llorona film, at least among those who have actually seen it.
• Talbot Rothwell, who wrote Up Pompeii, had less involvement with each of the films (Up Pompeii, Up the Chastity Belt, and Up the Front), eventually ending up not being involved at all with Up the Front. The general audience perception is that they got worse as they went on.

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