Steven Spielberg has directed just three Rotten movies in his incredibly Fresh five-decade career: 1979’s rarely spoken-of 1941; shark-jumping Jurassic Park sequel The Lost World (lucky pack!); and Hook, the story of the titular pirate and his nemesis, Peter Pan, who for some reason went and joined the real world and grew up. That last film is the Rottenest of the director’s movies, with a Tomatometer score of just 26%, and widely considered—at least among critics—a big misstep for one of our great filmmakers. (Even Spielberg himself has essentially disowned it, as you’ll read in this chapter.) And yet Hook remains beloved by so many of us who grew up wearing out our Hook VHS tapes screaming “Ru-Fi-Yo!” at our TV screens. It’s also typical of the films we’re looking at here: rare Rotten “off days” for some of the biggest names in movie-making. They’re films that ended incredible hot streaks (Ridley Scott’s Rotten fantasy epic Legend came on the heels of Blade Runner and Alien) or showed us that hot-shot newcomers weren’t infallible after all (Sofia Coppola hit her first snag with Marie Antoinette after the critical success of The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation). They show directors over-indulging their signature excesses (Wes Anderson’s only Rotten film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, or Michael Mann’s Miami Vice, which Vanity Fair critic K. Austin Collins defends in these pages), or being too smart for their own good, or at least a bit too smart for the critics (see critic Jessica Kiang’s salute to Jane Campion’s misunderstood The Portrait of a Lady). Like Hook, though, each has its defenders and fandoms, particularly those that bear the marks of their singular makers’ idiosyncrasies. And like Hook, most of these were risks—big and bold and thrilling in their ambition. They’re the foul balls hit as some of Hollywood’s most talented people swung for the fences, and those at bat mostly learned from them before stepping back up to the plate. (Spielberg’s next two films after Hook? Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, both released in 1993.)