Steven Spielberg once 'disowned' one of his biggest movies for being 'too dark'
If you're ever doubting yourself at work, just remember that even geniuses like Steven Spielberg have regrets about some of their projects - and they still went on to gross plenty of wonga at the box office.
The legendary director, 77, has more iconic movies than you can shake a stick at and he seems to have the Midas Touch when it comes to making them...but he doesn't look back on all of his cinematic hits as fondly as fans do.
In fact, he has been desperate to distance himself from one of his biggest ever flicks since it came out as he reckons it was 'far too dark'.
In Spielberg's words, he believes it even 'out-poltered Poltergeist' - his 1982 horror about demonic ghosts terrorising a family's home and taking their youngest daughter.
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Now, that's saying something.
Seen as though it's coming from the bloke behind the likes of scare fests including Something Evil, Duel, War Of The Worlds and Jaws, you're probably wondering what movie was the one which managed to keep Spielberg up at night.
A lot of people are pretty surprised to find out that it's one of the film's that he worked on with his good old pal George Lucas which he has tried to disown from his catalogue of incredible flicks.
Spielberg reckons the bullwhip-thrashing, fedora-donning action hero Indiana Jones ended up heading down a much darker path than he intended.
More specifically, it was the sequel to it - Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom - which he kicks himself for, as he says it is the project he is least proud of, even though it did big numbers at the box office.
The director said he wishes that he had prioritised adding more of that Spielberg spice which makes all of his movies so great while making the 1984 film, starring Harrison Ford, as he was more preoccupied with what viewers may think.
Discussing his grievances with the Sun Sentinel five years after it's release, he explained: "I wasn’t happy with Temple of Doom at all. It was too dark, too subterranean, and much too horrific. I thought it out-poltered Poltergeist.
"There’s not an ounce of my own personal feeling in Temple of Doom. The danger in making a sequel is that you can never satisfy everyone."
Even Steven Spielberg can't please everyone - so the moral of the story is, go with what you think is best.
For those who don't remember, Indiana Jones is on the run with companions Willie Scott and Short Round when they stumble across a village in the depths of India with a chilling mystery.
Their sacred Sankara stone has been stolen and the local children kidnapped, so of course the iconic hero sets out to rescue them - after getting past the terrifying villains and a few booby traps.
Spielberg explained the difficulty he had faced when deciding where to take the sequel, saying: "If you give people the same movie with different scenes, they say: ‘Why weren’t you more original?’
"But if you give them the same character in another fantastic adventure, but with a different tone, you risk disappointing the other half of the audience who just wanted a carbon copy of the first film with a different girl and a different bad guy.
"So you win, and you lose both ways," Spielberg added.
On the other hand, George Lucas said he 'loved' the Temple of Doom, although he admitted it's 'just slightly darker in tone and not as fun as the first'.
There was one silver lining that Spielberg managed to find when making Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom, though.
The movie set was the place where he met his beloved wife, actress Kate Capshaw, who starred as Wilhelmina 'Willie' Scott' in the action-packed film.
In the Making of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom documentary, Spielberg joked: "Temple Of Doom is my least favourite of the trilogy. I look back and I say, ‘Well the greatest thing that I got out of that was I met Kate Capshaw.’
"We married years later and that to me was the reason I was fated to make Temple of Doom."
The universe works in mysterious ways, huh?
Topics: Film, TV and Film, Celebrity
Olivia Burke