Vindicated By History / Live-Action Films

Genres

• Classic Hollywood in general:
  • With the implementation of The Hays Code in 1934, many films from The Pre-Code Era were banished from American screens until The '70s. Since then, later audiences have rediscovered this era, and many films that were once condemned by Moral Guardians and forgotten by audiences have come to be seen as classics, primarily for their Older Than They Think appeal.
  • Likewise, the genre films of Old Hollywood enjoy a far higher reputation among artists and audiences than the more hyped-up glossy studio productions. Film Noir mostly contained crime thrillers adapted from cheap pulp magazines, B-movies made on micro-budgets, and yet these films were far more influential and well-respected by artists from all fields and critics than the movies that won the Best Picture Academy Award in their respective years of release. The fact that they had less oversight and fell Beneath Suspicion of The Hays Code was one reason.
  • Westerns were once seen as disposable genre movies. It took till The '90s with Unforgiven and Dances with Wolves for Western to win Best Picture at the Oscars and officially come Out of the Ghetto, and even John Ford only won Oscars for his non-Western films. Yet, today, Westerns are considered a lost art, and the Hollywood Westerns of Ford, Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, Anthony Mann, Samuel Fuller, Budd Boetticher, and Sam Peckinpah are considered masterpieces and among America's best films.

Creators

• Tim Burton:
  • Early in his career, Burton worked with Disney but was fired in 1984 after the production of Frankenweenie. They thought he wasted their money for a film that was too scary for children (it was intended to run in theaters with a Pinocchio reissue). Burton went on to become a successful director, and finally, the short saw a home video release in The '90s. And a quarter of a century later, Burton remade it as a stop-motion feature — produced by Disney.
  • Burton's biopic Ed Wood failed at the box office with a $5.9 million gross versus an $18 million budget. But there was enough critical and industry affection for it that it won two Oscars (Makeup and Supporting Actor) and eventually became known as a great work.
  • Batman Returns (1992) disappointed at the box office, due to both its overhyped U.S. release and parental outrage at the gruesome horror and sexual themes in a film that was blatantly marketed toward children. While it didn't quite ruin Burton's career, it did bring his late 1980s/early 1990s hitmaking period to an abrupt end and forced Warner Brothers to move in a much Lighter and Softer direction with the Batman franchise. In the years since it's been acknowledged as perhaps the best pre-2005 Batman movie and a major influence on almost all superhero movies released since.
  • Though it remains divisive, the overall opinion of Alice in Wonderland (2010) has improved over time. In particular, a lot of fans look at it more fondly due to seeing it as something with more passion and creativity put into it compared to subsequent live-action Disney films.
• Frank Capra, one of the most successful directors of The Golden Age of Hollywood, had his fair share of disappointments which turned out to be undeserved for a particular film.
  • Lost Horizon was a critical and box-office dud in 1937, but its reputation has grown immensely over time. The same is true of The Bitter Tea of General Yen.
  • It's a Wonderful Life was one of Capra's most financially unsuccessful features, and suffered critical indifference. The production company of the film (Liberty Films) was threatened with bank foreclosure following the film's failure, though Paramount soon purchased the company and covered its debts. The film's distribution company, RKO Pictures, also lost money in attempts to promote the film. About three decades later, the film was recognized as a timeless and inspirational holiday classic, aided in no small part by frequent airings on TV after it accidentally went into the public domain.
• Ridley Scott:
  • Alien was a commercial success upon release in 1979, but one that received mixed reviews. While critics praised the set and creature design, they saw the rest of the film as style over substance, with an empty plot and characters masked by its production values. By the time the Director's Cut came out in 2003, many of those critics had come to recognize it as a masterpiece of sci-fi horror and one of Ridley’s greatest films (and easily his best Alien film). It’s also still usually considered the peak of the franchise decades on for its subtlety and unnerving gothic sexual themes with only the James Cameron-helmed sequel Aliens and Alien: Isolation truly matching the acclaim of Scott’s first film, with the latter game cementing itself heavily in the atmosphere of the 1979 movie rather than the sequels.
  • Blade Runner, while it’s incomprehensible to think nowadays with the mark it has left on Sci-Fi fiction — actually bombed quite badly when it first released in 1982. Audiences at the time were simply nonplussed by the broodingly slow cerebral tone and felt Scott’s visuals and special effects took precedent over the plot and acting (Harrison Ford and his costars did get frustrated over the fact Ridley gave them little input character-wise). This was also coupled with an infamously Troubled Production resulting in seven different cuts of the film. Yet despite all these setbacks and initial poor reception the film still won awards, became a cult classic and absolutely pioneered the Cyberpunk The Future Is Noir genre with some of the most popular Sci-Fi media of all time such as The Terminator, Robocop 1987, Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix, Cowboy Bebop and Cyberpunk 2077 having all taken direct influence from it. Tragically history would repeat itself with the non-Scott directed belated sequel Blade Runner 2049, which was also a box office bomb despite being an exceptional follow-up that Scott himself approved of.
  • Legend (1985) much to Scott’s dismay was yet another bomb after Blade Runner failing utterly to make its $24.5 million budget back, grossing only $23.5 million it was declared “Dead on Arrival” and absolutely savaged by critics and audiences who found it too weird and too Magical Land fanciful especially compared to the Rated M for Manly movies that came out in the mid-1980s. In more modern years, especially with the release of a director's cut in 2002, Legend has faired far more positively with it being considered a prime cult classic and one of Ridley’s most underrated films with the make up work by Rob Bottin, cinematography by Alex Thomson and the cast of Tom Cruise’s Jack, Mia Sara’s Princess Lili and especially Tim Curry’s Big Red Devil Darkness all fantastic. The esoteric elements that were disliked at the time are far more accepted today and loved precisely for them, helped by the fact fantasy films are now even more liked and successful than they were in the 1980s (barring Conan the Barbarian (1982)) due to works like The Lord of the Rings. Legend also has many uncanny similarities to the beloved The Legend of Zelda series to the extent where its influence is clearly felt on later games (Nintendo in general being fans of Ridley Scott, with Metroid homaging the aforementioned Alien).
• For just about his entire career, John Carpenter just couldn't catch a break. Halloween (1978), Christine, and They Live! were the only films of his to receive unambiguously positive receptions from both critics and moviegoers alike at the time of their release. His frequent collaborator Kurt Russell has outright attributed Carpenter's success and now-legendary status to the rise of cable and home video, noting how many of his films initially bombed in their theatrical runs only to be rediscovered.
  • His first film, Dark Star, was the one that set the tone for the rest of his career. At the time, it earned mixed reviews and left no mark on the box office, dismissed as a dumb spoof of 2001. Now, it's remembered as a Cult Classic and a witty sendup of '70s sci-fi, one whose blue-collar Used Future aesthetic served as an important progenitor to co-writer Dan O'Bannon's later film Alien.
  • Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) was made on a very small budget, and had a lukewarm critical reception and unimpressive box office returns. This was no doubt in large part thanks to it being largely a modern-day Western (Carpenter himself has often described it as a Spiritual Adaptation of Rio Bravo), a genre that was in decline with American audiences by 1976 due to oversaturation. However, when shown in Europe, it gained both critical acclaim and box-office success, as European audiences weren't as tired of Westerns. It subsequently underwent a reevaluation in the States once Carpenter hit it big with Halloween (1978), and is now considered to be one of the best action films of The '70s and a true Cult Classic in its own right, such that it was eventually remade in 2005.
  • While the 1980 film The Fog was a commercial hit, it met mixed reviews at the time due to Halloween being a Tough Act to Follow, and Carpenter himself has poor memories of working on it due to reshoots and the low budget he had to work with. It's more fondly remembered nowadays, precisely because of its small scope and lack of visceral horror, and has built a reputation as one of the hidden gems in Carpenter's catalog.
  • Escape from New York made a respectable splash in the cult sense when it was first released in 1981, but wasn't considered a classic by any stretch of the imagination. It has gained much more recognition over the years, mainly due, no doubt, to its influence on other media, with works as diverse as Metal Gear Solid, ReBoot, and The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy being only a few examples.
  • The Thing (1982), competing against Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, was a flop at the box office that made only $13.8 million in the US against a $15 million budget, with most critics dismissing it as nothing but "gore for gore's sake" and a pale shadow of the original 1951 The Thing from Another World, with even the director and star of the original coming out to trash it. As people rediscovered it in The '90s, they started seeing the strength of those practical effects, as well as the horrifying story underneath the gore. Nowadays, it's seen as a rival to Halloween as Carpenter's masterpiece, it regularly appears on lists of the best sci-fi and horror movies ever made, and it has spawned a comic book, a video game, and a prequel. While The Thing from Another World is still fondly remembered today by those who have seen it, Carpenter's version has become a classic case of Adaptation Displacement.
  • The same year as The Thing, Carpenter produced Halloween III: Season of the Witch, an attempt to turn Halloween into an anthology series, with each film having a standalone, self-contained story related to the Halloween holiday. Audiences and critics at the time rejected the film for having nothing to do with the first two films, lacking any returning characters (including iconic villain Michael Myers) or plot elements in favor of a sci-fi/horror story about a toy company using magitek Halloween masks to carry out a mass Human Sacrifice. It was the lowest-grossing film in the series up to that point, and its failure led Carpenter to turn the series over to producer Moustapha Akkad. Starting in the late '90s, however, people who have gone into the film understanding that it has no connection with the rest of the series have reevaluated it, viewing it as a biting satire of American consumerism and manufacturing and arguing that, had it not been called a Halloween film, it might have found its audience much sooner. Indeed, as the franchise saw increasingly poorer returns in recycling the formula of Michael Myers stabbing people, it became common to claim that perhaps the franchise would have been better off going the anthology route. Today, it's something of a Cult Classic.
  • The reception to Starman was lukewarm, barely recouping its budget despite critical acclaim, but over time it has achieved an impressive fandom.
  • Big Trouble in Little China bombed especially bad (an $11.1 million gross versus a $25 million budget). Its campy outrageousness has since become extremely well-loved, especially by those who grew up in The '80s, and its self-aware tone and Deadpan Snarker protagonist have proven especially influential on modern blockbusters, most notably the Marvel Cinematic Universe through films like Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor: Ragnarok. The fact that it was not what mid-'80s American audiences were expecting from a Martial Arts Movie (and in fact predated many Hong Kong supernatural kung fu classics!) may have contributed. As Blowing Up the Movies put it:
    Tsui Hark's Wuxia game-changer Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1982) exists as a reference at this point, along with such early kung fu ghost comedies as Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980, Sammo Hung) and The Dead and the Deadly (1982, Wu Ma). But as the film is being written (...) most of the HK supernatural fu classics have yet to be made. No Mr. Vampire (q.v.), no A Chinese Ghost Story (q.v.), no Swordsman (1990, credited to King Hu). The western fandom for [Hong Kong] films extant in 1986 revolves around Bruce Lee, Shaw Brothers Chop Socky, and real-world martial arts practice. It sure isn't ready for lightning-throwing warriors or ghostly sorcerers. Accordingly, Big Trouble flops on its theatrical release, joining the roster of fan favorites that slowly grows its popularity on home video.
  • Prince of Darkness did well at the box office, but received incredibly negative critical reviews. Leonard Maltin even named it one of the worst movies of that year. It's much more generally acclaimed these days.
  • In the Mouth of Madness is a near-identical case to Prince of Darkness, its Mind Screw plot turning off many critics and causing it to fail at the box office. The opinion now is that it's the last truly great film Carpenter ever made, and one of the best translations of the style and feel of H. P. Lovecraft to the big screen (even if it wasn't based on any one of his stories). Together with the aforementioned The Thing and Prince of Darkness, it's now seen as part of Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy" of films with Cosmic Horror Story themes.
• Charlie Chaplin:
  • A Woman of Paris was a flop due in part to Chaplin's acting absence (apart from a cameo where he's unrecognizable). Audiences at the time didn't know what to make of a slapstick filmmaker embracing something completely serious. What people could only recognize in subsequent decades was that Woman of Paris is a milestone in the shaping of silent cinema, and especially the development of the Chaplin style.
  • Monsieur Verdoux suffered similar misunderstanding. Critics and audiences in America, expecting the light-hearted humor of Chaplin's Tramp films, instead got a bleak and edgy murder-mystery-comedy, so people backed away from it in disgust. The film's anti-war message at the end gained condemnation because some audiences perceived that Chaplin was likening the heroes of World War II to a serial killer, and was later used as "evidence" of him being a Communist sympathizer, which ended his Hollywood career. A European fanbase sprouted a few years later, but Americans never fully embraced Verdoux until The '70s.
• French critics were split about actor Patrick Dewaere (he got invokedsnubbed several times at the César awards). It wasn't until his death that his performances were reevalued and given more unanimous (and overdue) cinephile praise.
• The majority of Carl Theodor Dreyer's works were flops. The Passion of Joan of Arc took several decades to find re-evaluation.
  • It also took decades just to be found. The film was mercilessly chopped down and taken apart by censors just after its premiere, and the original copies were all but destroyed. The director's original cut was thought to be lost for years until a copy was found in a closet in a Norwegian mental institution in 1981. Up until then, only the dissected and significantly shorter censored version was available. Since its rediscovery, the full cut of the film has been very well-received, especially by musicians and composers, who have created a variety of scores for the silent film.
• Sergei Eisenstein:
  • October faced a deadly critical and box-office blow in the Soviet Union when it didn't conform to the Josef Stalin-implemented Socialist Realism program. Its reputation has soared over time, especially with multiple generations of filmmakers who look to Russian cinema for montage techniques.
  • Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible was regarded in its time as Stalinist propaganda and people regarded him as a has-been who hadn't made a movie since The Roaring '20s (two of his productions were aborted while Alexander Nevsky was shelved). The release of the shelved Part II during the Khrushchev Thaw radically changed opinions, and today, both films are considered to be masterpieces and rank alongside The Battleship Potemkin as his best works.
• Buster Keaton:
  • Keaton in general was viewed with apathy at best for the greater part of his career, partly because his comedic style was viewed as overwrought and pretentious, (although the French appreciated it), and partly because his shtick was a lot more ironic and emotionally detached than Chaplin's in an era when hipster irony hadn't quite caught on. He has now been hailed by most critics as more visual and technically innovative than Chaplin (if not necessarily funnier), and quite a few current actors, most famously Johnny Depp, have looked to him for comic inspiration (many of Depp's goony facial expressions as Tonto in The Lone Ranger, for example, being pure Keaton).
  • Sherlock, Jr., considered today to be one of the finest examples of silent slapstick and a landmark satire of the film medium itself, was unappreciated at the time it came out (and perhaps for that very reason).
  • The General was not only a box office failure but widely panned by critics for being too dramatic and for casting Confederates in the place of the film's heroes. It would subsequently be regarded as Keaton's greatest film — ironically, even as Confederate soldiers have become even more unsympathetic in American popular folklore.
• Stanley Kubrick is a master of being vindicated. Nearly all of his films divided audiences into admirers and haters. Only in time have most of his films been reappreciated as classics.
  • The Killing went through its first run ignored by moviegoers, but a handful of critics championed it until it got the recognition it deserved. More humorously, its Halloween-masked bank robbers arguably inspired the "Ex-Presidents" in Point Break (1991) and the rubber-faced clowns in the opening scene of The Dark Knight.
  • Paths of Glory, another early Kubrick classic that is considered one of the most poignant stories of war ever told, failed on its first release. It was banned in France until 1970 for its criticism of the French army.
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey was not immediately successful, garnering brutally negative responses from critics and total dismissal from older adults (which was initially the majority of those who saw it). However, over the course of '68 and '69, positive word of mouth spread among younger people, who kept flocking to see it whenever it popped up in a theater. This way, it gradually picked up its status as the science fiction film of the century, and managed to become the second-highest-grossing film of 1968.
    • A further vindication: the original 2001 story had Discovery going to Saturn, and finding the Monolith near its moon Iapetus (or Japetus in the Queen's English). Production issues associated with recreating Saturn for the screen led Kubrick to change the setting to Jupiter, with the Monolith near Europa instead. The Voyager probes in the late-1970s would find Europa to be infinitely more interesting with its possible subsurface ocean of liquid water, ultimately making Europa even more likely than Mars to host extraterrestrial life. 2010 and further novels would take the idea and run with it. As for Iapetus... Cassini discovered it to be little more than a flying walnut, though sister moon Enceladus could possibly have subsurface water as well.
  • A Clockwork Orange was relatively successful, but so controversial that it left audiences and critics bitterly divided. Many serious reviews from that time dismiss it as glorifying sex and violence. The copycat crimes inspired by this film didn't help matters very well, either, to the point that Kubrick himself had the film pulled from British theaters (it was banned in the UK until 1999). Today, it is generally appreciated as a high-quality film and the definitive adaptation of the novel.
  • Barry Lyndon bombed critically as well as financially, but over the next few decades exerted enormous influence over a newer set of high-profile directors, like Quentin Tarantino.
  • The Shining also divided many moviegoers. Most horror fans felt it was a long anti-climatic buildup and Stephen King fans (and King himself, for whom this is still a Disowned Adaptation) thought it had a very different tone compared to the novel it was based on. It actually got Kubrick nominated for Worst Director at the first-ever Razzie Awards. Shocking to imagine today.
  • Full Metal Jacket also divided audiences, because the second half of the movie seemed not as strong as the first half.
• Akira Kurosawa, up until his death, was far more popular and acclaimed in the West than in Japan and was even accused by Japanese film critics of being "too Western". When Dodes'ka-den bombed in 1970, most of his small amount of Japanese popularity and acclaim vanished completely, and he was considered to be a hack whose Western acclaim was dismissed by Japanese critics as mere exotica and overrating by their American counterparts. After his death, his Japanese reputation increased dramatically.
  • Rashomon was panned and dismissed as junk in Japan on its release in 1950, and was even dismissed there when it won the esteemed Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival and single-handedly raised international interest in Japanese cinema. Shortly afterwards, it was embraced by American audiences, and the resulting popularity of samurai flicks in the West convinced Kurosawa to make more movies in that genre, leading to Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. Rashomon remained a dud in Japan for a while, but gradually built up its well-deserved reputation as a really good film.
  • The Idiot and I Live In Fear have been vindicated to a lesser extent.
  • Throne of Blood and The Lower Depths were met with mixed critical and public opinion, primarily their departure from the acclaimed Seven Samurai into a more pessimistic tone. The former was also widely criticized around the world for the liberties it took with Macbeth, which it was adapted from. Subsequent generations of viewers have become more appreciative of the artistry in those two works, and over half a century after its release, Throne of Blood in particular is considered one of the greatest film versions of Macbeth ever made.
  • Ran wasn't a success (nor was it a flop) when it was released in the US in 1985, doing modestly at the box office (if not slightly above average for a foreign film) and winning only a handful of awards, despite near-universal critical acclaim. Its response in Japan, however — like most of Kurosawa's post Red Beard efforts — was mostly disinterest; the Japanese film board actively sabotaged its chances of being nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar. Nowadays, it's widely considered among Kurosawa's masterpieces and among the best movies of all time.
• Fritz Lang:
  • His German films — Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, Die Nibelungen, The Woman in the Moon — were far more commercially successful and critically acclaimed than the film he is best known for: Metropolis. It had the most advanced special effects of any film from the silent era and nearly bankrupted the UFA Studio. For a long time, the film was regarded, even by Lang, as a fiasco, until later films like A New Hope and Blade Runner took inspiration from it and led to its reevaluation as the first science fiction masterpiece. Even critics who disliked the film came around upon the rediscovery in 2008 of a 95%-ish complete print.
  • Lang's second sound film The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was banned by the Nazis and internationally released in heavily-edited, dubbed versions. The uncut German version was eventually found in the mid-'70s, becoming one of his best-regarded movies.
  • Fritz Lang's American films were written off by nationalist critics, since they were smaller in scale, more subject to censorship, and on the surface, less artistic than the silent German mega-productions. Thanks to the French New Wave however, Lang's American films like Fury, You Only Live Once, Scarlet Street, The Big Heat, While the City Sleeps, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt are now considered to be classics. His collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, Hangmen Also Die!, is also regarded as one of the most unusual anti-Nazi propaganda films, and it inspired Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.
• David Lean:
  • Blithe Spirit, regarded today as a masterful adaptation of the Noël Coward play, flopped in both the UK and America and would not find an audience for several decades.
  • Ryan's Daughter, upon arriving in theaters, failed to live up to the expectations set by Lean's previous two works (Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago). It has since risen in stature.
• Val Lewton's horror films with Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise, and Mark Robson, Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, and The Seventh Victim, are now considered classics of horror cinema. Back then, they were seen as cheap and forgettable, if unusually stylish.
• Sergio Leone:
  • The "Man With No Name" Spaghetti Westerns were popular with audiences, but critics didn't take them seriously because... Spaghetti Westerns are automatically cheap B-movies. Read Roger Ebert's review of For a Few Dollars More (1967): he gives it a positive rating but treated it more like a Guilty Pleasure than a genuine work of art. Ebert himself lampshades this in his Great Movies review of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
  • Leone's operatic western Once Upon a Time in the West was not received very well upon release in 1968. In fairness, the American release was heavily edited (from 168 minutes to 144), jettisoning several important scenes and subplots. These days, you would be hard-pressed to find a notable director who does not claim to have been influenced by it in some way, and it frequently appears on Greatest Films lists.
  • The most overlooked post-1964 film by Leone is undoubtedly Duck, You Sucker!, which went virtually unnoticed upon its release. Now, it has gained critical and audience recognition and was shown at Cannes in 2009.
  • Once Upon a Time in America, Leone's 1984 companion piece to Once Upon a Time in the West, failed miserably (a $5.3 million gross versus a $20 million budget). Its release was horribly botched; while its premiere at Cannes met the sort of rave reviews one might expect given its present stature, its US release saw the film's run-time cut down from 229 minutes to 139, and scenes were rearranged in chronological order. Critics who knew about the longer Cannes cut attacked the recut, critics who didn't thought that the movie was an incomprehensible mess, and audiences stayed away. The film's reputation was saved when the studio released the original cut, and it is now acclaimed as one of the greatest crime dramas ever made. An anecdote told by James Woods is that one critic who proclaimed the recut to be the worst film of 1984 went back and proclaimed the original cut to be the best film of the entire decade upon seeing it. Currently, the recut is commercially unavailable.
• David Lynch:
  • Dune (1984) cost $40 million and made $29.8 million in theaters. It's considerably more popular nowadays, mainly thanks to the internet.
  • Blue Velvet didn't turn much of a profit at all ($8.6 million gross versus $6 million budget), but was well-liked by most critics who stuck by it, and soon it was re-evaluated by the general public as among the very best pictures of The '80s.
  • Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me was reviled when it first came out. The premiere of the film at Cannes was greeted by boos and jeers, and Lynch was kicked all over town by American reviewers, who accused him of betraying fans of the series. Moreover, by that point, there was significant backlash against Twin Peaks as a whole, which was widely perceived as having run out of steam. European reviews of the film were more favorable, however, and the film was a smash hit in Japanese cinemas. Over time, the film has undergone a significant critical reevaluation, to the point that it is now considered one of Lynch's better films.
• Leo McCarey:
  • The Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup was considered a box-office disappointment when it was released in 1933, and helped in finalizing the end of their contract with Paramount. Horse Feathers (1932) had been quite profitable for Paramount, but Duck Soup failed to match its box office success and was negatively compared with a more popular Paramount-produced comedy film, Mae West's I'm No Angel (1933). Today, it is their most popular film and considered one of the greatest comedies in the history of cinema.
  • Make Way for Tomorrow was a flop with audiences when first released due to its dramatic themes and Great Depression-inspired premise. Nowadays, it is considered one of the best films of the 1930s and the only film to have been screened at the Telluride Film Festival three times (due to audience demand). Leo McCarey himself even felt it was his masterpiece.
• F. W. Murnau was regarded as a genius and great filmmaker even by his contemporaries, but his films weren't always commercially successful. Still, he was invited to America, where he made three films that are now regarded as landmarks — Sunrise, City Girl, and Tabu — but which were unable to recoup their cost in their day. They were also dismissed by nationalist critics who felt he was a Sell-Out for going to Hollywood. Tabu was cited by later filmmakers for being especially modern for its criticism of colonialism, use of non-professional Polynesian actors, and avoidance of general stereotypes.
• The films of Harold Ramis:
  • Caddyshack was a moderate box office success, but received negative reviews and was overshadowed by other comedies at the time like Airplane! and The Blues Brothers. Today it's usually ranked as one of the top comedy films of all time, and it's hard to find anyone older than 30 who hasn't seen it.
  • Groundhog Day ranked #13 in box office in 1993. The critics liked it, but didn't love it. Since then, it has been listed among the 30 best screenplays ever, the 10 best comedies ever made, and among the 10 best films ever made. Roger Ebert included it in his Great Movies collection, very rare for a comedy, and rarer for a film he only gave 3 out of 4 stars in his original review. One critic observed that "'Groundhog' would never be selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress" — it was later selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2006.
• Nicholas Ray only had Rebel Without a Cause (known more for James Dean than for him) among his commercially successful films. Yet he became a major cult director for filmmakers of the French New Wave, the German New Wave, the New Hollywood, and for later independent filmmakers, especially former student Jim Jarmusch.
  • His Film Noir In a Lonely Place is considered a classic, as is They Live by Night and On Dangerous Ground. Johnny Guitar was criticized in its time for being too unusual, for having women as leads, and for being violent. Today it is liked, precisely for those things, and for its anti-McCarthy satire.
  • Bigger Than Life, a commercial disaster that stained Ray's reputation following the success of his previous film Rebel Without a Cause, has become one of the most artistically praised films of The '50s, and has been given the Blu-ray treatment by The Criterion Collection.
• Nicolas Roeg:
  • Walkabout flopped in 1971 and critics were mainly unresponsive, but it gradually rose in stature. It is now considered to be one of the films that kicked off the Australian New Wave.
  • The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) was vindicated partially because cable and video releases were of the original 136-minute British cut rather than the U.S. theatrical release which cut and reordered scenes (this was partially Bowdlerisation). It not only made it into The Criterion Collection (as has Walkabout) but was one of its first four Blu-Ray releases.
• After Taxi Driver, the legendary Martin Scorsese made the disastrous New York, New York, and a losing streak started for him in The '80s as the "New Hollywood" crumbled down on him and other major '70s filmmakers.
  • The first in the losing streak was Raging Bull in 1980. Although it was Robert De Niro's way of saving Scorsese's life (Scorsese was depressed and doing heavy drugs after New York, New York), and it was successful in that regard, Bull just barely reached the modest-hit mark in its first run, dismissed by most moviegoers as being too gratuitously violent, and most critics latched onto the tiniest inaccuracies of the film on its subject matter which they believed spoiled the whole thing. Ten years later, it was hailed by every film poll as Scorsese's masterpiece and the ultimate example of '80s Hollywood cinema.
  • Then came The King of Comedy and After Hours, which tanked commercially and critically but have since gone on to be hailed as comedy classics.
• In The '50s, Douglas Sirk's melodramas with Rock Hudson were commercially successful, but seen as fairly disposable. Today, they are regarded as deconstructions of a lot of what the '50s stood for (during the actual '50s, at that) with plenty of Stylistic Suck and Stealth Parody, cited by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Todd Haynes, and Quentin Tarantino as masterpieces.
• This has a tendency to happen to Zack Snyder.
  • Snyder's adaptation of Watchmen bombed theatrically when it came out in 2009 and received a very polarized reaction from audiences and critics. Fans of the source material were unhappy with the creative liberties taken, especially in regard to the ending. Conversely, general audiences were turned off by the fidelity to the comic and were disappointed in how the film wasn't as action-packed as promised by the trailers. However, it earned a reappraisal in later years following the release of a director's cut that added more action and character drama. It helps that the movie's murder-mystery plot and noir style made it stand out from the more bombastic superhero films that came out before and after it. Subsequently, the movie gained a significant cult following, with many coming to respect Snyder for his audacity in adapting "the unfilmable comic" and his willingness to push the bounds of the genre. Attack on Titan mangaka Hajime Isayama has cited Snyder's adaptation as a major influence, with Levi and Erwin being expies of Rorschach and Ozymandias. Likewise, Doctor Strange (2016) director Scott Derrickson calls it his favorite comic book movie and the "Blade Runner of superhero movies".
  • Sucker Punch got a lot of negative reviews from critics and audiences alike accusing it of being a "style over substance" movie, as well as having sexist undertones, and the film was an outright flop. However, over the years, re-evaluations of the movie from a feminist lens, especially following the rise of the #MeToo movement exposing decades of sexual abuse going on in Hollywood, have led to a renewed appreciation for it, with some critics hailing it as a misunderstood yet ambitious Feminist Fantasy that was ahead of its time in terms of its depictions of the abuse women face and the ways they combat against it.
  • After premiering to a polarized reception, attitudes towards Man of Steel have softened considerably over the years for its willingness to take liberties with the source material, portrayal of the main character, Worldbuilding, action scenes, visual effects and relatively self-contained story. With the release of Zack Snyder's Justice League, people are willing to acknowledge that these two movies, along with the Ultimate Edition of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, make up a believable trilogy that portrays Superman's journey from Classical Anti-Hero to The Cape he is traditionally known as.
  • Even Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, while still without its criticisms, is also agreed as working better alongside Man of Steel and Zack Snyder's Justice League as a trilogy, allowing both Batman and Superman a proper arc that pays off well and allowing the bleak atmosphere to be more fitting for viewers as it is building up to a lighter conclusion.
• Preston Sturges's work was known for its decidedly offbeat humor. Sometimes his style was a hit, and sometimes it just wasn't.
  • Sullivan's Travels was a commercial failure in its first run, gradually picking up its comedy-classic status in later releases.
  • Unfaithfully Yours was a box office disappointment when it came out, but grew on people willing to accept the Black Comedy genre.
• The Three Stooges made hundreds of 18-minute comedies for Columbia Pictures from the mid-'30s to the early '50s. They weren't very popular back then, even in comparison to other comedians in the short subject field. Nowadays they remain extremely popular with countless generations.
  • One short film in particular, Punch Drunks (1934), failed to click with the sensibilities of The Great Depression moviegoers. It is now one of the more critically acclaimed Stooge episodes. As of 2021, it's still the only one of their films selected for preservation by the National Film Registry.
• Erich von Stroheim was seen in his day as Prima Donna Director par excellence who made impossible films. Today he's considered to be one of the most radical and experimental film-makers of The Roaring '20s for his ability to push and tackle the complex subject matter and realistic drama in the silent film medium, cited as an inspiration by Jean Renoir, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, and many, many others. Greed was famously butchered (this is understandable since Stroheim planned for the film to be a two-part film of 3 hours each, after cutting down from his rough cut of 7 hours and 42 minutes). By the time Greed reached cinemas, it was in a sorry, hacked-apart state. Critics and the public have since embraced the elements of the film that survived.
• Orson Welles's career is constantly subject to widely changing opinions and revision:
  • Welles made Citizen Kane at the age of 25, and he was seen, and widely resented, as an Enfant Terrible upstart who was being pampered by RKO Pictures rather than a genius. The controversies of his notorious The War of the Worlds (1938) broadcast and his theatrical productions had already made him infamous. Kane became notorious because media mogul William Randolph Hearst was tipped that Charles Foster Kane was based on him in an unfavorable light, and did his best to suppress the film. Hearst ensured that the film would be poorly publicized upon its release: no newspaper or radio station under the jurisdiction of his empire was allowed to print an ad for Kane, and movie critics for those papers and stations, if they wrote a review at all, were pressured into writing a negative one. Theatres refused to run it, and it only played on a tiny number of screens. Kane lost money in its initial 1941 opening, and was even booed at the Academy Awards. It was well-received critically, at least by the few who had seen it, and it was nominated for multiple Academy Awards, with Welles and Herman Mankiewicz winning Oscars for the Screenplay. But it was only in The '40s and The '50s, mainly in France (where it played at the Cinematheque), that it came to be seen as the Greatest Film Ever Made. For instance, the first Sight and Sound didn't include Citizen Kane on its list. Kane would go on to top the decennial list every decade onwards from The '60s to The '90s.
  • A test screening of The Magnificent Ambersons, based on the novel by Booth Tarkington, was met with complete ridicule. RKO then proceeded (without Orson's approval) to change the ending, which did nothing for its appeal to American audiences in The Fortiess. Nowadays, while it might not be as fantastically unforgettable as Citizen Kane, it is very highly regarded and still considered a masterpiece.
  • The same applies for nearly all of Welles' films. His William Shakespeare adaptations were criticized for their American Accents, their unusual staging, and their changes to Shakespeare's plays, but today, the film are praised for this very reason. His Film Noir, The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil, are also considered masterpieces, while The Trial and F for Fake were forgotten or criticized but are now regarded as masterpieces. Welles was essentially well ahead of his time, and it took a while for audiences to catch up to him.
• Quentin Tarantino:
  • Reservoir Dogs barely made back its cost due to limited advertising, limited exhibition, and the fact that Tarantino's brutal style caught most people who saw it off-guard. Only after the enormous success of Pulp Fiction did audiences manage to truly embrace Reservoir, which (along with sex, lies, and videotape and El Mariachi) became the fuel that ignited independent cinema in America.
  • Jackie Brown got positive press when first released, but it could not shake criticism of it not being enough like Pulp Fiction. More recent years have been kinder to the film, with people even starting to consider it to be Tarantino's best film.
  • Grindhouse, a package feature he co-directed with Robert Rodriguez, gained its big cult following after horrible box office and mixed to negative reviews.
• Three of Terry Gilliam's failures are currently among his more famous creations:
  • Brazil: Critically acclaimed (its screenplay was nominated for an Oscar) but its release was largely overshadowed by a very public battle between Terry Gilliam and Universal head Sid Sheinberg over final cut, and wasn't a financial success in the U.S. Thanks in part to multiple releases by The Criterion Collection, its reputation has skyrocketed.
  • The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was barely released in the U.S. due to studio politics and became known as one of the biggest bombs in film history. It hasn't quite achieved classic status, but it's getting there and many look to it as the last of Gilliam's great fantasy films.
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: It opened against Godzilla in 1998 and bombed horribly. Now you can't go into a college book shop without seeing its poster on every corner.
• Rob Reiner:
  • This is Spın̈al Tap, upon initial theatrical release in 1984, lacked an audience aside from hardcore Heavy Metal fans, and its final box office numbers were very weak. Thanks to critical acclaim, however, the film proved extremely popular on VHS and cable, and single-handedly launched the mockumentary as a palatable genre.
  • The Princess Bride was a modest success when it was first released, but not enough to immediately ensure it wouldn't fade into obscurity. It was time, word-of-mouth, and the VHS release that boosted the film's popularity.
• Mike Judge
  • Office Space was poorly marketed, and barely broke even at $10.8 million. Now it's the champion of all workplace comedies, and among the most quoted films ever.
  • Idiocracy made around $495,000 in theaters against a $25 million budget, mostly because of the limited number of theaters it played at and barely any advertising. It became a smash hit on DVD.

Franchises

• Godzilla series:
  • The original Godzilla, while commercially successful, was criticized as being tastelessly exploitative of recent memories of World War II and the accidental irradiation of a Japanese fishing boat that same year due to the testing of the world's first hydrogen bomb. Some Japanese critics also felt it took itself too seriously, given how absurd the subject matter is. It is now considered to be one of the greatest Japanese movies ever made and one of the crown jewels of Toho's library. A 1984 issue of Kinema Junpo magazine listed it as one of the top twenty Japanese films created, while 370 Japanese film critics surveyed listed it as the 27th greatest Japanese film in Nihon Eiga Besuto 159 (Best 150 Japanese Films). When American critics got to view the original version of the film in 2004 (most for the first time), they raved about it.
  • The Godzilla films of the 1970s saw little critical attention and decreasing box office returns in their day, due to being relegated to children's film festivals and produced on shoestring budgets. Nowadays, though they aren't necessarily regarded as masterpieces, they have a strong following due to their wild creativity and resourcefulness. In 2019 they all became a part of the Criterion Collection alongside more acclaimed installments like the original, with accompanying essays explaining each film's context and values.
  • The Return of Godzilla, the 1984 film that revived the franchise and returned to a serious tone after a decade-long hiatus, was a modest box office success in Japan but fell short of Toho's expectations. In America on the other hand, it was an outright bomb, both critically and financially. After five years of trying to engineer a sequel that would set the box office on fire, Toho released Godzilla vs. Biollante, which outright flopped domestically, and went straight to video in the U.S. They finally hit it big with Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah two years later, and the subsequent films of the 1990s stuck to the more light-hearted, family-friendly style of that film rather than the more cerebral, gothic style of Return and Biollante. Of course, nowadays, the two '80s films are highly regarded as some of the best films of the entire franchise specifically for their more serious tone, while the '90s films are divisive, particularly in the west.
• Spider-Man:
  • 2007's Spider-Man 3. While still highly polarizing, it has been treated with more leniency after The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was released to even worse reviews and became a Franchise Killer for the already-contested reboot series. It received further vindication in 2017 with the Editor's Cut release, which is widely considered to be superior to the original version of the movie.
    • In general Tobey Maguire's take on Peter Parker/Spider-Man has become this. At the time (and even to this day), he got criticisms for being too angsty and awkward for the character and unlike the comics, didn’t do much quipping and joking even as Spider-Man. Over the years, people have come around to Maguire's Spidey, acknowledging the Narm Charm and praising his intense physical transformation into a hero which was rare for non-body building actors at the time. Nowadays, he's often considered the definitive live action Spider-Man by the people who grew up with the Raimi movies (also helped by being a Memetic Badass online) and fans were overjoyed to learn he, along with Andrew Garfield, would join Tom Holland's Spidey in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
  • The Amazing Spider-Man films themselves have undergone this (namely the first one). Due to the Raimi films being a Tough Act to Follow many people dismissed and disliked the reboot for its Darker and Edgier changes particularly in how Andrew Garfield’s Peter was more a jerkass as well as repeating most of the same story beats as the beloved 2002 film. This attitude towards the reboot didn’t improve when the sequel introduced half a dozen subplots and repeated Spider-Man 3’s mistake of introducing three villains at once. In the years since however fans have began to acknowledge the unambiguous positives of the Garfield films such as Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy who was more likeable than Raimi’s Mary Jane who was a Damsel Scrappy and moreover how Andrew Garfield’s Peter is in many ways Truer to the Text to how Spidey was and is in the comics, this sentiment was only reinforced in his return in Spider-Man: No Way Home where his version of Spidey got immense praise especially by his predecessor Tobey Maguire and successor Tom Holland. No Way Home also helped be a Fully Absorbed Finale for the Webbverse giving its villains Lizard and Electro happy resolutions and royally redeeming Garfield’s Spidey after he failed to save Gwen in the second film.
• Indiana Jones:
  • Although Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom actually did quite well at the box office, the critical reception was far from ideal with audiences disliking the Darker and Edgier tone (both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were going through break ups and it shows) and many people fairly criticised the inaccurate and stereotypically racist depictions of India and Hinduism and the sidekicks Willie in particular were disliked. For the longest time Temple of Doom was considered the low point of the 80s trilogy between the beloved Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade. Since the divisive reception to the fourth movie Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and later fifth movie Dial of Destiny however, Temple of Doom has been greatly reaccessed with fans acknowledging Temple’s many strengths, particularly its memorable action set pieces such as the opening club fight, the mine cart chase and bridge cutting climax. Not to mention the film’s heart-tearing villain Mola Ram played by the late Amrish Puri, whom is agreed among Indy fans to be the most memorable antagonist of the 80s trilogy, compared to the more stuffy Beloq and Donavon. Then there’s Short Round played by Ke Huy Quan, who plenty of fans found annoying at the time but who now most consider the heart of the movie, to the extent some see him as the “true son of Indy”, rather than his actual son Mutt. With Ke Huy Quan nabbing an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once a lot of fans wish he had returned as Short Round in the following movies, especially Dial of Destiny.
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was reviled by many for its deviation from the classic Indiana Jones trilogy, with its introduction of aliens and the infamous "Nuke the Fridge" scene singled out as being especially egregious. Over time however, the film has seen its reception improve substantially. This is due in part to the higher understanding of the film's stylistic choices as homage to classic '50s Sci-Fi genre films. Such elements, once seen as disrespectful to the original trilogy, are now understood as being intentional especially since Temple of Doom was also deviating from the other movies in terms of tone, plot and claustrophobic location. Complaints about the overuse of CGI have also been nullified as this is a common practice in modern day films pointing out the hypocrisy. People have also begun to appreciate the elements of the film that were positive in the first place, such as the reunion of the cast and crew of the original trilogy, notably Marion as well as Indy's growth and development with his newfound family. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has truly become better received with times and is now seen by many as an entertaining entry in the franchise. The divisive nature of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny certainly helps making people appreciate this movie for ending on a happier note.
• James Bond:
  • On Her Majesty's Secret Service although it was successful during its era was incredibly disliked for swapping out the beloved Sean Connery for the Australian George Lazenby which lead to Connery coming back for a final outing in Diamonds Are Forever. For decades On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was usually never particularly high on fans’ lists of favourite Bond films. However after the declining quality of the Roger Moore and later Pierce Brosnan films, more fans have accepted that Lazenby’s film is pretty underrated and actually delved into humanising Bond and exploring the idea of him losing a woman he genuinely loves long before the adored Casino Royale (2006) did. Additionally having Bond be married is a concept that No Time to Die would return to.
  • Licence to Kill was initially another disappointment of the blockbuster-heavy summer of 1989, further hurt by comparisons to the James Bond films that had preceded it. This, combined with legal issues over the franchise, ensured that another Bond film would not be made for 6 years, and that Timothy Dalton would not return to the lead role. Licence to Kill has since been re-evaluated by a number of Bond fans, who prefer its unique atmosphere. Whether it's one of the better films of the franchise or a misfire is still hotly debated, but at least the hate is far from universal.
  • Timothy Dalton's overall taciturn, violent portrayal of Bond is now considered to be almost prophetic, as it anticipated Daniel Craig's rendition of the character by nearly twenty years. At the time, most viewers had grown comfortable with Roger Moore's lighthearted Bond.
  • Tomorrow Never Dies: When it was released, the film was largely seen as GoldenEye's smaller sibling, often overlooked in discussions of Pierce Brosnan's run as Bond, and the Big Bad being a media mogul was seen as silly. But thanks to Values Resonance, people have begun liking the film more, as evil media baron Carver now looks more like a satire than a parody.
  • With the exception of Denise Richards' casting, the reception of The World Is Not Enough has warmed up "nowadays". It's also fondly remembered by people who miss the Brosnan era, and regret that it ended with the inferior Die Another Day. It probably helps that the highly-acclaimed Skyfall recycled a lot of ideas from TWINE (as seen in this post), so there's a greater acknowledgement that the latter had the potential to be a great Bond movie, but it got hampered for some people by some of its campier elements and a few questionable casting choices.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The Incredible Hulk (2008), despite coming after the success of Iron Man, is regarded as part of the cinematic universe's Early Instalment Weirdness due to the franchise just finding its feet and the film is generally looked down upon or ignored entirely ^note  Ang Lee's very disliked Hulk still being fresh in everyone's memory didn't help either. Nowadays, fans have reassessed the film and praised it, with some even preferring Edward Norton’s take on Bruce Banner rather than Mark Ruffalo’s. Fans were delighted to have William Hurt’s Thaddeus Ross back in Captain America: Civil War. There was much excitement upon the announcement that Tim Roth’s Abomination would be returning in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and the She-Hulk Disney+ series, as he was considered one of the best parts of the film.
  • Iron Man 2 was considered a pretty weak sequel compared the first film as well as inferior to other sequels in the MCU. However, later films helped to redeem it, such as the "My Greatest Creation" scene with Howard Stark playing a big role in Tony Stark's character arc, especially in later movies like Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Endgame and the introduction and One-Woman Army moment of Black Widow is still highly regarded, especially with her solo movie being released.
  • Thor: The Dark World, which like Age of Ultron, was (and still generally is) largely considered to be one of the franchise's weaker films. However, it got rescued by Avengers: Endgame thanks to the movie's Time Travel plot wherein Thor gets some proper closure with his mother Frigga before she dies. The Loki (2021) series also highlights on Frigga’s death from The Dark World and what it means to a time-displaced Loki who hadn’t experienced Character Development yet.
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron has gotten this thanks to later entries in the MCU (namely Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame and WandaVision), which had several big pay-offs to story elements that were set up in AoU, and character-specific moments that would influence the conclusion of their respective arcs, particularly for Wanda, her growing powers, and the future relationship between her and Vision.
  • Doctor Strange wasn't considered bad by any means during its initial release, but the general consensus was that while it did include some breathtaking special effects, it was a mediocre story with a forgettable villain. After the extremely divisive reception of film's sequel however, many have looked back on this film in a much more favorable light. With a lot viewers appreciating this film's more quiet and introspective tone, especially in the first half and the script being a lot tighter and more focused. Some now even consider it to be one of the best MCU origin stories.
• The Fast and the Furious:
  • 2 Fast 2 Furious got slammed with poor reviews when it released in 2003 with many decrying the lack of Vin Diesel and the more comical tone compared to the sleek and edgy first film to the point where a lot of people treated it like a direct-to-DVD sequel. Nowadays with the Fast saga getting more and more ego-driven, many now view the second film as refreshing precisely because it’s less straight-faced thanks to Tyrese Gibson’s Roman being plenty of fun and it gives Brian room to breath as a character without being joined at the hip to Dom — something even more appreciated after Paul Walker’s death. The second film also wasn’t afraid to depict its heroes as vulnerable and responding realistically to crashing their car into a boat whereas later films (due to actors’ contracts) has the cast be invincible heroes who just shrug off numerous crashes without so much as a scratch.
  • The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was very disliked when it released and considered the odd duck of the franchise, due to lacking none of the cast of the previous films (barring Dom briefly in The Stinger) and its protagonist Sean was considered unlikeable and unappealing. The film’s reputation was probably not helped by it inadvertently sparking off the Kudzu Plot due to being a retroactive sequel to the sixth film which was of course not the intention when it was being created. Nowadays however with the FF films getting diminishing returns, Tokyo Drift has gotten more love with people genuinely appreciating the fact it explored street racing in cool ways by being set in Japan — unlike future films where the street racing angle is largely abandoned in favour of being bombastic action films where the cast are all secret agents. The film also introduced Ensemble Dark Horse Han, the character even detractors of the franchise like (though his “death” in film caused the aforementioned Kudzu Plot when they wanted to have him back for the fourth movie). Even Christopher Nolan revealed Tokyo Drift is his favorite film of the series.
• Star Wars:
  • Although it remains divisive among fans and critics as a whole, the prequel trilogy has come to be seen in a better light for several reasons:
    • The release of Revenge of the Sith vindicated the other two films in a sense because it was a resolution of the story arc to which the other films was building. For some viewers, it was quite satisfying to finally see a resolution to questions that the prior two films had left unanswered.
    • It also helps that many who watched the prequels as children grew up. Many of the people who disliked the prequels saw the original trilogy first when they were kids and thought the prequels compared unfavorably, whereas those who grew up during the prequel era had to wait until they were old enough to articulate their defense of the films. In many cases, they were able to point out cases where criticism of the prequels was misplaced or equally applicable to the original trilogy.
    • Supplemental material like The Clone Wars helped rehabilitated the Prequel era by providing necessary worldbuilding, character development and overall story garnishment that would have been difficult for the films proper to include. This continued well after the Disney acquisition; indeed, when Hayden Christensen reprised his role as Anakin in Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ahsoka the response was immensely positive and led fans to reconsider his performance in the prequels, widely derided at the time, in a more positive light (or at least blame it on poor writing and direction rather than his acting).
    • And bizarrely, there is a certain ironic delight at watching the films. Following the divisive fan and critical reception to the Sequel Trilogy, there was a newfound appreciation for the prequels, and in some sense the "ironic" appreciation of them led to a more genuine fandom. Nowhere is this more evident in the "Prequel Memes" subreddit, which started out ironically quoting the prequels but became a gathering place for genuine fans where they could join forces to state their case.
• Batman:
  • Actor example with Michael Keaton as Batman. When he was first announced to play the Dark Knight for Batman (1989) the fan response left much to be desired with Warner Brothers getting 50,000 protest letters over the casting and even Batman co-creator Bob Kane questioned the choice. This all ironic considering nowadays countless fans cite Keaton as their favourite Batman in the wake of his films (if anything one of biggest criticisms of Batman Returns is that it didn’t use him enough compared to the villains) and many of the actors who have played Batman since such as Christian Bale hold Michael Keaton’s portrayal to the highest respect. This was only reaffirmed when he finally and effortlessly returned to the role in The Flash (2023) and was considered one of, if not the best thing about the film.
  • Batman Forever was a success but a multitude of fans bemoaned the change from Burton’s gothicness to a lighter wackier tone mandated by Warner Brothers with Jim Carry’s Riddler and Tommy Lee Jones’s Two-Face being far more over-the-top goofy compared to Nicholson’s Joker and DeVito’s Penguin. However with its follow up Batman & Robin being a Franchise Killer and there being more polarising DC films in the decades since more people are willingly to acknowledge Forever isn’t actually that bad and did have a lot of positives with the action being decent, Val Kilmer having a more accurate Bruce Wayne and the film actually bringing Robin to the screen and making him cool — unlike later Batman films which didn’t have the courage to actually use his character at all. Not to mention the portrayals of Two-Face and Riddler are less marginalised with the benefit of more serious live action depictions in The Dark Knight and The Batman (2022) respectively.
  • The Dark Knight Rises, despite being critically acclaimed and being one of the highest grossing Batman films, was considered a step down compared to its seminal predecessor The Dark Knight and is generally considered the weakest film of Nolan’s trilogy. Since then however with Batman getting a more polarising portrayal in the DCEU and quite a few DC box office bombs coming out, fans are far more charitable to Rises and acknowledge its positives such as Bane being Truer to the Text in terms of being a Genius Bruiser who breaks Batman’s spine and Catwoman is considered much more likeable than the previous love interest Rachel Dawes.
• Predator:
  • 1987's Predator, upon its initial release, received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics for its perceived shallowness and paper-thin plot. Later, its groundbreaking special effects, iconic antagonist, well-filmed action, and built tension, in addition to its very subtle Genre Deconstruction, have led to it being reappraised as a sci-fi action classic, nowadays often appearing on many "Best Of" lists.
  • The second film has also gone through this. When it was first released, it was widely regarded as a big step down from the first film and got mixed reviews at best (replacing Arnie with “I’m too old for this shit” Danny Glover was a very sore point for audiences at the time). As time went on and far more divisive entries came out, people began to revise their opinions about 2. It's now generally considered a pretty good follow-up that's just not as instantly memorable as the first movie, and it's often praised for trying to do something different instead of copying its predecessor. Also helped by the fact it completes the “Killed by a Terminator, Alien and Predator” trifecta for Bill Paxton and contains Rewatch Bonus lore elements, which the acclaimed prequel Prey (2022) fleshes out.
  • Predators was sadly only a “moderate” success when it initially released in 2010 coming behind both Despicable Me and Twilight: Eclipse on its opening weekend. It also largely got mixed to average reviews with an audience score of 52% and other reviews from Metacritic and CinemaScore giving the film average “C+” reviews, citing the characters as flat. Probably not helped by the fact both Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem were still very fresh in moviegoers’ memories and 2010 being a big year for blockbusters. Since then however aided by the poor reception to The Predator, Predators has steadily gotten more and more acclaim with people acknowledging it’s actually a pretty damn excellent and underrated action film with a unique concept and good twists as well as having a very off-kilter performance from The Pianist's Adrien Brody. It’s now generally considered easily the best follow up to the 1987 film, rivalled only by Prey (2022).
  • Downplayed with Alien vs. Predator it’s still considered a step down in quality compared to the films wherein its eponymous killer extraterrestrials spawned and worse still killed off plans for a Alien sequel created by both Ridley Scott and James Cameron (with the former disowning the crossover). While the box office wasn’t too bad it still got mauled by critics as well as fans of the original Predator and Alien films who found that the PG rating was a disservice to the horror and gore that was iconic to both monsters as well as a more forgettable cast (barring Bishop Weyland). Since then however a portion of fans have revalued the film and acknowledged its strengths, particularly the action and practical effects and Lance Henriksen’s reprisal as Weyland elevating the story (and completing the trifecta of him getting taken out by a Terminator, Alien and Predator similar to Bill Paxton). The film was also liked more like than its Darker and Edgier sequel Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem which was gorier but had even less likeable characters and it would get further vindication when Prometheus directed by Scott would use an extremely similar storyline complete with Bishop Weyland (played by a different actor) forming a For Science! expedition.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • Minor example but X-Men: The Last Stand was understandably reviled back in the day for its poor treatment of major characters and unnecessarily mashing The Dark Phoenix Saga with the Mutant cure storyline. Yet thanks to the release and commercial and critical bombing of X-Men: Dark Phoenix which was a meant to be a more accurate adaptation, fans have let X3 off the hook since it ironically was more critically successful than Dark Phoenix. It also helps the film introduced the excellently cast Kelsey Grammer’s Beast and Famke Janssen’s take on Jean’s Superpowered Evil Side was effectively creepy, therefore Truer to the Text than Sophie Turner’s version.
  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine just like X-Men: The Last Stand for a long time was considered one of the worst X-Men movies ever and granted it's not going to be on anyone's favorite X-Men movie list anytime soon. However the abysmal reception of Dark Phoenix lead to people liking this movie more if only because it's entertainment value makes it more enjoyable to watch than the humourless and disjointed tone of the latter, not to mention Liev Schreiber’s Sabretooth and Taylor Kitsch’s Gambit being admittedly pretty good as well as the opening to the film being (as even detractors can admit) genuinely awesome. It also helps that the worst aspects of the movie's plot (namely the In Name Only depiction of Deadpool) has been retconned out of continuity thanks to X-Men: Days of Future Past thereby making this a simple yet fun standalone action flick. Additionally Deadpool 2 actually goes back to Origins: Wolverine with Time Travel resulting in a great Take That, Scrappy! gag.

Pre-1930

• D. W. Griffith's Intolerance was such a failure that it bankrupted his studio — even though his previous film, The Birth of a Nation, was the most successful movie of the time and in fact the first Hollywood blockbuster. Today, Intolerance is considered one of the greatest films of The Silent Age of Hollywood, and while The Birth of a Nation is better known today (and still appreciated by film historians for its pioneering cinematography), it's mostly for the stunning levels of Values Dissonance.
• The silent 1925 version of Ben-Hur made a considerable amount of money (becoming one of the top grossers of 1925), but not enough to cover legal costs surrounding the film's Troubled Production process. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, therefore, counted it a failure. Nevertheless, it continued to build income for the studio in re-releases over the following decades, doing astounding business until topped by the Charlton Heston remake.
• The Rise of the Talkies destroyed the box-office potential of two major 1928 releases from MGM: King Vidor's The Crowd and Victor Sjostrom's The Wind (1928). Both have been hailed in recent years as highlights of silent cinema.
• Rouben Mamoulian's Applause was released just after the start of The Great Depression, and its unusual moodiness for a film of that period (and ESPECIALLY for a musical) repelled the public. Only in subsequent decades has there been appreciation for its advancement of quality sound-recording techniques in film, as well as its daring storyline.

1930s

• Freaks was actually banned in 1932 in many countries, to the point of ruining the careers of many people involved (the freaks themselves were able to walk it off, or, in Prince Randian's case, crawl it off), because it was seen as offensive and exploitative. During The '60s, someone dug it up and realized that it was neither.
• The 1933 W. C. Fields short The Fatal Glass of Beer was poorly received by audiences when it was first released. Today, it is considered one of Fields' funniest movies.
• Mandalay (1934): When Turner Classic Movies dug out this film, it gave Mandalay a very positive review. TCM highlighted the actors' on-spot performances (especially that of Kay Francis) and the film's artistry. The way Mandalay recreates the torrid, exotic underworld of Rangoon. The jump from Tony's drowning body to a shot of Tanya's beatific face after she disembarks. How Mrs. Peters calls out society on slut-shaming and double standards when it comes to women. The range of emotions Francis lays out as Tanya as she falls and then rises despite her circumstances. All in all, TCM praises this feature as more than a well-executed B-Movie but a rightful classic.
• Werewolf of London flopped in its initial 1935 release and was criticized for being too similar to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). Many years later, cinematic historians established it as a classic.
• Reefer Madness was made as a moral tale of the dangers of smoking weed. Seemingly unable to sell it as such, the distributors of the film recut it into a rebellious underground-art piece. Its campy dialogue turned off most viewers in 1936(!), but the film gradually built a tremendous fanbase in the "drug-experimenting" community (this is a case where a work was vindicated in a way its creators wouldn't have preferred).
• Bringing Up Baby was just too weird for cinema-goers in 1938. Today it is regarded as among the best comedies of its time, and an artistic jewel in the crown of director Howard Hawks as well as Katharine Hepburn's finest comic performance.
  • Howard Hawks in general was considered a reliable journeyman director who mostly made Cary Grant and John Wayne movies and directed the original Scarface. Today he is considered second only to John Ford in terms of esteem and influence in the Hollywood Pantheon.
• The Wizard of Oz netted Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer a loss of over a million dollars, only breaking even when it was re-released in 1948–49. Audiences liked it, as did most critics (though others called it "stupid and unimaginative"), but dozens of other great movies were being churned out in 1939. In the extremely fierce competition, Gone with the Wind and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington came out on top, while others such as Oz floundered. It wasn't until The '50s television screenings that Oz became so famous and highly regarded.
• The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir was poorly received by French audiences in 1939. After World War II it was re-evaluated and is considered by present-day critics to be his best work.

1940s

• The original To Be or Not to Be, which delved into controversial territory regarding the situation in Poland at the time, was a critical and box office bomb. Today it is hailed as a comedy masterpiece.
• Despite winning the Best Picture Oscar, Casablanca was treated by audiences and critics, and its cast, in 1942, as So Okay, It's Average. The film became a classic in the 1960s when it was constantly played on college campuses, leading to its colossal reputation.
  • This was partly due to Humphrey Bogart's reputation. In his time he was seen as, first, a character actor in 1930s gangster films, then as an Anti-Hero who romanced women half his age in crime films. He was popular but in his day and age, Bogart was not as big a star as Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Clark Gable. It was only in The '60s with the rise of the "Bogart Cult" and the re-evaluation of Film Noir in general, that he came to be seen as an Icon of Rebellion and the epitome of cool, and proved to be far more modern and accessible than the other big stars of his time. The fact that he was liberal (as compared to Wayne and the others) and opposed McCarthyism gave him street cred.
• Green for Danger, recognized today as a highlight of the career of Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, was a flop upon release.
• The film adaptation of Intruder in the Dust was a Box Office Bomb due to its Troubled Production and its frank and powerful look at the Jim Crow era not resonating with audiences, but nowadays, it is praised as a powerful work that was far ahead of its time.
• It's a Wonderful Life was not necessarily a box office failure, but in 1946 audiences who had just come off of WWII and the Great Depression were now enjoying a booming economy found the theme dated and the tone corny. The movie was quickly forgotten and a clerk forgot to renew the copyright on it after it expired in 1974. As a result, it was now in the public domain and local channels picked it up as a Christmas movie starring an iconic actor which was made by a very famous director. As a result, it’s now considered a classic.
• Nightmare Alley (1947) was a critical and financial failure when it was first released, but is seen today as one of the defining noirs of its era. Such is its later acclaim, that a later adaptation, now freed of The Hays Code censorship, came out in 2021.

1950s

• Ace in the Hole (1951), recognized today as a highlight of the career of Billy Wilder, was a flop.
• Scrooge, one of the most beloved film adaptations of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, failed in cinemas in 1951.
• Two landmark films from the '50s, High Noon and Salt of the Earth, suffered when first released due to suspicions of pro-Communist themes.
  • High Noon was vindicated in part by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was a huge fan of the film and started the tradition of White House High Noon screenings. Bill Clinton screened it a record 17 times.
  • Salt of the Earth was so controversial that it was dubbed a "blacklisted film", the only film to be so labeled.
• Singin' in the Rain made money, but was considered a box office disappointment after the success of Gene Kelly's previous film, An American in Paris. Singing in the Rain earned about 6 million dollars at the North American box office, becoming the 5th most commercially successful film of its year of release. But it was completely overshadowed by the smash hit of the year, The Greatest Show on Earth, which earned 14 million dollars at the box office and major awards. Singin' in the Rain was also snubbed by the Oscars, getting only two nominations and winning neither. It is now considered one of the greatest movies of all time.
• The Band Wagon had high expectations but was commercially flat on its debut. Critics and audiences have since come to agree that it is one of the best MGM musicals.
• The Night of the Hunter was neither a critical nor a commercial success when it came out, leading its director, Charles Laughton, to return to acting full time. Today, it is considered a masterpiece.
• The Searchers was completely shut out at the 1956 Academy Awards, not receiving a single nomination; perhaps because John Wayne's performance as a bigoted Anti-Hero and the underlying negative portrayal of Americans in the Old West was unexpected. Award snubs are not uncommon, but this particular film would go on to be considered one of the best of all time; film buffs hail it as a milestone in cinematic storytelling, and countless A-list directors cite it as one of the biggest influences on them.
  • Another John Ford Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, received tepid reviews despite its good box office. Reviewers typically dismissed it as just another John Wayne Western; one critic even called it "an actionless, colorless, humorless embarrassment." Today critics consider Valance one of Ford and Wayne's best movies, and among the greatest Westerns ever.
• The Court Jester is currently one of the most popular works of Danny Kaye (due in large part to individual comic moments such as the pellet-with-the-poison tongue twister), but was unsuccessful in its initial theatrical run.
• Critics and audiences in the late 1950s, expecting something different from Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis than what they eventually got in Sweet Smell of Success, absolutely hated the film. It has since gained a reputation as one of the film-noir highlights of its era.
• 12 Angry Men, one of the most famous courtroom-drama films ever made, bombed at the box office despite support from critics, and for a short while was largely forgotten.
• Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo was somehow not exciting enough for cinemagoers in the late 50s and most people ignored it. This in part was responsible for Hitchcock's creation of the horror blockbuster Psycho two years later, since he required something much more shocking to put himself back on the map. Ironically, current polls frequently rank Vertigo above Psycho as Hitchcock's ultimate masterpiece.
• Most French critics were rather cold with Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle at the time of its release, seeing its take on the emerging French consumer culture as reactionary and even poujadiste^note A form of right-wing populism that was gaining traction in France at the time, championed by and named for right-wing politician Pierre Poujade.. However, as the years went by and those on both sides of the political spectrum become more cynical towards that sort of Conspicuous Consumption, the film's satire became better appreciated.
• Porgy and Bess earned back only half its budget in 1959, spelling financial disaster for its producer Samuel Goldwyn (and convincing him to retire from filmmaking). The film has been revived in the public's eye and earned much critical recognition.
• Imitation of Life was derided in its day as a "soap opera", only to be re-evaluated in the following decades as an artistic gem.
• The films of Ed Wood, Plan 9 from Outer Space being the ultimate example, took a different path to vindication through their So Bad, It's Good nature. Plan 9 has been lovingly dubbed the worst movie of all time.

1960s

• Peeping Tom ruined the career of one of England's greatest directors, Michael Powell. It is now considered a masterpiece on par with Psycho in the serial-killer genre. Unlike most instances of this, Powell ultimately lived long enough to see this film, and by extension he himself, have its reputation restored. He even noted it himself:
  "I make a film that nobody wants to see and then, thirty years later, everybody has either seen it or wants to see it."
• Happened to the French film Eyes Without a Face. The film had some troubles from the start. First, the themes of the film shocked European critics, especially the Mad Scientist who was a case of poor timing for German critics and audiences. Also, the gore scenes, while short and downplayed, were too extreme for formal circles of the 1960s. Critical and public responses were neutral at best, and outright terrible at worst. Years later, the film was rediscovered by modern audiences and new critics praised the film for its haunting atmosphere, nods to German Expressionism, and the complexity of its characters. Eyes Without a Face was saved from fading into obscurity and is now considered among the best examples that the Horror genre has. In fact, it averted the Horror genre ghetto as it attracts fans of classic art-house films.
• John Huston's The Misfits has gained momentum after a disastrous initial run.
• The original The Manchurian Candidate didn't fare as well as it could have due to its star Frank Sinatra pulling it from release after the Kennedy assassination.
• Ride the High Country, a failure on its release in 1962, has gained favor from modern critics as an exemplary western and a top-notch early work by Sam Peckinpah.
• All the works of Jean-Luc Godard in The '60s are praised by lovers of European film, but there was a period in the early part of that decade when a handful of his movies (including Vivre Sa Vie and Contempt) were initially bombs.
• The Great Race was initially derided in cinemas for being too cartoony (which was said mostly because it came from an apparently unexpected source: Blake Edwards). Several years went by before it gained the popularity it truly deserved, to the point where it inspired the Hanna-Barbera primetime series Wacky Races and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop.
• 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, a failure in 1965, is regarded as a classic fantasy film nowadays.
• The most ambitious work of Jacques Tati was Playtime, which flopped so colossally in 1967 that the director went bankrupt. He was never able to make movies again, except with aid from others. Guess which of Tati's films is the first (and so far the only one) to show up on the prestigious Blu-Ray format?
• Seijun Suzuki's satirical yakuza film Branded to Kill was a commercial and critical flop, and got him effectively blacklisted from making another movie for 10 years. Nowadays it is recognized as a countercultural classic.
• As far as the United States goes, Barbarella failed when it was first released there in 1968. It performed much better when re-released in 1977, to follow in the heels of Star Wars, and that earned it its reputation as a campy Cult Classic.
• Tony Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade was the most expensive British film made up to 1968 - and the biggest flop. Audiences were baffled by the movie's changing between broad social satire and angry antiwar commentary, while critics found the narrative sloppy and the battle scenes muddled. That Richardson presaged its release with a savage Take That! against critics (calling them "intellectual eunuchs") didn't help. It has been significantly reassessed over the years, however, and is often listed among the best epics of its era, and a high point in British cinema.
• The Producers by Mel Brooks was not well-received at all upon its theatrical debut (1968), and never managed a nationwide release, even though it won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Its failure (combined with that of Mel's second film, The Twelve Chairs) reduced Mel to scavenging for loose change on the sidewalk (according to Mel, anyway). A friend of his working for Warner Bros. saved him from obscurity by recruiting him as a director on the appealingly controversial Blazing Saddles, and since that and Young Frankenstein (both came out in 1974) Mel's status as a comedy wizard has never been questioned. The Producers has since become one of the great American comedies, and only had its reputation enhanced further when it became the basis for a hit Broadway musical and a big-screen remake at the Turn of the Millennium.
• Head, an experimental comedy by The Monkees which late 1960s audiences (somehow!) found too weird, has become embraced by critics as one the greatest examples of that era's counterculture.
• The 1969 film Army of Shadows was extremely unpopular in its home country of France, so much so that no U.S. distributor would pick it up until 2006, by which time it had gained respect as one of Jean-Pierre Melville's greatest works.

1970s

• Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) flopped in the United States, only picking up its classic status after its home video release in The '80s.
• Zabriskie Point, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, was critically trashed and hated when it came out, billed as "the worst film ever made". Several decades later, reviews changed positively, praising the stunning scenery and cinematography, the great soundtrack from The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Patti Page, and the like, and the pioneering direction that baffled the first-time viewers of that time.
• The weirdness of Harold and Maude was not in sync with the early '70s, what with a teenage boy having a romance with a septuagenarian woman, and it failed horribly. People have since come to understand the film's finer qualities better, and its reputation has skyrocketed.
• Two-Lane Blacktop was released with no advertising thanks to Universal executives lacking faith; it tanked miserably at the box office. Its popularity has skyrocketed in the 21st century with various DVD releases.
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory had a disappointing theatrical run in 1971, a time when family movies just weren't big draws (this being when the New Hollywood wave was sweeping over the film landscape), and only found its audience through TV and home video — after Paramount's rights to the film were transferred to Warner Bros. Ironically, the exact opposite happened with its source material's 2005 film adaptation; in fact, this movie's enduring legacy is what caused the backlash against the latter film.
• George Lucas' THX 1138 remained unpopular even after the success of Star Wars. Around the time the aforementioned franchise's prequels were coming out, 1138 gained a lot of momentum.
• Wake in Fright bombed spectacularly when first released in 1971 (at least in America and Australia).^note It did have a good public response in France, where it ran for five months, and in the United Kingdom. However, despite the film receiving critical support at Cannes and in Australia, United Artists did nothing to promote the movie outside one trailer for it. To make matters worse, the film opened in America (under the title Outback) in a single theater on the east side of New York on a Sunday night. During a blizzard. Unsurprisingly, not a single person saw it during its opening day. Also, even if anyone did see it, the film's brutal portrayal of the Australian outback and protests caused by actual footage of kangaroos getting shot being used in the climactic hunting sequence didn't help matters. The film was then lost for a few decades before its negatives were found in 2002 by editor Anthony Buckley in a bin marked FOR DESTRUCTION inside a Pittsburgh warehouse.^note There were other prints available, but they were either shortened, censored versions or their quality wasn't sufficient enough to warrant having restoration work being done. After a few years were spent painstakingly restoring the film digitally, it was re-released in 2009 to unanimous acclaim. It also became only the second film to ever be shown at the Cannes Film Festival twice, when it was selected as a Cannes Classic by the head of the department, Martin Scorsese, who first saw Wake in Fright when it premiered at Cannes in 1971, when he was just an unknown director.
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller had little fanfare when it first came out, but over a short period of time gained its well-deserved status as a cinema classic.
• The theatrical success of Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God was destroyed by the financiers' decision to air it on TV at the same time. Aguirre has since become Herzog's most popular work.
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show did NOT do well when it was first released into U.S. theatres in 1975. However, noticing that those people who liked it really liked it, the studio relaunched it as a midnight movie, the fandom grew and developed Audience Participation rituals, and 35 years later it is still in limited release. It is the longest run of any movie, hands down. And in some places, it never stopped running. It is rare, but there are a few theaters that have shown it every Friday night since it first premiered.
• Eraserhead, the shoestring-budget horror film David Lynch debuted with, barely made a blip at the box office. Now it is well-loved as a textbook example of cinematic creepiness.
• Upon its release, William Friedkin's Sorcerer was panned by critics outraged that Friedkin had dared to remake The Wages of Fear (seen as a classic by many) and was a box-office flop due to the release of A New Hope. In recent decades, the film has been reassessed and hailed as a misunderstood classic with some going out to say that it's superior to The Wages of Fear.
• Slap Shot was not well received when it was released, as people found it ridiculously violent and vulgar. Critics also went on to deride it for similar reasons. Over the years, however, the movie gained a solid cult following and today is considered one of the best sports movies ever made (and the best hockey movie ever made as well; it even left a lasting mark on hockey culture). In fact, Gene Siskel went on to say that giving the movie a poor review was his biggest regret as a critic after viewing the movie multiple times.
• According to John Cleese, Monty Python's Life of Brian, out of the three most famous Monty Python movies, was the easiest to make and their best work as a team. Most everybody, even those outside the fanbase, will agree. On its release in 1979, however, the controversy surrounding its premise was too much and a fair number of countries (e.g. Ireland) banned it.
• The Warriors under-performed at the box office; fights and three homicides caused by rival gangs showing up at the theater to see the film only hurt it further. Today its a recognized cult classic; even the ridiculously naïve depiction of gang members as misunderstood Noble Savages seems fresh after so many years of urban crime dramas that have painted a very cynical, unflattering portrait of their subject.
• Miloš Forman's adaptation of the rock musical Hair did poorly at the box office despite critical praise. Many, many people have embraced the film version in subsequent years.
• The 1975 Indian film Sholay didn't do very well when it was originally released, but word-of-mouth spread, and the film ended up having a full house for five years. It is now considered a Bollywood classic.
• John Waters' Multiple Maniacs was a pure underground film at the time, but it is included in The Criterion Collection and has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
• Where's Poppa? zig-zags the trope. The film performed poorly at the box office upon its release in 1970 but gained such a following that it earned a rerelease in 1975 under the title Going Ape. However, in the decades that followed, it's largely been forgotten and is now remembered only as one of Carl Reiner's most obscure films.

1980s

• The 1980 Robert Zemeckis/Bob Gale comedy Used Cars met mixed reviews and barely made back its budget, getting lost in the shuffle against competition from the likes of Airplane! and Caddyshack. Coming right on the heels of another bomb in 1941 (1979) the prior year, its failure almost killed the careers of Zemeckis and Gale, their screenplays gaining a reputation for getting high marks from focus groups that didn't actually translate to box-office success. While it remains obscure among casual moviegoers, among film geeks and critics (especially fans of Zemeckis and Gale) its reputation has improved considerably, with many considering it to be on par with the films it competed with and one of the hidden gems of the '80s Hollywood comedy.
• The Stunt Man failed financially and didn't gain many positive reviews, but over time has amassed enormous popularity.
• Heaven's Gate. Well-publicized reports of its legendarily Troubled Production meant that many critics went in having sharpened their knives beforehand, and they found the film to be a bloated, self-indulgent mess. This poor reception led the film's release to be delayed into 1981 in order to do a Re-Cut that cleaved over an hour from the film, which only made matters worse. For decades, Heaven's Gate was remembered as arguably the most notorious Box Office Bomb in history, one that not only destroyed the career of writer/director Michael Cimino, but took down United Artists as an independent studio with it and wrote the obituary for both The Western as a mainstream genre and for the "auteur period" of '70s Hollywood. However, European critics, having not been constantly exposed to the reports from the set, had long felt that their American counterparts were too hard on the film; while it flopped in the US, it met rave reviews at Cannes. In 2012, a director's cut of Heaven's Gate that was not dissimilar to the original edit premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was released as part of The Criterion Collection, causing many critics who had previously dismissed the film to reassess it as an overlooked gem, arguing that the theatrical edit did the film a grave injustice and that many people at the time of its initial release were too focused on the cloud of its production to judge it fairly.
• Blow Out, Brian De Palma's thriller about a slasher-flick sound mixer who finds audio evidence of a murder, bombed at the box office due to negative word of mouth. Its reputation has since climbed and the film is highly lauded as an artistic gem of the 1980s.
• My Bloody Valentine was largely ignored when it first came out in 1981 as just another slasher film, but it is generally considered to be one of the best slasher films of the early-1980s/post-Halloween (1978) era nowadays.
• Mommie Dearest, released in 1981, was treated as somewhat of a comedy and was easily Faye Dunaway's Star-Derailing Role earning it a razzie. Not helped was the Troubled Production causing multiple accidents and drama on set. The signature scene of "No wire hangers EVER!" was seen as so over the top people constantly made fun of it. Forty years later, people see it in a much different light - as being one of the scariest portrayals of child abuse with narcissistic parents out there due to how real it is.
• First Blood was released to mixed reviews in 1982. Today it is considered one of the classic anti-war thrillers of the 1980s with a resounding message about the dehumanization and mistreatment of Vietnam veterans (complete with a famous speech on the subject at the end) that lets it stand out from its more action-oriented and thematically-conflicted sequels.
• TRON turned a tiny profit but in the same vein was no competition against E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and was even denied an Oscar effects nomination due to "cheating" by the use of computers. Today, it's considered a bold pioneer in CGI for film. More than twenty years later, it received a major Colbert Bump thanks to its appearance in Kingdom Hearts II, which eventually led to a sequel released in 2010, which was rare in an age where any movie over 10 years old would be a candidate for a reboot instead of a direct sequel. It doesn't hurt that TRON directly inspired Disney's Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter to make feature-length computer-animated movies...
• The 1982 film adaptation of Annie, a box office flop with mixed reviews (like TRON, it competed with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) that were often hostile, due to the elephantine conception, divergence from the musical, the darker nature, and the fact that John Huston was the wrong director for the film. However, it has become a cult favorite among people born after 1976 since its home video release.
• The non-Muppet non-Sesame Street movies of Jim Henson are a major example, gaining large enough fanbases after their theatrical runs in The '80s that since their initial DVD releases in 1999, they have been among Sony's best-selling titles. Each also enjoys an Expanded Universe via graphic novels.
  • The Dark Crystal (1982) did okay in theaters, but Henson's kiddie-friendly reputation made this darker High Fantasy production a tough sell with audiences and critics at the time.
  • Labyrinth was intended as a lighter-hearted Spiritual Successor, but proved to be an outright flop in the summer of 1986 (costing $25 million and making $12.7 million). Reviews tended towards divisive opinions and TriStar's ad push was half-hearted, perhaps because it was coming on the heels of several Magical Land films that hadn't caught on (Return to Oz, Legend, etc.). But now it's so loved by its fanbase that beyond it spawning an Expanded Universe of comics, the 2005 Spiritual Successor MirrorMask was created on a small budget and given a limited release specifically because Sony wanted to create another cult hit.
• Fast Times at Ridgemont High, upon release, was largely written off by critics as another Sex Comedy done In the Style of Porky's and Animal House (Roger Ebert, in particular, wrote a very scathing review for it). Fortunately, once people realized how realistic the film's characters and situations were (along with its realistically unglamorous depiction of sex — something unheard of in teen sex comedies circa 1982), the film gained considerable momentum throughout the years. Not only that, but it practically invented the Generation X "slacker" culture (or, at least, that culture as it was imagined by Hollywood) that countless less serious films would reference, rehash, and parody for nearly two decades afterward. It now stands alongside The Breakfast Club and Dazed and Confused as one of the best teen movies of its generation.
• David Cronenberg's Videodrome lost money in theaters with a $2.1 million gross versus a $6 million budget. After his subsequent films The Dead Zone and The Fly (1986) were successful, it started receiving more positive notice. The Criterion Collection's 2004 DVD release cemented its reputation as one of Cronenberg's strongest and most ambitious films, and it's turned out to have a great deal of Values Resonance with the rise of the Internet, social media, virtual reality, and so forth.
• A Christmas Story was financially lukewarm, and the critics were pretty mixed. Its timing of release (1983) arguably wasn't very good, as a large chunk of its supposed appeal depended upon the 1930s/1940s nostalgia that had been pretty common in films since the early '70s and appeared to have run its course by the '80s, especially since the '50s and the '60s were the preferred nostalgic fodder by that time. Now it's a very popular holiday classic - even replacing It's a Wonderful Life in that stature in many viewers' minds. TIME Magazine TV critic James Poniewozik wrote a December 2007 essay explaining its appeal as he saw it: while A Christmas Story takes place during roughly the same time period as It's a Wonderful Life (indeed, given certain aspects of the setting it would appear to be taking place earlier), its casual and emotionally aloof attitude toward the subject matter reflects modern sensibilities much better than It's a Wonderful Life.
• Monty Python's The Meaning of Life wasn't well received in 1983 because of its sketchy format and grossly over-the-top jokes. It has been re-appreciated over time as an uneven but enjoyable film that is more in tune with their original TV series since it doesn't follow a direct narrative and is, at times, rather offensive.
• Eddie and the Cruisers suffered from being saddled with a studio, Embassy Pictures, that didn't know how to properly distribute films; as a result, the film, largely marketed for a teen audience, was released in September 1983, when teens were in school. The film barely grossed $4.7 million, was heavily negatively reviewed, and ended up failing so dismally that it was pulled from theaters after three weeks. At the time, the only well-reviewed thing about it was its soundtrack, which climbed the charts as the movie was failing. Then HBO showed the film in 1984 to great success, prompting a limited re-release in theaters for one week... which failed just as dismally. Television airings and home video releases in the following years enhanced its reputation significantly.
• 1984's Gremlins was a box-office hit and reviews overall leaned positive, but critics at the time were highly polarized over its violence (especially for a PG-rated film), Black Comedy, and Norman Rockwell-inspired Sugar Apocalypse setting. It was one of the films responsible for the creation of the PG-13 rating due to backlash from Moral Guardians, and a number of critics actually preferred its sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, due to its Lighter and Softer tone (most notably Leonard Maltin, who has a cameo in the sequel in which he repeats his criticisms of the first film). Nowadays, of course, it's considered one of the greatest horror comedies ever made.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge had a terrible reception, to the point further sequels mostly ignored its events. While still agreed to be inferior to the original movie, it has earned a reappraisal for retaining the scarier Freddy Krueger when the follow-ups made him more comedic, some impressive gore effects, and the homoerotic overtones now being hailed as an interesting allegory for a gay teenager's struggle with self-hatred.
• Ishtar was met with critical hostility and was a Box Office Bomb upon its release in 1987, but as more and more people started watching it in spite of its reception, they found that it was funny, and it's become another Cult Classic that even had a documentary about it.
• 1987's The Monster Squad was a Box Office Bomb that met a mixed critical reception, with many people not knowing what to make of its mix of genuinely creepy Universal monsters with a kids' adventure story in the vein of The Goonies. However, regular showings on HBO helped it build its reputation through the '90s, and by its 20th anniversary (commemorated with a special edition two-disc DVD set), it had come to be remembered as one of the great horror-comedies of the '80s.
• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Although it did not do well in theaters due to poor promotion, it has since become a cult classic. It also had bad sound, making it no easier to follow; this has been corrected in some home releases.
• Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo made money, but not enough to recoup its budget (falling $5 million short). It's been nominated for several American Film Institute awards since then.
• 1986's Highlander also didn't recoup its $19 million budget and was not well-received upon its initial release... in America. It became a huge hit throughout Europe and the home video market, gaining it cult classic status, four sequels, a television series, books, comics, video games, and other components of the huge franchise it is today.
• When Spaceballs was released in 1987, it underperformed at the box office and received mixed reviews, even being named Worst Picture at the 1987 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards; common criticisms included being deemed inferior to Mel Brooks' earlier works and Star Wars no longer being culturally relevant enough to work as a parody (Spaceballs primarily spoofs A New Hope, which was released a decade prior; following the 1983 release of Return of the Jedi there was little new Star Wars content released until Heir to the Empire was published in 1991). Over the decades, though, Spaceballs came to be regarded far more warmly, especially given Star Wars' return to the limelight and long-lasting impact on pop culture. Particularly following the Sequel Trilogy's release (which resulted in many aspects of Spaceballs becoming Hilarious in Hindsight), Spaceballs is now seen as a Cult Classic.
• The Blob (1988) bombed at the box office, and while some critics liked it, others saw it as a needless retread of the 1958 original that did nothing but amp up the gorn. Today, it's not unheard of to find people who prefer the remake over the original, for both its improved special effects and for its added Government Conspiracy storyline, with the two films' IMDb scores being identical.
• Scrooged did okay at the box office, but received a plethora of negative reviews upon release. The success it received in the home video department, however, helped it build a reputation as a Christmas classic and one of Bill Murray's best films.
• UHF was critically panned and flopped (at $6.2 million, barely recovering its $5 million budget) at the summer 1989 box office — ironically, the latter was because its studio was so confident it would be a hit that it was scheduled amongst much higher-profile blockbusters (Batman, Ghostbusters II, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, etc.). It became a cult hit among "Weird Al" Yankovic fans and eventually found even greater reception upon its DVD release — which was due to popular demand that outstripped any other MGM-owned title that hadn't received a DVD up to that point.
  • Weird Al Lampshades this in the DVD commentary. During the credits, he reads several poor reviews the film got, ending with one positive one (possibly the only one he could find). While UHF has soured him on the idea of ever doing a movie again, he seems pleased that people still enjoy watching it.
• Heathers was shunned in theaters for the perceived glorification of teen suicide (although this was not the case at all). It made $1.1 million against a $2 million budget. Upon arrival on home video, it was a top seller, and is highly regarded nowadays.
  • Though in another case of Vindicated by History, all portrayals of suicide, no matter the intent, run a strong risk of copycats. If a notable character in a popular show or movie commits suicide, no matter how much it is intended to serve as a cautionary tale, expect a wave of suicides committed in a similar manner to the portrayal to occur..
• Bull Durham was a modest critical and financial success on its release, but in more recent years it's undergone a critical reevaluation and is now considered one of the best sports movies ever.
• Stand and Deliver was completely overlooked on its release in 1988, buried amid a slew of big blockbusters. Critics are nowadays championing it as a top-notch drama.
• While fans still agree The Karate Kid Part III is the worst of the original trilogy, Cobra Kai made them reevaluate it in a more positive light by showing the impact of the movie's events and bringing back villain Terry Silver while fleshing out his backstory.
• While Popeye actually managed to turn a profit it had very mixed reviews at the time of its release and was also publicly written off as a flop by the studio, and didn't really manage to have much of an impact culturally. Nowadays it's been more warmly received for a variety of reasons, including the surprisingly catchy soundtrack and star Robin Williams in a rare singing role.
• The Color Purple (1985) was successful upon release, but it was criticized by many in the black community, including the NAACP, due to the fact that it had a white director and for its negative portrayal of black men, as almost every male character in the movie is either abusive or spineless. The condemnation from the NAACP is largely considered to be the main factor behind the movie's infamous Award Snub at the 1986 Oscars. But in the years that followed, the criticisms against the movie have softened, and it is now widely considered to be one of the greatest black movies ever made.

1990s

• The Coen Brothers made five films in the 1990s that are all now very popular and considered true classics. However, of these five films, Fargo was the only one to achieve first-run theatrical success.
  • Miller's Crossing cost $14 million and made only $5 million. While it will never see as much praise as Fargo, it has gained a fair amount of respect from critics (even making some "Best" lists) and particularly from fans of the Coens, and is generally thought of as the "other" great crime film of 1990.
  • Barton Fink cost $9 million and in its theatrical run made a disappointing $6.2 million. It picked up popularity on VHS after winning the top prizes at the Cannes Film Festival.
  • The Hudsucker Proxy suffered the most. Costing $25 million it was their most expensive film of that decade, and made the least amount of money... $2.8 million, a tremendous loss for Warner Brothers (and probably the reason the Coens never had Warners as a distributor again). Hudsucker was re-evaluated after the success of Fargo, and gained a sizable fandom.
  • The Big Lebowski made $17 million in the United States, not enough to recoup its $15 million budget plus prints and advertising costs. It remained a dud in the US (although it managed to turn a sizable profit in foreign markets) until its home video release. Its popularity then exploded to gargantuan proportions... Lebowski is now one of the biggest cult classics, and since 2002 a "Lebowskifest" has been held each year in every single U.S. state. It even has a religion centered around The Dude's lifestyle.
  • Before all of these were the first two Coen films in the 1980s, Blood Simple and Raising Arizona. They were not flops (in fact they turned enough of a profit to satisfy the distributors), but they were also not considered artistic masterpieces until MANY years later.
• The Rocketeer flopped miserably when it debuted in 1991 opening behind Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, City Slickers and Dying Young with the reasons for its failure cited as there being a “lack of big stars” (despite Jennifer Connelly and Timothy Dalton being fairly well known) and moreover because it was a Genre Throwback in a time where the mainstream was not interested in such things. Of course since then The Rocketeer has become a certified classic with many people naming it as one of their all time favourite live action Disney films and one of the few pulp inspired films to be genuinely good compared to other genre throw backs like The Shadow and The Phantom (1996). It also helps that the film won multiple Accolades and even got a CG spin-off show (where Billy Campbell reprised his role) making it much more than the average Indiana Jones knock-off it was initially viewed as in the long run.
• Fire in the Sky got horrible reviews and was only an average performer at the box office when it was first released. Today, it is considered by many as one of the scariest films ever made and has a strong following among sci-fi fans.
• Drop Dead Fred came out to a major critical thrashing and mediocre box office returns, with major criticisms being towards its glaring tone problems and uncertainty of its audience, being too mean-spirited and adult for children, while also too juvenile and wacky for adults. Nowadays, the film has become a Cult Classic, in part due to it being so bizarre and uniquely atonal, carried largely by the stand-out performance of its titular character by the late Rik Mayall. The film has also received critical reevaluation from modern critics, with an ever-increasing consensus of it being a misunderstood Black Comedy with the misfortune of having an unmarketable premise.
• Lethal Weapon 3 and 4. Whether people have a higher opinion of both movies is questionable, but both films look much better by comparison after the Die Hard films Live Free or Die Hard and especially A Good Day to Die Hard came out, and Weapon is considered to have maintained a more consistent level of quality versus that rivaling '80s/'90s action franchise.
• Boomerang (1992) was initially met with mixed reviews and was considered a part of Eddie Murphy’s (first) Audience-Alienating Era, which went from Harlem Nights (1989) to The Nutty Professor (1996). In the decades since, Boomerang has come to be viewed as one of the best African-American romantic comedies and provided breakout performances for Halle Berry and, on the soundtrack, Toni Braxton.
• Space Jam is a unique case of this. It was far from a flop being the highest grossing basketball movie of all time and it’s still a favourite movie of many Millennials aka kids who grow up in the 90s and early 2000s, critically however it was absolutely raked over the coals with many reviewers deeming it nothing more than a shameless Merchandise-Driven hour and twenty eight minute ad for Michael Jordan and NBA with Looney Tunes as hollow set dressing. Even classical animator Chuck Jones disliked it and felt it besmirched the toons with hit and miss humour. However decades later when Space Jam: A New Legacy came out and flopped some of the biggest detractors of the 1993 film have begrudgingly admitted that, for all its flaws, the first film was better and closer to Who Framed Roger Rabbit compared to A New Legacy — which was more interested in being a splurge of Warner Bros. IP than a NBA meets Loony Tunes film and even turns the toons into CGI by the climax unlike the original where the toons were beautifully 2D animated throughout. People have also revalued Space Jam 1’s humour acknowledging it does have legitimately good Leaning on the Fourth Wall jokes and some actual heart whereas the follow up ironically has more dated humour including using The Matrix Bullet Time parodies, which comedies had stopped doing years ago. It also helps that the first film genuinely respected the voice cast whilst A New Legacy recasts Kath Soucie as Lola with Zendaya simply for the sake of star power.
• Hocus Pocus, upon its release in 1993, got negative reviews and barely broke even at the box office, where it was run over by Free Willy and dropped out of the top ten by the time of its third weekend in theaters. Disney made the mistake of releasing this Halloween film in July, largely because executives were concerned that children wouldn't go see the film in the Fall when school was in session. However, regular airings on the Disney Channel and Freeform every October turned it into a Cult Classic, and now it's regarded as one of the all-time great family-friendly Halloween films. Disney even got confident enough about the movie's rise in popularity to finally give it a sequel at their streaming platform in 2020.
• Dazed and Confused, upon release, was admired by critics but barely broke even at the box office. Subsequent years have seen it listed very near the top on various countdowns of the greatest cult films and high school comedies ever made, and as Cracked would later note, the film served as a prototype for many of the "average guys doing average things" comedies that proliferated in the '00s.
• While Wes Craven's New Nightmare earned good reviews, it was the lowest-grossing film in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The only reason it wasn't an outright Box Office Bomb was that its budget was so low that even its meager take was enough to recoup its production costs. Now, fans of the Nightmare films regard it as up there with the original film and Dream Warriors as one of the best entries in the series, especially from a pure horror standpoint, and fans of Wes Craven regard it as a prototype of sorts for Scream (1996) due to its similar metatextual ideas.
• The Shawshank Redemption was released to critical acclaim and a handful of Oscar nominations. Box office success? Not so much, as it was in the shadows of Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction at the time of its release. In its first run, it made $16 million versus a $25 million budget. Its current popularity is almost exclusively thanks to heavy broadcasts on cable and home video.
  • A TV special on the director showed that the public chased it on video after hearing its name over and over during the Academy Awards. A theatrical re-release also took place during the Oscar season, in which the film was much more successful.
• The Western film The Quick and the Dead flopped, despite an all-star cast of actors like Gene Hackman, Leonardo Dicaprio, Russell Crowe, and Sharon Stone, who was enjoying the super-stardom she gained after her role in Basic Instinct. It cost 32 million to make, but only made 18 million back. Today, the film has a huge cult following.
• Demolition Man, when it was released, was seen as a subpar sci-fi action movie getting mostly panned by critics, barely recouping its budget despite opening at number one, though it did make up for it internationally. In recent years, it's seen more for what it really is, a pretty solid fish-out-of-water satire of sci-fi action movies from the 1980s and a Deconstructive Parody of Political Overcorrectness.
• The consensus in 1995 was that the Clerks prequel Mallrats sucked (with a $2.1 million gross against a $6.1 million budget), but many have since agreed that its quality equals that of Clerks and Chasing Amy.
• Mortal Kombat: The Movie while successful enough to warrant a sequel and often considered the best movie adaptation of a video game, still got a divisive reputation from audiences. While many fans appreciated how it mostly stayed true to the plot of the game it was adapting, the performances of the cast (especially Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Christopher Lambert as Shang Tsung and Raiden), the fight choreography not getting chopped up, the tight story and the special effects - particularly the animatronic Goro - there were also fans of the games who bemoaned the PG rating which didn’t allow for the blood and gore of the games and for turning fan favorites ninjas Scorpion and Sub-Zero into minor henchmen whilst other people criticized the martial arts and the cheesiness of the plot. The sequel did nothing to help matters with its near-complete overhaul of the cast, Random Events Plot, Narm-laden dialogue^note "Too bad you... will die.", loads of characters that pretty much contributed nothing to the plot, and the Fight Scene and Special Effects Failure all over the place. Yet the decades afterwards had so many borderline unwatchable game movies that Mortal Kombat managed to at least stand with a good reputation for being competently made and faithful, to the point the game series incorporated elements like Kano being Australian and a skin pack in Mortal Kombat 11 that gave the film likenesses and voices to four characters. And when a new movie came out in Mortal Kombat (2021), it changed so many things (like the protagonist being a Canon Foreigner and not having the Mortal Kombat tournament) that numerous people unironically now cite the 1995 film as the better adaptation.
• Dark City was a commercial flop that divided critics when it came out, not helped by studio-mandated edits. Over time, it has developed a large cult following, has received a re-release that restored director Alex Proyas' original cut, and is frequently compared favourably to similar films of the time such as The Matrix.
• Wes Anderson wasn't really a well-regarded filmmaker until the success of The Royal Tenenbaums.
  • Wes's first film Bottle Rocket didn't recoup its modest indie budget in theaters (a $1 million gross versus a $7 million budget). It has since proven itself on VHS and DVD as a classic.
  • His second film Rushmore, originally a box office flop, has gained immense notice.
• EDtv, initially dismissed as a ripoff of The Truman Show, has gained widespread recognition in recent years as a brilliant satire that foreshadowed the reality TV craze.
• Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco was a financial failure, but acclaim for its artistry has been growing since its release.
• Fight Club. During its North American theatrical run, the film garnered a very polarized reaction from critics (just as much for its at-the-time graphic violence as its actual quality) and performed mediocre at the box office (a $37 million gross versus a $63 million budget). However, once the film made it to home video, it quickly developed a large and loyal cult following. At the same time, many critics seriously reconsidered their original assessments of the film, gradually making it one of the most acclaimed movies of the last thirty years and landing it on many "Best Movies Of All Time" lists. There's also the issue of people creating "real Fight Clubs" after seeing the movie.
• The Boondock Saints was a massive flop, only making back $30,471 from its $6 million budget, and it was harshly criticized for being the worst of the Tarantino-inspired movies coming out at the time, mainly due to its juvenile characters and messy editing. Most of its failures can be attributed to a mix of the Columbine High School massacre right before its release causing a backlash against violent action movies, and the Prima Donna Director antics of writer/director Troy Duffy leading him to burn every bridge he had in Hollywood by the time the film was finished; between them, they caused the film's theatrical release to be cut to just five theaters for one week. The film would develop a cult following on home video, however, and has grossed over $50 million in domestic video sales. Nowadays, it is noted for its innovative approach to action scenes and chronology, its thought-provoking ending, and Willem Dafoe's performance. It even got a sequel ten years later, though many fans don't like to talk about it.
• Election did okay at the box office but was unimpressive compared to American Pie, which came out around the same time. Today it's regarded as one of the best teen comedies ever made, as well as one of Reese Witherspoon's best performances.
• Ride with the Devil ($635,100 gross versus a $38 million budget), hailed as an Ang Lee masterpiece.
• Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy lost money in its theatrical run, and is now considered a classic.
• When the 1994 Street Fighter movie came out, it was initially pretty widely disliked and considered a shining example of Video Game Movies Suck, though even then it did have a small following due to its campy nature. However, as time went on, its camp and the passing of Raúl Juliá would make it relatively fondly remembered. Cementing this is the release of the next Street Fighter movie, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li which was universally reviled and almost every Street Fighter fan agrees that, for all its flaws, the first film was better.
• Super Mario Bros. (1993) was the trope codifier for Video Game Movies Suck during The '90s and the Turn of the Millennium. Views towards it have softened a bit. Primarily citing its technical achievements and its willingness to take a risk. The latter especially became relevant after how the film industry has become Strictly Formula. Some people see it as So Okay, It's Average or simply So Bad, It's Good. Further vindicated by the fact that the Truer to the Text The Super Mario Bros. Movie ironically does actually borrow story beats from the live-action 1993 film, especially in regard to depicting Mario and Luigi in Brooklyn as plumbers and how they enter the other dimension that is the Mushroom Kingdom. Also now with the benefit of a faithful movie adaptation, the 90s film can be considered an interesting novelty rather than the unredeemable mess it was once viewed as.
• Clueless was a respectable hit at the box office, but it didn't exactly set it on fire. About a decade later and it became the teen movie of the '90s.
• Billy Madison was critically panned back in the '90s and made little money. It became looked back upon more fondly as Adam Sandler rose to the top of the Hollywood A-list.
• Waterworld was the poster child for Troubled Production and Box Office Bomb. (Even though it actually made money thanks to the international markets) People thought the Ocean Punk concept was quite stupid, in a genre dominated by the Desert Punk Mad Max clones. But between the stage show at Universal Theme Parks that has been a mainstay for well over a decade, and people who watched it on video and TV, it has been reevaluated as a serviceable action flick not as bad as it seemed from the scathing contemporary reviews (which mostly focused on how for all its budget and ambitions the end product was mediocre), helped by the extended cut showcasing a lot of worldbuilding stuff that was left on the cutting room floor. The movie is even deemed a Trope Codifier for Ocean Punk.
• 1997's Event Horizon was a commercial failure and has a reputation for being cut to pieces by Executive Meddling making it less graphic than originally intended. It has since become a Sci-Fi Horror Cult Classic and viewers have wondered what the film could’ve been like if it was uncensored. Event Horizon has also directly inspired successful franchises like Dead Space with its supernatural, gory, and mechanical space aesthetic and is considered one of Paul W.S. Anderson's best films.
• Starship Troopers, in its day, was criticized for having little to do with its source material in favor of being a Rated M for Manly action movie to bring in the teenage boys, but over time, has been re-evaluated as an excellent satire of right-wing militarism, as well as just a fun and enjoyable movie in its own right.

2000s

• The 2000 film adaptation of American Psycho deeply polarized critics at the time, for many of the same reasons as the aforementioned Fight Club. Its Rotten Tomatoes score is 68%, decent but not spectacular. In addition, audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the movie a D. Since then, it's gone on to be recognized as one of the greatest horror films of its time, and a stinging satire of '80s yuppie culture. One could say that it really came into its own, commercially and artistically.
• Almost Famous cost $60 million to make and only managed to rake in $47 million. But critics kept rooting for it, and eventually Cameron Crowe's Oscar win for best screenplay helped boost the film's popularity on home video. The film launched Kate Hudson's career into the stratosphere, and even after the Hype Backlash she got over her string of romantic comedy hits, Almost Famous is the one film of hers still well-regarded today.
• The Live-Action Adaptation of Josie and the Pussycats (2001) received mixed reviews and bombed at the box office, with many critics feeling that its parody of the corporate Teen Idols of the late '90s and early '00s rang hollow in the face of the over-the-top amount of Product Placement it carried. It killed the careers of the writer/director team of Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, who wouldn't direct another movie and would stick to screenwriting from there on out. It's since been reevaluated as a hilarious satire, the plastering of corporate logos in every shot having been part of the entire joke that critics at the time missed the point of (notably, none of those logos were actually paid for by the rights holders). The film's soundtrack in particular, put together by a who's who of big-name '90s songwriters and producers with Letters to Cleo's Kay Hanley on vocals, stood the test of time well enough that it was rereleased on vinyl in 2017, and has even been cited as an influence on the Pop Punk revival scene of the late 2010s and early '20s, especially its female artists.
• 2000’s Unbreakable wasn’t considered a smash hit and was seen as inferior to M. Night Shyamalan’s previous film The Sixth Sense. People were also nonplussed by why Shyamalan had gone from a compelling ghost story to in their own words “a film about comic books”, since in the Aughts Superhero movies weren’t the box office juggernauts they are nowadays. Over the years Unbreakable became a cult classic, one of Shyamalan’s most celebrated works and thanks to the massive success of Marvel and DC films, even more people have gone back to Unbreakable and praised it for being a completely unique and original take on the superhero genre putting it alongside Watchmen when it comes to gritty, realistic deconstructions. Quentin Tarantino names it as one of his favourite movies, it’s consistently ranked high on several best superhero movies of all time lists and audiences went wild when The Stinger of Split revealed it was a Stealth Sequel to Unbreakable. It finally got a sequel in the form of Glass (2019), ironically making it more successful than The Sixth Sense in the long run.
• 2001's Donnie Darko did not make much of a splash during its modest theatrical run (making $4.1 million, narrowly missing the $4.5 million breaking-even mark), but quickly developed a large cult following and on home video found an unprecedented amount of belated fame. The poor theatrical showing might have been due to its coming out a month & a half after 9/11.
• The 2001 comedy Wet Hot American Summer had poor critical reception (Roger Ebert gave it one star) and a virtually nonexistent box office when it was first released, partially thanks to a truly awful distribution deal. It ultimately became so popular as a cult classic that it actually received a prequel series on Netflix in 2015 which debuted to extremely positive reviews and became the streaming service's fifth smash hit (after House of Cards (US), Orange Is the New Black, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Daredevil (2015)).
• Zoolander had the misfortune of coming out in late September of 2001, just weeks after the 9/11 attacks. The world was therefore not in the mood for comedy or, in many cases, even to leave the house, and while it made back its budget, it was not a hit by any stretch of the imagination. Since then, the film has more than made up for the theatrical misfortune with DVD sales and been hailed as one of the defining comedies of the 2000s "Frat Pack" era of Hollywood comedy, and the sequel Zoolander 2 was finally released almost 15 years later.
• Terry Zwigoff's 2001 Live-Action Adaptation of Ghost World was screened at various film festivals before it was given a limited commercial theatrical release, where no audience seemed to catch on that well despite nigh-universal critical acclaim. Today, it can be found on various lists of the greatest comic book movies of all time, and has been released as part of The Criterion Collection.
• Punch-Drunk Love garnered critical acclaim in 2002, especially for Adam Sandler's surprising dramatic turn, but failed to attract audiences because of Adam Sandler's surprising dramatic turn. The box-office failure of this film, combined with the similar performances of Spanglish, Reign Over Me, and Funny People, officially caused Sandler to be typecast in silly comedies. The film has only become more highly regarded by audiences in recent years due in large part to public backlash over Sandler's recent films.
• The 2002 made-for-TV adaptation of Carrie was panned viciously when it first came out for being seen as a pale shadow of the 1976 film, to the degree that lead actress Angela Bettis herself said she wouldn't have seen it if she hadn't been in it. As time has moved on, younger fans and fans of the book have come to like this as a more faithful adaptation (the ending aside; it was intended as a TV pilot). While few will defend the special effects, some of the casting choices (Rena Sofer as Miss Desjardin, Kandyse McClure as Sue) are seen by some as better than the original, and while Bettis' performance is not usually counted among them, that's mainly because she had a very Tough Act to Follow in Sissy Spacek (who was nominated for an Oscar), as she is still considered to have made for a very strong Carrie who many fans feel was on par with Spacek. When the 2013 adaptation came out and got criticism for being too similar to the 1976 version, this one got a second look due to the ways in which it played around with a few of the characters.
• Resident Evil (2002) was divisive for not being a direct adaptation of the games. Years later, fans can admit that the film was better than it was given credit for, featuring some sweet action scenes, genuine suspense like the games, a cast of likeable characters, including protagonist Alice, and its looser connection to the games means it works fine as a stand-alone story that doesn't mess with the franchise's main canon or characters. Also helping is the decreasing quality of the sequels, which also made Alice much more divisive by making her an Invincible Heroine who steals the spotlight of the game characters.
• Looney Tunes: Back in Action in the block buster heavy year of 2003 failed to regroup its budget at the box office with its financial and critical failure putting breaks to the planned Looney Tunes film franchise with Buggs and co not appearing in a theatrical film again until Space Jam: A New Legacy. Nowadays, Back In Action has gotten greatly reassessed with people acknowledging its many strengths such as having humour closer to the original shorts and wonderfully starring Brendan Fraser whom has undergone Career Resurrection in the decades since. It also helps its successor A New Legacy was a far greater flop with accordingly weaker jokes strengthening Back In Action's Buddy Picture humour by comparison. Further vindicated by the film’s Breaking the Fourth Wall and Biting-the-Hand Humor as Back In Action portraying Warner Bros as incompetent Never My Fault execs who mishandle their properties and characters has only gotten more and more apt since the film was released, to the point where you can make a case for the film predicting the future of the company.
• The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) though they did pretty well at the box office especially the former, are still considered vastly inferior to the seminal first film with the Wachowskis’s worldbuilding being considered pretentious Author Tract that got right up its own butt with Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness in the infamous Architect scene that was mercilessly mocked. Not to mention the more ropey special effects such as Neo and Agent Smith turning into CGI models. Despite the good action fans were just happy to ignore the second and third films altogether and only treat the first film and The Animatrix as canon. Then almost two decades later The Matrix Resurrections came out and in a case of not learning lessons from the previous films only indulged further in metaphor and meta narrative in a Filibuster Freefall while actively downplaying the action in more muted fight sequences — despite the Kung-Fu Gun Kata being what people loved about The Matrix in the first place. After the box office bombing of the fourth film now more fans than ever concede that Reloaded and Revolutions had their genuine positives particularly the action sequences such as the highway Chase Fight unlike Resurrections making them much more enjoyable in comparison. Additionally the second and third film for their all faults still had Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus and Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith elevating the proceedings, while Resurrections has neither actor returning and their characters replaced with different actors.
• The 2003 theatrical cut of Daredevil underwhelmed after critics and audiences complained that it was a watered-down comic book film coming on the heels of other critically- and commercially-successful Marvel properties like X-Men and Spider-Man. A year later, the Daredevil Director's Cut restored a significant amount of material (making it much more Darker and Edgier), which gave the film a whole new focus and restored its credibility among audiences who had previously dismissed it out of hand.
• Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation were and are Contested Sequels deemed as not living up to the beloved first two movies. Yet both earned reappraisals with the further sequels Terminator Genisys and Terminator: Dark Fate, for actually trying to further John Connor's story instead of changing it too hard (Genisys has him become a villain through Unwilling Roboticization, Dark Fate kills him in the opening scene), not delving too deep into the Timey-Wimey Ball, and in the case of Salvation being different enough to stand out (it's the only one focused on the Robot War rather than time-travelling).
• Van Helsing was considered a bad movie of 2004 but after the release of The Mummy (2017), many looked at the film as a better modern portrayal of classic Universal movie monsters.
• Mean Girls received a similar reception to Groundhog Day and The Big Lebowski upon its release in 2004 — critics' reviews were good, but not great, and while it was certainly a hit, it wasn't a blockbuster either. By the time of its ten-year anniversary in early 2014, it was being hailed as one of the best comedies of the '00s and one of the greatest teen movies ever made, with quotes from the film becoming part of the Generation Y and internet lexicon, and October 3rd being hailed as "Mean Girls Day", in a situation not unlike May 4th as "Star Wars Day". Its ten-year anniversary was a major internet and social media event, garnering much more buzz than some of the biggest movies of 2004 like Shrek 2 and The Passion of the Christ. By that point, it was considered the definitive film of 2004 much like Pulp Fiction had become for 1994 or Goodfellas for 1990.
• Edgar Wright:
  • 2004's Shaun of the Dead, with a $5 million budget, made a profit at the UK and US box office but not an impressive one. On DVD, the movie has become a huge hit, and one of the most acclaimed British comedies ever.
  • Hot Fuzz did quite well in the UK box office in 2007, but did poorly in the US due to being released around the same time as Epic Movie. But once it was brought to DVD and Blu-Ray, it has become very popular in the US as well as the UK.
• Constantine (2005), while it did decently, still got absolutely thrashed by critics and especially fans of Hellblazer, who loathed its alterations to the source material; Alan Moore also disowned it like the majority of adaptations of his work. However, in the years since and especially after Keanu Reeves’s Career Resurrection, the film has gotten reassessed, with many people citing it as a genuinely cool supernatural action thriller with a great cast that unfortunately came out in a period where most comic book movies didn’t aim for great accuracy (see the X-Men Film Series). Nowadays, even some fans of Hellblazer can admit the film is actually pretty damn good on its own merits and did get the Did You Just Scam Cthulhu? aspects of the comics right. Further vindicated by Constantine (2014) as well as The Sandman (2022), both of which also depicted a different Constantine from the comics (especially the latter) to comics fans’ upset, taking a lot of the singular ire away from the 2005 film's changes.
• Minor example: While the Tim Story-directed Fantastic Four films from 2005 and 2007 were never held in high regard (though the first movie had a more positive reception than Rise of the Silver Surfer, which killed the franchise), they have gained more of an appreciation after Josh Trank's infamous reboot of the series was not only trashed by critics, audiences, and Marvel themselves, but a Box Office Bomb on top of it. Basically, the 2015 film's weaknesses made those of the previous duology look less bad, and made their strengths stand out more.
  • The Roger Corman Fantastic Four film has also undergone something of a re-evaluation by some. Being the only feature film adaptation of Marvel's First Family for years (and never actually intended for public release), it was considered by fans to be a mere B-movie, per the norm for Corman, and dismissed as a cheap Ashcan Copy. But again, with how bad the so-nicknamed "Fant4stic" has since been considered, this version of the Fantastic Four is being recognized by fans in a more positive light, considering that it seems like the makers of this one cared more than the makers of the 2015 reboot. It's also considered the closest a Fantastic Four movie has come to matching its source material in many ways. Some also consider its infamously low budget to be a strength that the other Fantastic Four movies do not possess.
• 2005's Hard Candy wasn't really a "flop," since it was an indie film, with a fairly small release anyway (never more than 150 theatres). That said, it just barely broke $1 million domestically. While it's never gotten Donnie Darko-level popular, its recognition has definitely grown over time.
• Sky High (2005) was well-liked upon its release in 2005, but it was largely seen as one of several Harry Potter imitators (only with superheroes!) trying to create stories in Hogwarts-esque Academies of Adventure, and faded out of public consciousness quickly. However, people started to look back upon the film more fondly about a decade later, not only for the Retroactive Recognition of stars Danielle Panabaker and Mary Elizabeth Winstead but also because, with the growing popularity of the superhero genre in film and television, people were open to looking at more novel takes on the genre. Like with Mean Girls, it has become a source of high school nostalgia for its grown-up audiences due to its surprisingly complex themes about social class (the conflict between the heroes and sidekicks), betrayal (when the girl you fall in love with is really evil), and relationships between parents and their children. For modern anime fans Sky High also bears uncanny similarities with My Hero Academia and is such celebrated by them too.
• Serenity, the 2005 feature-film continuation of the TV series Firefly, got a mixed response from critics, and failed to earn back its $39 million budget in theaters despite support from Firefly's fandom. Only on DVD did it gain the tremendous popularity it has now. Appropriately enough, this is the exact same way that the show built its fandom in the first place.
• Stranger Than Fiction, while never really panned by critics, only received moderate critical acclaim upon its release (mostly because of skepticism towards Will Ferrell's acting abilities). Today, it stands as possibly one of the strongest films of 2006, usually highly regarded for its effective life message and its powerhouse cast.
• Director Shusuke Kaneko's two-part film adaptation of Death Note received So Okay, It's Average reception within fans and critics alike (at least within North America): as film adaptations of manga series, they were decent at best and has an improved ending, but the special effects didn't age well. They came out in middle of a time period where Japan's film industry was slowly in decline (starting with the critical failure of 2004's Devilman movie), and people stopped having much expectation toward live-action movies based on manga series. However, shortly after the release of Netflix's American adaptation of Death Note, fans enthusiastically put the Japanese live-action movies onto the high pedestal. Not only they consider these as the superior adaptation, but also among the best live-action adaptations of comic books or manga series in the past few decades. It also helps that for those who are more closer to the Death Note anime dub, the voice actors from the anime dub reprise their roles in this film series' English dub.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) despite their bigger box office success both got scathing reviews with critics finding them very much Sequelitis for the more complicated plot and massive cast rather than just a comparatively straightforward fun pirate action adventure like the first film. Nowadays however the response to Dead Man’s Chest and At Worlds’ End is immensely different with many people loving them and accepting them as part of the trilogy that expanded the story in a compelling way. The second and third film have also been acknowledged to have great villains in the form of Beckett and Davy Jones with latter having (along with his crew) having spectacular Serkis Folk CGI that more than holds up today. Not to mention audiences are now more accepting of the pirate genre having more complex plots thanks to works like Black Sails and One Piece and its live-action Netflix adaptation. Dead Man’s Chest and At Worlds’ End were also vindicated by the Trilogy Creep of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and even more so by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales which is considered a Franchise Killer.
• Neither remake of Black Christmas (1974) are considered to be superior to the original, but since the release of Black Christmas (2019) fans have become more accepting of the initially panned and bombed Black Christmas (2006), mainly due to its Gorn and Camp appeal, the revelation that it was subject to heavy Executive Meddling, and actually trying to remake the original instead of being derailed into a borderline misandrist Author Tract.
• Superman Returns, while not a Box Office Bomb, did start out with a tepid reaction from fans, many of whom thought a full reboot should've been the route taken rather than a sequel to Superman II that just ignores Superman III, Supergirl (1984), and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. However, at first due to the reactions to Zack Snyder's DC films and Brandon Routh playing a well-received version of his Superman inspired by Kingdom Come, the film is seen in a better light.
• Despite good critical reception, Children of Men failed to break even among a sea of similarly ambitious 2006 releases. As a result of the less-than-impressive returns, director Alfonso Cuarón would go more than half a decade without any directorial work. Its DVD sales have been more generous, elevating it to mainstream popularity as one of the greatest sci-fi films of the 2000s.
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was hounded by release issues: it was originally scheduled for September 2006, then February 2007, before finally being released in September of 2007, almost two years after filming wrapped. Given a limited release, the film grossed just over $15 million, slightly more than half of its $30m budget. DVD releases of the film have helped it significantly.
• Lars and the Real Girl didn't recoup its budget during its initial theatrical release in 2007, though it was critically acclaimed. Today it's well-regarded by such outlets as (but not limited to) Christian media as a textbook example of tolerance (believe it or not, considering the film's less-than-wholesome premise).
• P2 received mixed to negative reviews for being a typical obsessive stalker film that mixed in elements of Torture Porn and was a massive box office bombs, being mostly forgotten about shortly after. As the years went by, it became more popular among audiences and has become a bit of a Cult Classic due to it's association with Christmas and the two lead actors having become more recognized, Wes Bentley was known from American Beauty, but he starred in more films that garnered him in attention, such as Interstellar.
• Speed Racer was an enormous critical and commercial bomb upon its release in 2008. However, as the years have gone on, the film has found several defenders and even a decent sized fanbase, with even Time Magazine and Den of Geek looking back at the film as being underappreciated, and is sometimes even favorably compared to works like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Pacific Rim in terms of "anime-influenced films". It’s probably the most well-liked anime Live-Action Adaptation prior to Alita: Battle Angel and One Piece (2023)
• 2008's In Bruges recouped its budget twice over (and won Colin Farrell a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy), but opened to mixed reviews, with a lot of reviewers viewing it as just another British gangster in the vein of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. It came to be appreciated more over time due to its intimate portrayal of very human characters (who defy the genre standard of being cool, quick witted badasses) and its absolutely beautiful cinematography.
• Steven Soderbergh's 2008 film Che, a biopic of Che Guevara, has built up a very high profile in the two years since its theatrical bombing (having made $41 million on a $58 million budget).
• 2008's The Hurt Locker never got a wide release and grossed just $17 million in theatres, despite near-unanimous critical acclaim (the disappointing box office mainly due to Summit having higher hopes on flops such as Bandslam, Sorority Row, and Astro Boy). However, the film managed to became a huge hit on DVD and won several Academy Awards (including Best Picture).
• Indie filmmaker Duncan Jones debuted with a sci-fi drama called Moon. Getting little attention in 2009 apart from the film festival circuit (with a gross of $7 million, it barely made its money back), Moon has since taken off on home video and propelled Jones to the director's seat on a number of top Hollywood projects.
• The 2009 horror-comedy Jennifer's Body met a poor reception from both critics and audiences at the time, with a 43% on Rotten Tomatoes and a C- CinemaScore, and while it made its money back due to its low budget, it was still a box office disappointment. It killed the buzz that Megan Fox had after Transformers (2007), and it also cast a cloud over the then-white-hot career of its writer Diablo Cody, who was following up her Oscar win for Juno. Nowadays, it's hailed as an unsung classic of feminist horror, one that was ahead of its time in both its treatment of rape culture and in how it portrayed the friendship of its two teenage girl leads, and which had the misfortune of being marketed as a campy sex romp and alienating its target audience while being a victim of the pop culture Hype Backlash against both Fox (seen as a vapid glamour model after Transformers) and Cody (seen as a hipster one-trick pony after Juno).
• The extent to which Trick 'r Treat was Screwed by the Studio is somewhat legendary. After its planned release in 2007 was delayed indefinitely (either to avoid competition with Saw IV, to punish writer/director Michael Dougherty and producer Bryan Singer for the disappointment of Superman Returns, or due to squeamishness over its depiction of children getting brutally murdered), it only saw the light of day at festival screenings. However, Dougherty wasn't prepared to give up on it, nor were the rabid fans it made at those screenings. Warner Bros. finally dumped it on DVD in 2009, whereupon it gained significant traction from the internet and word of mouth. Nowadays, many people consider it a Halloween classic, and judge most other modern anthology films, horror-comedies, and Halloween movies in general by the standard it set.
• A minor example with Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The former was widely seen as vastly inferior to the first film, and the latter was somewhat of an improvement, but it was seen as too little, too late. With the releases of Transformers: Age of Extinction and Transformers: The Last Knight, the first two sequels to Transformers (2007) are looked upon more favorably, with many recognizing the various merits in those films. While they still have many detractors, most of the haters have gone forward to attack the newer films, and defenders point out the Narm Charm provided by Shia Labeouf, the Visual Effects of Awesome, the Awesome Music provided not just by Steve Jablonsky, but also Linkin Park (especially after the passing of Chester Bennington), and the more interesting cast of characters.

In-universe examples

• Cloud Atlas: Sonmi's actions make her go from being the face of a rebellion to an outright god worshiped by Zachary and his tribe.

---