Sacred Haven of Debauchery

The point is to do what the client wants...

And isn't it the client's responsibility to provide a clear and well-defined technical assignment, so that you don't waste a lot of effort only to have the result rejected?

More likely, the problem is that you need to agree on all the details in advance, and also find out if your views on the work are compatible, so that you don't have to argue later, having wasted a lot of effort in vain. Imagine you're a car designer, you get an order to "make me a cool car," you spend hundreds of hours drawing all the body details using references, materials science, etc., you make a model on a 3D printer, you test it in a wind tunnel with visualization, it all looks great, you show it to the client, and the client says, "Are you stupid? I wanted a cool car like in Mad Max, what kind of nonsense did you make for me?"

From your couch, it seems strange to do something you didn't want to and didn't plan to do, although complaining on Twitter that your views didn't align is also an option. You could have researched the studio's profile to understand that their work probably isn't for you...