< Vindicated by History

Vindicated by History/Film


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Animated Films

  • Disney:
    • Pinocchio, Fantasia and Bambi are nowadays regarded as three of the greatest animated films of all time, but were all huge flops, both critically and financially, on their original releases. World War II cost Disney the foreign market (that helped make Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs so successful), although other factors contributed to the films' failures (listed below with each film). Their combined failures nearly destroyed Walt Disney Studios. Even after they recovered from the debacle, Disney never again experimented with such risky films, opting for safer, more commercial and profitable ventures instead. However, Walt did live to see the films gain the reputations they truly deserved.
      • Pinocchio (1940) was considered too episodic by some critics, and audiences proved to NOT be in the mood for such fanciful fare during WWII.
      • Fantasia (1940), in a nutshell, was too far ahead of its time. Most theaters refused to install the special "Fantasound" speakers needed to create the surround sound which Walt had planned the film to use, and many critics derided the film as pretentious. Yes, the Animation Age Ghetto existed before the trope did. The failure of Fantasia crushed Walt, who abolished plans to make any sequels (and this was the only film he wanted to make a sequel to).
      • Bambi (1942), like Fantasia, was a victim of being too far ahead of its time. Critics derided it as pretentious and overly introspective compared to everything that had come before. Oh, and lets not bring Bambification into this either, please.
    • The following decade had its ups and downs. Cinderella, Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp were big hits. But:
      • Alice in Wonderland (1951) was a financial failure. Like Fantasia, it was rediscovered in The Sixties and became popular among the counter-culture and a new generation of fans that didn't care that they weren't the Disney Princess fare.
      • Sleeping Beauty (1959) in particular devastated Walt Disney and almost convinced him to abandon animated feature production altogether. The Xerox process pioneered by One Hundred and One Dalmatians and used in subsequent films lowered production costs substantially, which played a pivotal role in Disney's continued animated film production.
    • A number of Disney disappointments after Walt's death recuperated on a small scale, either when re-released to theaters or when debuting on home video.
      • Many are cult hits (e.g. The Black Cauldron).
      • The first completely independent of Walt, Robin Hood (1973), was wracked by the company's financial problems of the 1970s, resulting in severe corner-cutting in its production. It made money, but was panned by contemporary critics, and was considered Disney's worst film to date internally. However, VHS made it one of Disney's most beloved classics in the 1980s and 1990s.
      • While not panned - they're both graded Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes - The Hunchback of Notre Dame and |Hercules were widely criticized for Bowdlerizing a classic work of literature and classical mythology, respectively. Both, however, are now often viewed as being massive steps in the right direction after the disappointing Pocahontas, and genuinely good films in their own right: Hunchback gets a lot of praise for being one of the darkest Disney films and quite possibly having Alan Menken's greatest soundtrack, while Herc is often viewed as one of the funniest films in the canon, as well as providing the most genuinely likeable villain since Ratigan in Hades.
      • Some other Disney flops from the Turn of the Millennium, such as Atlantis the Lost Empire and Treasure Planet have gained a lot of fans because they aren't musicals. The Emperor's New Groove is even more vindicated - it's nowadays viewed as being one of the best animated comedies of all time, and considered an unsung classic.
  • What's Opera, Doc? by Chuck Jones took several weeks longer to make than the standard Looney Tunes short, and Jones gave it a grand Hollywood premiere nearing the scale of a feature-length movie. His aim was the ultimate Bugs Bunny cartoon. His work was not rewarded at the time by animation critics or by the Academy. After 35 years it became one of the first pieces of animation inducted into the National Film Registry, arguably the highest reward in American cinema. Before Steamboat Willie!
    • Similarly, two particular characters from Warner's Golden Age, Marvin the Martian and Tasmanian Devil, each appeared in only five shorts in the 1950s and garnered no popularity at the time. They have become major Looney Tunes supporting stars since the Golden Age ended, aging much better than a number of characters who appeared in 10 or more Golden Age shorts.
  • Yellow Submarine, released near the peak of Beatlemania, was nevertheless compared unfavourably to other cartoons of the period, especially Disney product. It took a few decades for the film to eventually gain its tremendous fanbase.
  • Tim Burton's stop-motion short film Vincent.
  • Don Bluth:
    • The Secret of NIMH. It was a hit with the critics but financially the results were less than impressive against Disney Studio fare of the time, and (because it was 1982) against ET the Extraterrestrial). NIMH is currently the most popular work of Don Bluth, Disney's fiercest competitor.
    • All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989) earned about 27 million in the United States market and the professional reviews were mostly negative, but it became a smash hit when released on video, considered "one of the top-selling VHS releases of all time". It is currently highly regarded by animation fans.
  • Twice Upon a Time.
  • The animated Transformers: The Movie from 1986. Universally panned by critics in its day, an absolute bomb at the box offices, the target audience cried at the deaths of beloved characters and rejected the newly introduced nobodies... 20 years later it was a constant hot seller on video and DVD, and continues to be to this very day, with "anniversary" and "reconstructed" and "ultimate" editions being released every few years. Fans widely believe it to be the quintessential piece of 1980s "Transformers Generation 1" fiction. The Transformers Wiki offers a simple explanation:

On a practical note, it was widely available on videotape, and remained so long after the The Transformers cartoon had gone off the air. Only a handful of series episodes were available on video, making The Transformers: The Movie the logical choice for someone looking to pick up a Transformers cartoon; this made it far more well-known among fans than any particular cartoon episode.

  • The Brave Little Toaster (1987) received a limited theatrical release and had no real box office results. It only became a hit when released on VHS in 1991. It went to become popular with 1990s animations fans and currently has a reputation as an animated gem.
  • Batman: Mask of the Phantasm performed poorly at the box office (a $5.6 million gross versus a $6 million budget), slowly gaining a stronger audience through VHS release. It is now known around the internet as "The greatest Batman film prior to The Dark Knight."
    • Some still put it ahead of The Dark Knight.
    • This situation deserves a little more explanation: Phantasm was intended to be a straight-to-video release, but Warner Brothers decided to release it theatrically at the last possible moment, giving them practically no time to promote it.
    • Siskel & Ebert reviewed it, and generally liked it better than Batman Returns, except for one thing - the voice of the Joker. They seemed not to know that the voice was done by Mark Hamill, whose Joker work is now considered the best Joker voice and one of the best period.
  • The Iron Giant tanked domestically (a $23.2 million gross versus a $70 million budget), a feat that wasn't helped by Warner Brothers' botched marketing for the film. Upon hitting VHS, it became the best-selling animated film of its year (even outperforming Tarzan), and was the film that convinced John Lasseter to produce Brad Bird's pet project The Incredibles (which naturally turned into another Pixar megablockbuster). It routinely receives marathon airings on Cartoon Network, and has been regarded as one of the best animated films of the 90's.

Live-Action Films, 1893-1979

  • D. W. Griffith's Intolerance was such a failure that it bankrupted his studio—even though his preceding 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 silent films, while Birth of a Nation, despite having pioneered many filmmaking techniques, is best remembered now for its jaw-dropping levels of Values Dissonance on account of its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan.
  • The German Expressionists
    • Well-regarded filmmaker F.W. Murnau provides several examples:
      • Nosferatu was taken down by the estate of Bram Stoker, due to it being quite obviously a rip-off of Dracula, and only survived in the form of pirated copies until Dracula entered the public domain (or more precisely, was discovered to have been public domain all along in the US). It single-handedly launched the idea of sunlight killing vampires.
      • The three now-landmark films he made in the United States -- Sunrise, City Girl and Tabu—were unable to recoup their cost in their day.
    • Fritz Lang's Metropolis had the most advanced special effects of any film from the silent era, which nearly bankrupted the UFA Studio. The original Berlin premiere in 1927 was not a failure; however, the film did become one when its American distributor got hold of it and made drastic edits. Thanks to a 95%-ish complete print found in Argentina in 2008, fans of sci-fi are rediscovering just how much of a masterpiece it really is.
    • G.W. Pabst's silent version of Pandora's Box, considered today to be one of the greatest examples of Weimar Cinema, was overlooked by German audiences of the late 20s.
  • Charlie Chaplin
    • A Woman of Paris was a flop due in part to Chaplin's acting absence (apart from a cameo where he is 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 towards immortality.
    • Monsieur Verdoux suffered similar misunderstanding. Critics and audiences in America, expecting the lighted-hearted humor of Chaplin's Tramp films, instead got a bleak and edgy murder-mystery-comedy, so people backed away from it in disgust. A European fanbase sprouted a few years later, but American never fully embraced Verdoux until the 1970s.
  • Buster 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.
    • 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.
  • The Executive Meddling on Erich Von Stroheim's Greed caused the film's plotline to be extremely compromised (this is understandable since the final cut Von Stroheim prepared for theaters was EIGHT HOURS LONG). By the time Greed reached cinemas, it was in a sorry hacked-apart state that noone found interesting. Critics and the public have since embraced the elements of the film that survived.
  • The silent 20s 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. MGM therefore counted it a failure. Nevertheless it continued to build income for the studio in rereleases over the following decades, doing astounding business until topped by the Charlton Heston remake.
  • The rise of the talkies in 1928 destroyed the box-office potential of two major releases from MGM: King Vidor's The Crowd and Victor Sjostrom's The Wind. Both have been hailed in recent years as highlights of silent cinema.
  • The majority of Carl Theodor Dreyer's works were flops. The Passion of Joan of Arc took several decades to find re-evaluation.
  • October faced a deadly critical and box-office blow in the Soviet Union when it didn't conform to the 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.
  • 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.
  • The Three Stooges made hundreds of 10-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, failed to click with the sensibilities of Great Depression moviegoers. It is now one of the more critically acclaimed Stooge episodes.
  • 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.
  • Leo McCarey.
    • The Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup was considered a box-office disappointment when it was released in 1933. Today, it's 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 1930's and the only film to have been screened at the Telluride Film Festival three times (due to audience demand). Mc Carey himself even felt it was his masterpiece.
  • Werewolf of London flopped on its intial release in 1935 and was criticized for being too similar to the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptation released in 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).
  • 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.
    • It's a Wonderful Life was one of Capra's most financially unsuccessful features, and suffered critical indifference. About three decades later, it was recognized as a timeless and inspirational holiday classic.
  • Bringing Up Baby was just too weird for cinemagoers of the late '30s. Today it is regarded as among the best comedies of the late 30s, and an artistic jewel in the crown of director Howard Hawks.
  • The Wizard of Oz barely made its money back. Critics and audiences liked it, 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 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.
  • Orson Welles
    • Coming off of resounding success as a Broadway actor/producer and as the mastermind of the infamous The War of the Worlds radio adaptation, Welles moved his business and his circle of friends (both known as Mercury) to LA for his motion picture debut: Citizen Kane. It was an epic human drama for which he amassed the greatest crew he could possibly find, and he had high hopes for it. But the whole thing was seemingly destroyed by a fiasco involving media mogul William Randolph Hearst, who heard rumors that Charles Kane was based on him in an unfavorable light. Hearst ensured that on its release the film would be poorly publicized: 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. Kane lost money in its 1941 initial run, and was even booed at the Academy Awards. RKO, the movie’s distributor, saw just enough merit in Kane not to sell all prints of it to Hearst for incineration (like a certain object in the movie itself), and at any rate it seemed doomed to fade in the mists of time ... Then in 1956, RKO lost control of part of its film library and Kane made its first appearance on television. Around this time, respected, high-profile European directors such as Francois Truffaut started pointing to it as a prime example of auteur cinema. From that point onward Kane‍'‍s reputation continued to grow, and now this film is consistently ranked the #1 movie of all time in various polls on the subject of which movies are truly the greatest.
    • Screenings of The Magnificent Ambersons, based on the novel by Booth Tarkington, were 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 40s. Nowadays, while it might not be as fantastically unforgettable as Citizen Kane, it is regarded reasonably high.
    • Orson had initially exhibited a level on control over his work envied by many of his peers. The failure of Kane and Ambersons dramatically altered his career in that for the rest of it he had to fight with every breath in his body for the creative control he needed to make great films. The theatrical bombing of the majority of his output (which have since been recognized as a slew of masterpieces) and the resulting lack of warm welcome for him in Hollywood (at least until the 70s when mega-moneymakers like Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola cited him as an influence) is one of the biggest tragedies in cinema history.
    • Of his subsequent works, The Lady From Shanghai stands out as rising above the financial loss and mixed critical reaction into the status of classic film noir.
    • Touch of Evil is another Welles work worth mentioning. It was the last movie that Orson made in Hollywood itself, before moving to Europe and becoming a half-hermit. Recognized today as an awesome thriller and one of the last artistic triumphs of the Golden Age, it failed miserably in its first run.
  • Preston Sturges's work was known for its decidedly offbeat humor. Sometime 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 dark comedies.
  • 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's hailed as a comedy masterpiece.
  • Despite winning the Best Picture Oscar, Casablanca was treated by audiences and critics in 1942 as So Okay It's Average. The current reputation of the film is colossal.
  • David Lean
    • Blithe Spirit, regarded today as a masterful adaptation of the Noel 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.
  • 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 that was beloved in the West for what Japanese critics believed was mere exotica and over-rating 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. 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 the even greater classics 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. Subsequent generations of viewers have become more appreciative of the artistry in those two works.
  • Ace in the Hole, recognized today as a highlight of the career of Billy Wilder, was a flop.
  • The Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol, by far the most beloved film adaptation of Dickens's story, 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 Eisenhower, who was a huge fan of the film and started the tradition of White House High Noon screenings. 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 labelled.
  • 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.
  • Gojira (1954), the first of the Godzilla series, 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 very year due to the testing of the world's first hydrogen bomb. It is now considered to be one of the greatest Japanese movies ever made. 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 non-dubbed, original version of the film in 2004 (most for the first time), they raved about it.
  • The Night of the Hunter was neither a critical, nor a commercial success, when it came out. Today, it's considered a masterpiece.
  • The Searchers was reviled by audiences in 1956, particularly for John Wayne's performance as a bigoted antihero and the underlying negative portrayal of Americans in the Old West. Now 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.
  • Nicholas Ray
    • Bigger Than Life, a commercial disaster that stained Nicholas 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 been given the Blu-ray treatment by Criterion.
    • When King of Kings came out it was treated like a joke, but at present has reached the critical reverence of The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur and other high-profile Biblical epics.
  • 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.
  • Stanley Kubrick is the master of being vindicated. Nearly all of his films divided audiences in 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.
    • Paths of Glory, another early Kubrick classic which is considered one of the most poignant stories of war ever told, failed on its first release.
    • 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), but 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 2nd-highest-grossing film of 1968 (this is usually referred to as a "sleeper hit").
    • A Clockwork Orange was relatively successful, but so controversial that it divided audiences whether it was really a good film. Many serious reviews from that time dismiss it as merely "a film that glorifies sex and violence." The copy-cat crimes inspired by this film didn't help matters very well either. 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 high-profile directors like Quentin Tarantino.
  • Critics and audiences in the late 50s, 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.
  • 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-evealuated in the following decades as a 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 Nine has been lovingly dubbed the worst movie of all time.
  • Peeping Tom ruined the career of one of England's greatest directors, Michael Powell. It's now considered a masterpiece on par with Psycho in the serial-killer genre.
  • 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.
  • Sergio Leone
  • 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 nowadays as a classic fantasy.
  • The most ambitious work of Jacques Tati was Playtime, which tanked in 1967. Guess which of Tati's films is the first (and so far only) 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 ten years. Nowadays it's recognized as a countercultural classic.
  • The Producers by Mel Brooks (1968) was not well-received at all upon its theatrical debut, 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 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 60s 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.
  • Tora! Tora! Tora! flopped in the U.S., only picking up its classic status after home video release in the following decade.
  • The weirdness of Harold and Maude wasn't in sync with the early 70s, what with a teenage boy having a romance with an octogenarian woman, and it failed horribly. People have since come to understand the film's finer qualities better, and its repuation has skyrocketed.
  • Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory found its audience through TV and home video after a disappointing theatrical run in 1971 (a time when family movies just weren't big draws)... and after Paramount's rights were transferred to Warner Bros.
  • 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.
  • Nicolas Roeg
    • Walkabout flopped in 1971 and critics were mainly unresponsive, but it gradually rose in stature.
    • 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.
  • McCabe and 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 the most popular work of Herzog.
  • 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's still in limited release. It is the longest run of any movie, hands down.
    • In some places, it never stopped running. It's rare, but there are a few theaters that have shown it every Friday night since it first premiered.
  • The original 1976 Assault on Precinct 13 by John Carpenter was made on a very small budget, and had lukewarm criticial reception and unimpressive box office returns. This was no doubt in large part thanks to it being largely a modern western, and American audiences had become desaturated from the huge number of western films being released just around 1976. However, when shown in Europe, it gained both critical acclaim and was a box office hit, as European audiences were less familiar with the westerns. It subsequently underwent a reevaluation in the States, and is now considered to be one of the best action film of the 70s, and is a a true Cult Classic in its own right.
  • 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.
  • Slap Shot was not a well received movie 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 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 it is a recognized cult classic.
  • Milos Forman's adaptation of the rock musical Hair (theatre) did poorly at the box office despite critical praise. Many, many people have embraced the film version in subsequent years.

Live-Action Films, 1980-present

  • After Taxi Driver, the legendary Martin Scorsese made the disastrous New York New York (which so far hasn't quite been vindicated), 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. 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 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 believed spoiled the whole thing. 10 years later it was hailed by every film poll as Scorsese's masterpiece and the ultimate example of 80s 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.
    • The Last Temptation of Christ was absolutely DESPISED on its initial release, with its stylistic innovation on the Biblical genre 100% ignored. Scorsese's career could have ended soonafter. Luckily, his next film was Goodfellas, a massive critical and commercial hit. Thus the losing streak ended.
  • 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. 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's been listed among the 30 best screenplays ever, the 10 best comedies ever made, and more recently, 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.
  • The Empire Strikes Back became the second highest-grossing film at the time, second only to the original Star Wars, but critics didn't know what to make of its Downer Ending. It's now considered by many to be the best Star Wars film.

"Empire" had the better ending. I mean, Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader's his father, Han gets frozen and taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that's what life is, a series of down endings. All "Jedi" had was a bunch of Muppets.

    • The prequels themselves are starting to be seen in a better light due to their original concepts as oppose to The Force Awakens's rehash of the plot of A New Hope
  • The Stunt Man failed financially and didn't gain many positive reviews, but over time has amassed enormous popularity.
  • The Shining actually got Stanley Kubrick[1] nominated for Worst Director at the first ever Razzie awards. Shocking to imagine today.
  • It seems that after the blockbuster success of his slasher flick Halloween, John Carpenter just couldn't catch a break.
    • 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 Metal Gear Solid, ReBoot, and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy being only a few examples.
    • The 1982 The Thing, competing against Steven Spielberg's ET the Extraterrestrial, was a flop at the box office (making only $13.8 million in the US against a $15 million budget) and critically panned when it first came out but is highly regarded these days; it spawned a comic book and a video game and regularly appears on lists of the best sci-fi and horror movies ever made.
    • Starman was lukewarm, but over time 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 Eighties.
  • 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 80s.
  • Blade Runner, now recognized as a seminal work of dystopian science fiction and neo-noir, did okay but was not particularly successful during its first theatrical run, due to competition from ET the Extraterrestrial and from Executive Meddling to make the story more "uplifting". It remained a footnote in Harrison Ford's career and in sci-fi until a Director's Cut was released ten years afterward.
  • Tron turned a tiny profit but in the same vein was no competition against ET the Extraterrestrial, 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. In 2010, more than twenty years later, it had a sequel released. It doesn't hurt that TRON directly inspired Disney's Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter to make feature-length computer-animated movies...
  • The non-Muppet non-Sesame Street movies by Jim Henson are a major example.
    • The Dark Crystal.
    • Labyrinth, an outright flop in the summer of 1986 (costing $25 million and making $12.7 million). Once cable and VHS picked it up, it grew a significant fanbase. In fact ever since its initial DVD release in 1999, it's been among Sony's biggest sellers, and Spiritual Successor Mirror Mask was created on a small budget and given a limited release specifically because the company wanted to create another cult hit.
  • David Cronenberg's Videodrome lost money in theaters (a $2.1 million gross versus a $6 million budget) and is now one of the most recognized Canadian-made films outside of Canada.
  • A Christmas Story was financially lukewarm, and the critics were pretty mixed. Now it's a very popular holiday classic.
  • Eddie and the Cruisers.
  • Once Upon a Time in America, Sergio Leone's companion piece to Once Upon a Time in the West, failed miserably (a $5.3 million gross versus a $20 million budget). This may come as a big shock to some, since it currently has one of the highest reputations of any film in history.
  • Rob Reiner.
    • This Is Spinal Tap, upon initial theatrical release, 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 "mockumentaries" 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.
  • David Lynch.
    • Dune cost $40 million and made $29.8 million in theaters, flopping mainly because Lynch's directorial vision was compromised by Sid Scheinberg. It's considerably more popular nowadays, mainly thanks to the internet.
    • Blue Velvet didn't turn much 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.
  • 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. Burton went on to become a successful director and finally the short saw home video release. And a quarter of a century later, Burton is going to remake 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 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.
  • The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai.
  • Three of Terry Gilliam's failures are currently among his more famous creations:
  • Akira Kurosawa's[2] 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 largely of disinterest and the Japanese film board actively sabotaged its chances of being nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar. Nowadays, it's widely considered among Akira Kurosawa's masterpieces and among the best movies of all time.
  • Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo.
  • Highlander.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Licence to Kill was initially another disappointment of the blockbuster-heavy summer of 1989, further hurt by comparisons to the 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. License to Kill has since been re-evaluated as among the best installments of the franchise.
    • Timothy Dalton's overall taciturn, violent portrayal of Bond is now considered to be almost prophetic, as it heralded 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.
  • Mystery Train by Jim Jarmusch.
  • 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 and particularly from fans of the Coens.
    • 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 sizeable fandom.
    • The Big Lebowski made $17 million in the United States, enough to recoup its $15 million budget but not nearly enough to be considered a success. It remained a dud in the US (although it managed to turn a sizeable 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 US state.
    • Before all of these were the first two Coen films in the 80s, 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 1992 film Hoffa lost money and divided critics but since then has established a high reputation.
  • Dazed and Confused.
  • The Shawshank Redemption was released to critical acclaim and a handful of Oscar nominations. Box office success? Not so much, as it was very much 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 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 did not make much money during its North American theatrical run (a $37 million gross versus a $63 million budget), and received very mixed reviews. However, it quickly developed a large and loyal cult following, to the point that people creating "real Fight Clubs" made headlines. Hardly anyone hasn't heard the film's most famous quotes.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Zoolander was wounded at the box office by the September 11th attacks on the Trade Center and the Pentagon, which took place the previous week. The world was therefore not in the mood for comedy. Since then the film has more than made up for the theatrical misfortune with DVD sales, and Ben Stiller has discussed the development of a sequel.
  • Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World.
  • Punch-Drunk Love, dismissed back in 2002 because of the widespread disbelief that Adam Sandler would be able to pull off a more dramatic role.
  • The 2003 theatrical cut of Daredevil bombed domestically 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. Several months 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. Today, the Director's Cut is heralded as one of the best Marvel films ever released.
  • Any of Edgar Wright's movies:
    • Shaun of the Dead, with a $5m budget, made a profit at the UK and US box office. 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, 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.
    • Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has become a smash hit on DVD and Blu-Ray after a dismal reception in theaters.
  • Serenity, the 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.
  • Stranger Than Fiction, while never really panned by critics, only received moderate critical acclaim upon it's release (mostly because of skepticism towards Will Ferrel's acting abilities). Today it stands a possibly one of the strongest films of 2006, usually highly regarded for it's effective life message and it's powerhouse cast.
  • Quentin Tarantino's and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse.
  • Lars and the Real Girl.
  • The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford.
  • Che has built up a very high profile in the two years since its theatrical bombing (having made $41 million on a $58 million budget).
  • Speed Racer. When it was released in 2008, it was a critical and commercial flop. Now, it is becoming a cult classic, with many now calling it underrated, one of the most faithful adaptations ever, and groundbreaking in terms of visuals. Later films such as Scott Pilgrim, Tron: Legacy, and Sucker Punch would also use inspiration for their visuals from the film.
  • The Hurt Locker. It 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.
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  1. ↑ Check the 1916-1979 category for more on him
  2. ↑ Check the 1916-1979 category for more on him
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