History Film / HeavensGate

The film became a BoxOfficeBomb--$3.4 million on a $44 million budget--and an infamous CreatorKiller. Michael Cimino, who had been one of Hollywood's hottest young directors following his UsefulNotes/AcademyAward-winning ''Film/TheDeerHunter'', never recovered. He worked sporadically after this film (even serving as the director of ''Film/{{Footloose}}'' before his constant requests to make it more extravagant--and expensive--led him to him being fired and replaced due to fear of another ''Heaven's Gate''), but never enjoyed the success he had prior to it. Kris Kristofferson, who had enjoyed a very successful career as a leading man in TheSeventies, [[StarDerailingRole never headlined a film this big again]]. The film had gone way, way over budget, causing Creator/UnitedArtists to take a bath. UA was sold to Creator/{{MGM}} by parent company Transamerica, thus ending the studio's sixty-year run as a distribution company for independent producers.[[note]]Steven Bach, the UA production exec who greenlighted ''Heaven's Gate'', had his career ruined too, as he was fired after the movie bombed. He wrote a famous book about the disaster, ''Final Cut''.[[/note]] It also is regarded as a milestone in the end of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era, the period in the late [[TheSixties Sixties]] and TheSeventies in which auteurs enjoyed unprecedented creative freedom and control of their work.

Became a BoxOfficeBomb--$3.4 million on a $44 million budget--and an infamous CreatorKiller. Michael Cimino, who had been one of Hollywood's hottest young directors following his UsefulNotes/AcademyAward-winning ''Film/TheDeerHunter'', never recovered. He worked sporadically after this film (even serving as the director of ''Film/{{Footloose}}'' before his constant requests to make it more extravagant--and expensive--led him to him being fired and replaced due to fear of another ''Heaven's Gate''), but never enjoyed the success he had prior to it. Kris Kristofferson, who had enjoyed a very successful career as a leading man in TheSeventies, [[StarDerailingRole never headlined a film this big again]]. The film had gone way, way over budget, causing Creator/UnitedArtists to take a bath. UA was sold to Creator/{{MGM}} by parent company Transamerica, thus ending the studio's sixty-year run as a distribution company for independent producers.[[note]]Steven Bach, the UA production exec who greenlighted ''Heaven's Gate'', had his career ruined too, as he was fired after the movie bombed. He wrote a famous book about the disaster, ''Final Cut''.[[/note]] It also is regarded as a milestone in the end of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era, the period in the late [[TheSixties Sixties]] and TheSeventies in which auteurs enjoyed unprecedented creative freedom and control of their work.

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: The climactic battle never happened--or at least, no one was killed. In fact TheCavalry came to rescue the evil ranchers before any fighting could start.
* BasedOnATrueStory: The Johnson County War. There really were a bunch of hired killers imported into Johnson County. There really was a siege. A real person named Nate Champion really did go down shooting outside his blazing cabin. And the United States Cavalry really did come to the rescue of the ranchers.
** Beyond that, though, VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory comes into play. Especially with the lead characters: James ''Averell'' and Ella Watson were a married couple accused of cattle rustling. They didn't even live in Johnson County and were lynched before the "war" started (their deaths were one of the events that sparked the conflict, in fact). Though in Cimino's defense, the pair quickly became ShroudedInMyth and historians are still trying to pin down exactly how the whole incident unfolded.

* OscarBait: Oh yeah, after all that, it managed a ''single'' nomination for Art Direction.

* ReCut: Creator/MichaelCimino's original cut was ''5 hours and 25 minutes long''. This was edited down to 3 hours and 39 minutes and then down to 2 hours and 29 minutes. In 2012, it was later restored to Cimino's original vision of 216 minutes.

** Beyond that, though, VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory comes into play. Especially with the lead characters: James ''Averell'' and Ella Watson (aka Cattle Kate) were accused cattle rustlers who didn't live in Johnson County and were lynched before the "war" started (their deaths were one of the events that sparked the conflict, in fact).

The AllStarCast included Kris Kristofferson as Averill, Creator/ChristopherWalken as Champion, Creator/JohnHurt as Billy Irvine, Creator/JeffBridges as John Bridges, Creator/SamWaterston as Canton (the head of the evil ranchers), Creator/JosephCotten in one of his last film roles, Isabelle Huppert as Ella, Creator/MickeyRourke, Creator/BradDourif, and Creator/WillemDafoe in his film debut.

* ShownTheirWork: One of the reasons the film cost so much was that Cimino was obsessed with getting all the period details right. (A promotional tie-in with [[Creator/EastmanKodak Kodak]] film quoted him as saying, "If you don't get it right, what's the point?") One legendary anecdote had Cimino deciding that the street on his main set wasn't wide enough, and then having both sides of the street torn down and moved back three feet, at great cost and time wasted. But this trope was so abundant that [[RealityIsUnrealistic 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.

* SceneryPorn: The cinematography is lavish, but spoiled by the directly above-mentioned trope.

* 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. (And that cockfighting scene? That was real.)

* GunshotShutUp: Bridges has to do this to get the immigrants to quiet down and stop jabbering when it's time to talk about what to do about the death list. Amusingly, he has to do this again later when they start jabbering again.

* ShutUpGunshot: Bridges does this to quiet the jabbering citizens before starting the meeting at the dance hall.

* BasedOnATrueStory: The Johnson County War. There really were a bunch of hired killers imported into Johnson County, and townspeople really did fight against them, and there really was a battle and siege. A real person named Nate Champion really did go down shooting outside his blazing cabin. And the United States Cavalry really did come to the rescue of the ranchers.

Became a BoxOfficeBomb--$3.4 million on a $44 million budget--and an infamous CreatorKiller. Michael Cimino, who had been one of Hollywood's hottest young directors following his UsefulNotes/AcademyAward-winning ''Film/TheDeerHunter'', never recovered. He worked sporadically after this film (even serving as the director of ''Film/{{Footloose}}'' before his constant requests to make it more extravagant--and expensive--led him to him being fired and replaced due to fear of another ''Heaven's Gate''), but never enjoyed the success he had prior to it. Kris Kristofferson, who had enjoyed a very successful career as a leading man in TheSeventies, [[StarDerailingRole never headlined a film this big again]]. The film had gone way, way over budget, causing Creator/UnitedArtists to take a bath. UA was sold to Creator/{{MGM}} by parent company Transamerica, thus ending the studio's sixty-year run as a distribution company for independent producers. It also is regarded as a milestone in the end of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era, the period in the late [[TheSixties Sixties]] and TheSeventies in which auteurs enjoyed unprecedented creative freedom and control of their work.

Became a BoxOfficeBomb--$3.4 million on a $44 million budget--and an infamous CreatorKiller. Michael Cimino, who had been one of Hollywood's hottest young directors following his UsefulNotes/AcademyAward-winning ''Film/TheDeerHunter'', never recovered. He worked sporadically after this film (even serving as the director of ''Film/{{Footloose}}'' before his constant requests to make it more extravagant--and expensive--led him to him being fired and replaced due to fear of another ''Heaven's Gate''), but never enjoyed the success he had prior to it. Kris Kristofferson, who had enjoyed a very successful career as a leading man in TheSeventies, never headlined a film this big again. The film had gone way, way over budget, causing Creator/UnitedArtists to take a bath. UA was sold to Creator/{{MGM}} by parent company Transamerica, thus ending the studio's sixty-year run as a distribution company for independent producers. It also is regarded as a milestone in the end of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era, the period in the late [[TheSixties Sixties]] and TheSeventies in which auteurs enjoyed unprecedented creative freedom and control of their work.

Became a BoxOfficeBomb--$3.4 million on a $44 million budget--and an infamous CreatorKiller. Michael Cimino, who had been one of Hollywood's hottest young directors following his UsefulNotes/AcademyAward-winning ''Film/TheDeerHunter'', never recovered. He worked sporadically after this film (even serving as the director of ''Film/{{Footloose}}'' before his constant requests to make it more extravagant--and expensive--led him to him being fired and replaced due to fear of another ''Heaven's Gate''), but never enjoyed the success he had prior to it. Kris Kristofferson, who had enjoyed a very successful career as a leading man in TheSeventies, never headlined a film this big again. The film had gone way, way over budget, causing Creator/UnitedArtists to take a bath. UA was sold to Creator/{{MGM}} by parent company Transamerica, thus ending the studio's sixty-year run as a distribution company for independent producers.. It also is regarded as a milestone in the end of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era, the period in the late [[TheSixties Sixties]] and TheSeventies in which auteurs enjoyed unprecedented creative freedom and control of their work.

* DeterminedHomesteadersWife: The Serb woman who tells Averill "''We'll work our land''" after her husband has been murdered by Champion.

Became a BoxOfficeBomb--$3.4 million on a $44 million budget--and an infamous CreatorKiller. Michael Cimino, who had been one of Hollywood's hottest young directors following his UsefulNotes/AcademyAward-winning ''Film/TheDeerHunter'', never recovered. He worked sporadically after this film (even serving as the director of ''Film/{{Footloose}}'' before his constant requests to make it more extravagant--and expensive--led him to him being fired and replaced due to fear of another ''Heaven's Gate''), but never enjoyed the success he had prior to it. Kris Kristofferson, who had enjoyed a very successful career as a leading man in TheSeventies, never headlined a film this big again. The film had gone way, way over budget, causing Creator/UnitedArtists to take a bath. UA, which had been in business for sixty years as a distributor for independent filmmakers, went bankrupt, eventually being bought out by Creator/{{MGM}}. It also is regarded as a milestone in the end of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era, the period in the late [[TheSixties Sixties]] and TheSeventies in which auteurs enjoyed unprecedented creative freedom and control of their work.

The AllStarCast included Kris Kristofferson as Averill, Creator/ChristopherWalken as Champion, Creator/JohnHurt as Billy Irvine, Creator/JeffBridges as John Bridges, Creator/SamWaterston as Canton (the head of the evil ranchers), Joseph Cotten in one of his last film roles, Isabelle Huppert as Ella, Creator/MickeyRourke, Creator/BradDourif, and Creator/WillemDafoe in his film debut.

* 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.

* 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. Creator/RogerEbert stated that this was one of the ugliest films he had to watch.

* TheCavalry

* DisasterDominoes: Not only did it kill Michael Cimino's reputation, collapse United Artists, and essentially put an end to the ''Auteur'' era of UsefulNotes/NewHollywood, but the loss of money also made it impossible for UA to run an Oscar campaign for Creator/MartinScorsese's ''Film/RagingBull'', possibly leading to one of the most notorious [[AwardSnub Best Picture snubs]] of the modern film era. And finished off the already dying {{Western}} genre, for everybody except Creator/ClintEastwood anyway.
-->'''Creator/RogerEbert:''' The most scandalous cinematic waste I have ever seen, and remember, I've seen ''Film/PaintYourWagon''.

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:The immigrants lose, and Ella, Nate, and Bridges die.]]

* FanEdit: Creator/StevenSoderbergh put together [[http://extension765.com/sdr/16-heavens-gate-the-butchers-cut an "immoral and illegal" edit]] that trimmed it to under two hours. He tightens up the narrative, ditches the epilogue and [[spoiler:puts the Harvard scenes at the end as a flashback]].

* MissKitty

* PietaPlagiarism

* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Jim Averill's arc is the slow slide from one end to the other. He starts out as a Harvard-educated son of privilege who rejects a cushy life in favor of becoming a lawman and doing some good in the world. [[spoiler: At the end, he's an EmptyShell who completely failed to protect either the immigrants or the woman he loved.]] "I hate getting old", indeed.

* RealityIsUnrealistic: The scene where Nate Champion writes his FinalSpeech in a ''burning cabin'', which was unsurprisingly criticized for being melodramatic and an unnecessary addition? That actually happened. One of the few scenes ''true'' to historical events, actually.

The AllStarCast included Kris Kristofferson as Averill, Creator/ChristopherWalken as Champion, Creator/JohnHurt as Billy Irvine, Creator/JeffBridges as John Bridges, Creator/SamWaterston as Canton (the head of the evil farmers), Joseph Cotten in one of his last film roles, Isabelle Huppert as Ella, Creator/MickeyRourke, Creator/BradDourif, and Creator/WillemDafoe in his film debut.

* ShownTheirWork: One of the reasons the film cost so much was that Cimino was obsessed with getting all the period details right. (A promotional tie-in with [[Creator/EastmanKodak Kodak]] film quoted him as saying, "If you don't get it right, what's the point?") But this trope was so abundant that [[RealityIsUnrealistic 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.

* EpicMovie: Cimino clearly wanted this to be his ''Film/BenHur''.