History Main / HeavensGate

* Heaven's Gate, an offensive technique used by [=HolyAngemon=] in ''DigimonAdventure''.

->It's getting dangerous to be poor in this country.
-->'''John L. Bridges'''

''Heaven's Gate'', starring Kris Kristofferson, ChristopherWalken and JeffBridges, is best known as the film that destroyed the career of its director and writer Michael Cimino. Cimino went ''way'' over budget on the movie, and the movie itself did so poorly at the box office that the combined effect of the high budget and low income sent the studio (United Artists) into deep financial trouble. It saw a ''very'' limited release in 1980 before going wider in 1981. Some critics have suggested that the film's real problem was its "naturalistic" sound mixing, which caused a lot of important dialogue to be swamped by background noise.

The film itself tells the tale of two Wyoming men, Sheriff James Averill and gunslinger Nathan Champion. Averill's lawful duty is to keep the peace between immigrants and rich farmers, while Champion is the farmers' means of [[JudgeJuryAndExecutioner lethal property protection.]] Both are in love with the same woman, a madam who falls on the farmers' "hit list." As a result, they end up opposing the farmers and join the immigrants' side in the subsequent Johnson County War. Let's just say this battle is a long one.

Not to be confused with the infamous cult.

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!!This film provides examples of:

* CreatorKiller: Killed both Cimino's reputation and contributed to the collapse of United Artists.
* TheDanza: JeffBridges as John L. Bridges
* DoingItForTheArt: One of the few examples that just wasn't worth it.
* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:The immigrants lose, and Ella, Nate, and Bridges die.]]
* EpicMovie: Cimino clearly wanted this to be his ''BenHur''.
* ExecutiveMeddling: The only major instance was the studio brass forcing Cimino to trim the film from its initial runtime of just over '''five hours''' to around three hours, forty-five minutes. The theatrical cut ran about '''two-and-a-half-hours''', and somehow managed to be [[BeyondTheImpossible far worse]]. (Today, the most frequently screened version is the three hour-plus cut.)
** The studio brass did consider sacking Cimino and replace him with Norman Jewison. However, Jewison wanted nothing to do with the film, so that never happened.
** It's not strange that the two and a half hour cut would be the worst of them all. The story was designed to unfold over the course of five hours. You can't remove half of a film and still expect it to work. It can be assumed that the never-seen five hour version is full of excessive scenery porn and other time wasters that were cut to make the three hour version shorter but still comprehensible. The two hour version was a mess with characterization, plot, and pacing completely removed in order to achieve the shorter run time.
* FinalSpeech: Nathan Champion writes a letter containing this to his friends in a ''burning cabin.'' No need to guess what exactly is wrong with that.
** Attacked by contemporary critics as unrealistic, ironically this is one of the few elements true to the historical events on which the film was losely based.
* FollowUpFailure: Keep in mind that Cimino had just won ''two'' Oscars out of the ''five'' for ''TheDeerHunter''.
* GenreKiller: Effectively destroyed the artistic credibility of TheWestern. In addition, this, and quite a few other films, marked the end of the "NewHollywood" era, causing studios to keep a much closer eye on directors to ensure they didn't go drastically over budget.
* HeyItsThatGuy: This was the film debut of Willem Dafoe.
** [[LawAndOrder Jack McCoy]] is leading the farmers into war.
** [[LordOfTheRings Wormtongue]] supports Averill in their attempt to drive the mercenaries back.
** [[IronMan Ivan Vanko]] is the inexperienced friend of [[TheProphecy Gabriel]]. This also is the 2nd movie Mickey Rourke stared in.
** [[NineteenEightyFour Winston Smith]] supervises the mercenaries despite him disagreeing with the plan to kill 125 civilians.
** Kris Kristofferson is the college friend of John Hurt and orchestrates the final - and much more successful - attack the civilians launch at the mercenaries.
** [[TheBigLebowski The Dude]] is the best friend of the local sheriff.
** Although only a minor role, this was the debut for [[Series/DrQuinnMedicineWoman Jake Slicker]] as well.
* LeaveTheCameraRunning
* MagnumOpusDissonance: Perhaps the definitive example; it's not only one of the biggest box office flops of all time, but widely considered one of the worst films of all time.
** YourMilageMayVary on this. If anything, it follows a similar approach as TheThinRedLine (or any movie by Terence Malick). Letting the images explain, with monologues as well dialogues only adding what can't be said with images alone, is something not everyone likes, but it in no way makes ''Heaven's Gate'' on of the worst films of all time. Both this approach as well as the GreyAndGrayMorality simply didn't fit into the time it was released.
* NoAnimalsWereHarmed - Caused a huge stink that led to this being a required part of all movie end credits. The American Humane Association brought numerous cases against the movie asserting horses were mistreated, bled, and in one instance BLOWN UP ON CAMERA.
* OscarBait: Oh yeah, after all that, it managed a ''single'' nomination for Art Direction.
* RealIsBrown: Especially in some of the earlier scenes. Naturally this doesn't improve the quality of shots where the frame is dominated by dust and smoke.
* SceneryPorn: The cinematography is lavish, but spoiled by the directly above-mentioned trope.
* ShownTheirWork: One of the reasons the film cost so much was that Cimino was obsessed with getting all the period details right.
** In fact, a promotional tie-in with Kodak film quoted him as saying, "If you don't get it right, what's the point?"
** Of course, this trope was so abundant that people refused to accept its little quirks as "real" at all. Cimino tended to abandon generic verisimilitude in favour of being "accurate", in turn ignoring a lot of things that people expect (or want) to see in a western. See FinalSpeech above for a good example, as well as the widespread criticism regarding the infamous roller skate dance scene.
* TroubledProduction: Originally budgeted at $2 million, events occurred that shot its budget up to ''$44 million!'' (Adjusting for inflation, that's over $100 million.) For example, after an entire set of a town's main street was built ''to his exact specifications'', Cimino decided that the street looked too narrow. He ordered the buildings on each side torn down and rebuilt three feet back from where they were, even after one crew member pointed out that it would be easier and cheaper to ''just tear one side down and rebuild it six feet back''. The cost of this decision alone? $550,000. You know that something's wrong when, after six days of filming, the project's ''five'' days behind schedule.
** Though as something of an exception, tensions reportedly weren't high on set at all and in fact a lot of people had good things to say about Cimino, some even commending him for his "artistic" efforts. Part of the problem however was that Cimino had closed sets off from the press. Eventually an undercover reporter wrote an article on how things were going having snuck in, choosing to paint a picture of chaos. Many consider the article a big TakeThat at Cimino that inevitably harmed the reputation of the film itself.
* VindicatedByVideo[=/=]YourMilageMayVary: After VHS and DVD releases, the film has acquired a bit of a cult following and is seeing a margin of critical revision postulating that it isn't really that bad.

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** Although only a minor role, this was the debut for [[DrQuinnMedicineWoman Jake Slicker]] as well.