I don’t think The Emperor’s New Groove did well in the theaters, but it is one of the best Disney movies of its time.
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Emperor's New Groove and Lilo & Stitch were also two of the last few times Disney put out something original. The last two decades of Disney releases have mostly been franchises they've bought from others or remakes of older Disney films that weren't even their original stories to begin with, e.g. Star Wars, MCU, 20th Century Fox, Pixar, a majority of Disney classics.
Funnily enough it did fine at the box office but because it was positioned at the end of Disney's "golden age" and made noticeably less than any other Disney movie of the era, they pivoted away from it to the point where many people assume it's a DreamWorks or Universal animated flick.
Dredd and John Carter. In both cases the film was tanked by marketing (or lack thereof).
I absolutely loved Dredd when I finally got around to seeing it at home. The visuals made me wish I had seen it in theaters. It was so viciously and grotesquely beautiful.
If they had just called it "John Carter of Mars" it would have at least communicated a major plot point. It was a really ambitious attempt to reboot a classic science fiction novel, but since nobody remembered what Barsoom was they were at a disadvantage.
Dredd was a great movie. It's an apology to the fans after the Stallone movie.
I still maintain that while not the same disaster as a film that it was as an investment, John Carter was muddy, its source material was past its sell-by date, and it topped out at "okay." I'm not at all sure added marketing budget would have made enough additional fans to have made it worthwhile.
The John Carter source material was so old that I imagine the movie was championed by dinosaur executives who remembered loving it when they were kids. Their underlings were afraid to say no.
That probably isn’t how things went down, but it’s my head canon.
IIRC it was a passion property for Andrew Stanton, who was coming off of one of the most insanely good Pixar resumes in an era of amazing Pixar resumes.
Unfortunately, when something is old and influential, a modern audience is going to have seen things influenced by it for decades, and the original can sometimes become a kind of "inside baseball" that only appeals to the passion of people who are into the historical context of their fields.
Nobody is making millions off of Citizen Kane or Metropolis.
I really enjoyed The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It got panned by the critics and didn't do well at the box office, but seems to be being more accepted recently.
The original Blade Runner (1982) didn’t do as well as expected at the box office upon release. I originally thought it lost money but when conducting research for this post I found that it apparently did turn a small profit according to Wikipedia.
Now it’s considered a cult classic and some argue it’s one of the best sci-fi movies ever made and its influence can be felt in many other movies, TV shows, anime/manga, and games.
I couldn’t find anyone wanted to go see Shawshank when it came out. I was probably one of a dozen people in the theater.
The Fifth Element was kinda a flop in the USA, but I loved it. The alien opera bit was awesome in the theater.
I didn't know it was a flop at release. It's in my top 5 of all time, so I'm super biased. Absolute legend of a film.
I didn't know it was a flop either.
super green
Despite overwhelmingly positive critical reviews, Children of Men lost money in its 2006 theatrical run. Most people I knew had never heard of it, and the only person I knew who had seen it was the friend I went to the theater with. It's now generally regarded as one of the best films of the 21st Century (so far) and particularly lauded for its cinematography. It's had a very successful home video run since then and is even more relevant today than on its release.
Seriously? Shit I saw it three times in theaters. I thought it was a masterpiece. Hopefully it's getting some of the recognition it deserves now.
I'm not sure if Death To Smoochy counts as a cult classic, but it damn well ought to. Screw critics, screw naysayers: That movie is bold, and it is fucking hilarious.
“Are you okay?” “I don’t know. I’m kinda fucked up in general, so it’s hard to gauge.”
I saw Death to Smoochy in theaters and, for whatever reason, that line has always stuck with me. Great movie!
Super Mario Bros. - I'm sorry for Hopper & Hoskins' experiences (RIP). But between the directorial chaos, editorial saves, and constant drunkenness, they turned out a pretty solid dark cyberpunk movie that feels more like "two New York plumbers save the day" than the recent movie. The visuals mostly still hold up, the story is okay. There's maybe a few things that could be improved, but overall I don't think it's all that bad.
The Rifftrax of it is one of my favorites to watch.
I think Stargate didn't do very well when it came out, but then went on to spawn several TV series.
I was surprised when I learned that because the shows were really fun.
Indeed.
I had trouble with the show. I really wanted to like it, but there are too many things I didn’t like about it. But the movie was amazing. I just watched it for the first time in the past year.
How far along did you get in the show? It starts out sort of slow and cheesy, but ramps up to having really big overarching storylines and super epic battles!
Like 4 episodes. I’ve heard it gets better, I just can’t bring myself to watch it. Maybe I’ll try Atlantis and then go back to the original.
I have a really hard time with the recasting.
With a lot of TV from that era you have to accept the first season is the show figuring itself out. 4 episodes, really isn't enough.
The best approach is just to skip boring chunks/episodes and move on to the next. Then when your hooked going back is worth it.
With Stargate while its an episodic format, events in past episodes are incorporated and it slowly starts building a complex universe.
Atlantis starts in SG1 season 5 and there are constant events in one series affecting the other one as a result.
Blade Runner. It did very poorly at the box office, and the critics were lukewarm at best, but I loved it. I was a big fan of Philip K. Dick, so a film by Ridley Scott based on one of his novels was right up my alley. I dragged my friend to see it the week it came out, and I was blown away. Even back then I wasn’t alone. It almost immediately became a cult film that regularly played in smaller repertory theaters.
I remember reading an interview with Arthur C. Clarke back then where he mentioned that he had recently spoken with Stanley Kubrick, and Kubrick had said that Blade Runner was the most visually beautiful film he had ever seen.
There was this duplex in '82 that was showing Blade Runner (rated R) on one screen and Clint Eastwood's Cold War thriller Firefox (rated PG) on the other. As an unaccompanied teen I had to see Firefox, but I do remember that Vangelis soundtrack, which you could hear from the lobby area. I really wanted to see it then, but it didn't happen until I rented the VHS tape a year later, maybe even a bit longer than that.
I feel like the sequel had similar problems. I think it did end up making its money back but based on what they spent vs what it made it wasn't a home run at all. But everyone I've talked to who has seen it thought it was great, myself included.
"Army of Darkness" a movie I still pick up and watch once a year.
John Carpenter's The Thing was critically and commercially panned on release. It lost the special effects Oscar to ET. It got such a bad response John Carpenter considered retiring.
Absolutely shocking in hindsight.
It's genuinely my favorite horror movie ever. Insane to me that it did poorly, but shit happens.
Does waterworld count as a cult classic these days? I think so but I could be wrong. I thought I was going insane when it came out because I absolutely loved it and seemingly everyone else couldn’t stand it for one minute!
I loved it too. It's silly but fun.
I think if it had been less expensive to make perhaps it wouldn't have flopped so spectacularly.
If we go all the way back to 1980, the classic example is Heaven's Gate by Deerhunter director Michael Cimino. I was alive but way too young to have bought a ticket. It was a disaster. Cost over $40m and made only $3-4m. Bankrupt United Artists, killed the western genre, was a critical and commercial failure. Pretty much destroyed Cimino's standing as a director. However, it has since been critical re-evaluated, in part due to a couple of new edits. IMHO it's alright. A bit long, and no Deerhunter. But it didn't deserve the reputation.
Fun fact, Heavens Gate contained so much animal cruelty, it's one of if not the primary cause of the "no animals were harmed in the making of this movie" label we see in movies now a days. Among the list of terrible acts, they killed at least 4 horses, one of which was blown up with dynamite, and they gave many others PTSD. The wiki entry is eye opening.
Yeah that stuff is pretty grim. By all accounts Cimino was unleashed and unhinged on this movie. Some of the egregious scenes of animal cruelty were removed from later edits, for what it's worth.
That isn't fun at all :(
Weird Al's UHF is hilarious and would have done well except that it came out the same weekend as a whooole bunch of other classic movies. The weekend of July 21, 1989 the other movies you could see were:
- Ghostbusters II
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- When Harry Met Sally
- Dead Poet's Society
- Batman
- Lethal Weapon 2
- Weekend at Bernie's
- Karate Kid III
Spatula City vs. Gotham City
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Did you mean Last Crusade?