Films that may have flopped but not because of you, because you did your part and bought a ticket.
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.
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.
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
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.
It’s a fun ride, but I don’t know if I can say it’s exactly a good movie. It’s trying to scratch that same adventure itch as The Mummy or Indiana Jones, but I don’t think it does it quite as well.
A lot of that was due to how badly they butchered the graphic novels.
I enjoy the movie - but it’s definitely not the comic.
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 friggin’ love that movie. Same with The Postman. Why does Kevin Costner make movies that are just so much better than they have any right to be?
Postman is so good. Love the Tom Petty cameo
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
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.
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.
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.
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.
I get the feeling that both the original and the sequel are the kind of film where word of mouth just doesn’t do it for some reason. I had a friend years ago who mentioned that she had never seen Blade Runner, and immediately followed that by saying not to bother telling her how good it was.
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 couldn’t find anyone wanted to go see Shawshank when it came out. I was probably one of a dozen people in the theater.
It got a generally lukewarm reception on release too.
That’s kind of insane considering it’s literally the top movie on imdb
I just got my wife to watch it for the first time this past week. Possibly my favorite movie ever.
Came here to say Shawshank. Same with me, I went to see it on my own.
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.
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.
Dredd was a great movie. It’s an apology to the fans after the Stallone movie.
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
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Did you mean Last Crusade?
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.
Not only did it spawn multiple spin-offs, sg1 was the longest running sci-fi series
I didn’t see it in theaters, iirc, but I wore out the VHS tape as a kid.
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!
Not critically acclaimed by a long shot but I really loved Speed Racer when I saw it in the theater.
That’s the first one that came to mind for me too! Kid me absolutely loved it in theaters, and it only gets better with age. It’s so stylistically out there, there’s really nothing that looks quite like it.
Another one of my favorites was Tron: Legacy. Again, blew my mind in theaters, and I’ve come to love it even more now. I don’t think this one was a flop exactly, though it did underperform. It’s similar to Speed Racer in that it’s very visually-focused with a super unique aesthetic, though the emphasis on practical effects and physical camera stuff (lens flares etc) gives it a completely different feel that I love too.
I watched Tron Legacy in the theatre, I thought it was really good, the soundtrack was amazing but as soon as I left the theatre I never felt like seeing it again, maybe it was just fine tipped over the edge by a great soundtrack?
I saw Tron in the theater in 1982! How about that? I’d forgotten all about it, until just now that I read the word “Tron”.
There was an arcade next door, of course - they had the Tron game! A guy was playing like a wizard, I asked if he’d gone next door to see it, he looked at me and said - “I’ve seen it four times”. I wonder where that guy is now. Did he go into computer engineering or something like that, just at the right time when the industry was about to explode in size?
I’m confident in saying that Speed Racer is the best Wachowski film.
“Army of Darkness” a movie I still pick up and watch once a year.
Given that there were 2 TV shows with the same tone, and a whole Evil Dead reboot thing, it’s safe to say that Army of Darkness has gotten it’s fair praise.
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.
Starship troopers comes to mind. I remember critics hating it when it came out. It is a classic in my cult!
