Director David Ayer recently reflected on Suicide Squad. Though a commercial hit, the superhero flick got panned in part for hyping up Jared Leto’s Joker, but delivering precious little of him. “I love the movie and believe in it,” he wrote in a letter posted to Twitter. “Wish I had a time machine. I’d make Joker the main villain and engineer a more grounded story.”

Film’s a divisive medium, and a movie can take a thousand different wrong turns. A remake of a much-loved original can make diehard fans groan, blockbusters can shatter the box office without winning over critics and a true work of art can fail to find an audience at all.

When it comes to these disappointments, directors don’t always get the opportunity to explain themselves. Here, we’ve assembled defenses from directors (and one producer) on ten of their most infamously disappointing movies—from humble regrets to the bold, “no, you’re just watching it wrong.”

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