What films that flopped when they came out but you saw in the theater and loved, that are now universally acclaimed or cult classics?
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.
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.
I enjoy the movie - but it's definitely not the comic.
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.
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.
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 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.
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!
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 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.
I didn't see it in theaters, iirc, but I wore out the VHS tape as a kid.
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.
I just got my wife to watch it for the first time this past week. Possibly my favorite movie ever.
It got a generally lukewarm reception on release too.
That's kind of insane considering it's literally the top movie on imdb
Not critically acclaimed by a long shot but I really loved Speed Racer when I saw it in the theater.
I'm confident in saying that Speed Racer is the best Wachowski film.
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.
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.
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:
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Did you mean Last Crusade?
Spatula City vs. Gotham City
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.
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 really enjoyed Waterworld.
"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.
Starship troopers comes to mind. I remember critics hating it when it came out. It is a classic in my cult!
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.
It's so bad but I love that movie
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.
That isn't fun at all :(
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.
Maybe The Island?
I think it didn't do great at the box office, but I went in expecting a mindless, Michael Bay summer action flick and that's what I got.
I watched it in theaters—twice. Alone, too.
I don't know if it's considered a cult classic now though.
I wouldn't consider it a cult classic but I did enjoy it.
I don't think it's a cult classic but it was a surprisingly decent movie.