Line #7 YMMV/HeavensGate


1	!!The film
2	* AccidentalAesop: A meta example. This film's production is a good cautionary tale of how being a {{Perfectionist}} can blow up in your face. Had Creator/{{Michael Cimino\|Director}} been a bit more pragmatic about how to achieve his artistic goals for the film, a lot of its issues could've been avoided. It's also a great reminder about keeping your ego in check and just as quickly as you can be on top, you can also just as quickly lose it as Creator/{{Michael Cimino\|Director}} went from being a major name in the movie making business to having his career destroyed by this film.
3	* BetterOnDVD: The Blu-Ray release is the version restored closest to Cimino's original vision.
4	* CommonKnowledge: "''Film/HeavensGate'' bankrupted Creator/UnitedArtists" isn't exactly what happened. In a nutshell, in 1981 UA's parent company Transamerica decided to refocus on their core business of insurance and investments, and started selling off their other assets. ''Heaven's Gate'' had certainly been a major contributor to UA's recent underperformance, but there were other factors like many of UA's former clients preferring to do business with the old UA regime now at Creator/OrionPictures, plus other questionable moves by UA's new regime, presiding over several other flops and paying exorbitant amounts to acquire film rights for high profile books. Even then, thanks largely to the success of ''Film/{{Moonraker}}'' and ''Film/RockyII'', plus smaller hits like ''Film/RagingBull'' and ''Film/{{Caveman}}'', the studio was breaking even. Then Creator/{{MGM}} owner Kirk Kerkorian suddenly swooped in and offered Transamerica $380 million (over a billion dollars in today's money) to buy UA, and it was simply too good of a deal for them to pass up.
5	* CompleteMonster: [[CattleBaron Frank Canton]], here [[HistoricalVillainUpgrade lacking any of his more sympathetic qualities,]] is the head of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association who intends to kill 125 immigrants and claim them as anarchists, with the support of the President of the United States. Canton ambushes and murders the train station master when he tries to warn the town about his arrival. Canton then has his men [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil rape]] Ella Watson. When his enforcer Nathan D. Champion [[EveryoneHasStandards discovers this]], he kills the one rapist who escaped in front of Canton, [[BadBoss who shows no concern]] over his death and personally executes a captured immigrant. While fighting with the immigrants, Canton brings in the cavalry to rescue his own men, and threatens to shoot [[TheHero James Averill]] for insurrection when he points this out. Canton later ambushes Averill, Ella, and John H. Bridges, the only survivors of the battle, killing both Ella and Bridges before he himself is shot by Averill.
6	* EndingFatigue: With a runtime of 3 hours and 36 minutes, this is one of the biggest complaints, with the view that the film doesn't have nearly enough plot to fill out its running time. In particular, the epilogue,[[spoiler:--a DistantFinale with Averill back among the New England aristocracy--]] a wholly disconnected scene that Cimino added purely for artistic gravitas, is viewed as completely unnecessary.
7	* EnsembleDarkhorse: To the surprise of no one, Creator/ChristopherWalken's performance as Nate Champion is considered the standout.
8	* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: The film has received popularity within some European critics circles, especially in France.
9	* HilariousInHindsight: Creator/KrisKristofferson later starred in the MadeForTVMovie ''Sodbusters'', directed and co-written by Creator/EugeneLevy, a comic {{Western}} based on a PlayedForLaughs "cattle barons vs. settlers" storyline. A second ''Heaven's Gate'' actor, Ronnie Hawkins, has a small role as well.
10	* ImprovedByTheReCut: The 216-minute Director's Cut was widely praised for restoring the film's many SceneryPorn scenes and making the plot easier to follow, and helped play a significant in the [[VindicatedByHistory film's reevaluation]] from a cinematic disaster to an underrated masterpiece.
11	* MisBlamed:
12	** Many people consider this as the film that ended the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood and scapegoated the entire generation as {{Prima Donna Director}}s. In actual fact, at the time of the film's release, funding was already drying up for ambitious projects and the film industry was already bought out by corporations who sought to follow the trend of ''[[Film/ANewHope Star Wars]]''.
13	** Other observers point out that the similarly TroubledProduction ''Film/ApocalypseNow'' was a box-office success[[note]]Steven Bach in ''Final Cut'' draws this explicit comparison[[/note]] and that ''Heaven's Gate'' was also accompanied by other expensive films like Creator/StevenSpielberg's ''Film/NineteenFortyOne1979'' and Creator/WarrenBeatty's ''Film/{{Reds\|1981}}'', the former being a critical failure, an out of control production and a modest success, while the latter being successful and preserving Beatty's reputation. Spielberg himself enjoyed a couple of expensive flops in TheEighties and TheNineties such as ''Film/{{Hook}}'' and ''Film/EmpireOfTheSun'' yet his career did not quite sink as drastically as Cimino's. In many ways, Cimino's behavior was not especially excessive for his time, and he had success with ''Film/TheDeerHunter'' to justify his ambition and grit, yet this one failure ruined his Hollywood career for good.
14	** There's also the argument that the film's failure was a result of negative publicity about the film's production reported in the news before the film's release. Negative publicity had damaged the reception of ''Film/{{Ishtar}}'' (a late-80s BoxOfficeBomb that like ''Heaven's Gate'' is now seen in a better light) and this in turn put more pressure on the producers who released a cut-down version to critics which didn't make sense, and only made things worse. This practice of cutting down and sabotaging releases also led to other instances in TheEighties such as ''Film/BladeRunner'' and ''Film/{{Brazil}}'' whose ReCut version released later proved to be successful.
15	** A big issue in the film's reputation is that Steven Bach's book ''Final Cut'' shaped a lot of the public perception of its TroubledProduction, but, while it's a very well-written and candid book, Bach, as the UA exec in charge of production, wasn't an impartial observer, and one of the subtexts of the book is actually really important in understanding what happened: five UA executives quitting at the start of 1978 to form Creator/OrionPictures, leaving a less-experienced group (including Bach) to take over at UA. The UA leadership giving Cimino free rein, then bungling the release, needs to be kept in mind in the whole situation (Bach to his credit admits this, but focusing the book on Cimino's excesses, entertaining though they were, deflected too much of the blame). Bach's co-head of production, David Field, also felt that Bach used ''Final Cut'' as an attempt to deflect blame away from himself.
16	* MemeticMutation: When the TroubledProduction of ''{{Film/Waterworld}}'' became the talk of Hollywood, people started calling it ''Kevin's Gate''.
17	* {{Narm}}:
18	** Canton's reaction to Nate's shooting of one of Ella's rapists in his tent.
19	--->'''Canton:''' Not in here!
20	** Anyone checking out the film these days with its name having become so notorious is probably a bit nonplussed to find out the movie has that title because of a ''roller rink''.
21	* OlderThanTheyThink: The story of the Johnson County War had already been featured in a few films before ''Heaven's Gate''. In fact, a 1976 MadeForTVMovie called ''The Invasion of Johnson County'' (with Creator/BillBixby and Creator/BoHopkins) hit a lot of the same story beats Cimino would later use, including Frank Canton and Nate Champion as characters amid the fictionalized storyline. In general, the stock Western plot of settlers versus cattle barons was a conscious echo of the Johnson County events, with ''Literature/{{Shane}}'' (novel and film) especially taking the central Johnson County conflict and giving it a mythicized treatment.
22	* PoorMansSubstitute: Given that two of this film's obvious inspirations (''Film/McCabeAndMrsMiller'' and ''Film/DoctorZhivago'') both starred Creator/JulieChristie, you can make the case that Creator/IsabelleHuppert as Ella Watson was one for Christie.
23	* ProtectionFromEditors: The main reason why the film's budget spiraled so ludicrously out of control; Cimino's contract said that short of outright firing him, the producers could not interfere with the film's writing or filming process in any way. The contract ''did'' allow the producers to make and release their own cut (which they ultimately did), but Cimino ended up creating such a long, dense plot that the producer's cut turned out to be a barely comprehensible mess.
24	* QuestionableCasting: The producers were initially confused at Cimino wanting to cast French actress Creator/IsabelleHuppert as the female (American) lead. Few people would argue that Huppert is in any way a bad actress, but her role in this film is probably the one that divides critics the most; in particular, the producers and many critics shared the opinion that her dialogue is fairly incomprehensible at times. Of course, one of the producers tried ExecutiveMeddling. Cimino's response? "Go fuck yourself." According to Steven Bach in ''Final Cut'', the executives fought him every step of the way on Huppert, since she was practically unknown to most Americans, and didn't have leading lady looks (the most flattering description for Huppert that Bach can muster is "mousy"). They finally gave up once they realized he was infatuated with her. Depending on who you want to believe, either Cimino was prepared to quit if they didn't agree to Huppert, or UA was prepared to drop the project if he didn't back down, before UA president Andy Albeck stepped in and supported Cimino. David Field, Bach's co-head of production at UA, feels that winning the battle over Huppert marked the point where Cimino basically took control of the film once and for all.
25	* RetroactiveRecognition: A pre-fame Creator/WillemDafoe makes his acting debut as Willy.
26	* RomanticPlotTumor: The LoveTriangle between Averill, Champion, and Ella takes up a great deal of the movie; detractors point out what little chemistry she has with both men.
27	* SignatureScene: The Roller Skate dance sequence, complete with David Mansfield introducing the dance by skating around with the violin.
28	* SoOkayItsAverage: What some viewers now see the film as. While the cinematography, sets, and production design are generally seen as absolutely beautiful, the story and characters aren't viewed as all that interesting or engaging.
29	* VindicatedByHistory: The film, or at least the [[ReCut various 216-to-219 minute cuts]] of it, have started to develop this reputation in recent years, with some critics hailing it as a lost masterpiece.
30	* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical: Creator/{{Michael Cimino\|Director}} argued that he simply wanted to make a compelling story, not a political one. That didn't stop some critics from calling him a Communist and the film left-wing propaganda. Granted, the film was about poor immigrants being unfairly slaughtered by rich elitists with full support from the American government; surely Cimino must have known how politically-charged that subject matter is. It didn't help when he gave an interview around the time of the edited version's release saying that he wanted to show the birth of the American mentality that ultimately led to Vietnam.
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32	!!The band
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34	* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: They were extremely popular in Japan.
35	* SignatureSong: "Rising Sun".

Context YMMV / HeavensGate