Films that may have flopped but not because of you, because you did your part and bought a ticket.
Blade Runner. It did very poorly at the box office, and the critics were lukewarm at best, but I loved it. I was a big fan of Philip K. Dick, so a film by Ridley Scott based on one of his novels was right up my alley. I dragged my friend to see it the week it came out, and I was blown away. Even back then I wasn’t alone. It almost immediately became a cult film that regularly played in smaller repertory theaters.
I remember reading an interview with Arthur C. Clarke back then where he mentioned that he had recently spoken with Stanley Kubrick, and Kubrick had said that Blade Runner was the most visually beautiful film he had ever seen.
There was this duplex in '82 that was showing Blade Runner (rated R) on one screen and Clint Eastwood’s Cold War thriller Firefox (rated PG) on the other. As an unaccompanied teen I had to see Firefox, but I do remember that Vangelis soundtrack, which you could hear from the lobby area. I really wanted to see it then, but it didn’t happen until I rented the VHS tape a year later, maybe even a bit longer than that.
I feel like the sequel had similar problems. I think it did end up making its money back but based on what they spent vs what it made it wasn’t a home run at all. But everyone I’ve talked to who has seen it thought it was great, myself included.
I get the feeling that both the original and the sequel are the kind of film where word of mouth just doesn’t do it for some reason. I had a friend years ago who mentioned that she had never seen Blade Runner, and immediately followed that by saying not to bother telling her how good it was.
Super Mario Bros. - I’m sorry for Hopper & Hoskins’ experiences (RIP). But between the directorial chaos, editorial saves, and constant drunkenness, they turned out a pretty solid dark cyberpunk movie that feels more like “two New York plumbers save the day” than the recent movie. The visuals mostly still hold up, the story is okay. There’s maybe a few things that could be improved, but overall I don’t think it’s all that bad.
Weird Al’s UHF is hilarious and would have done well except that it came out the same weekend as a whooole bunch of other classic movies. The weekend of July 21, 1989 the other movies you could see were:
- Ghostbusters II
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- When Harry Met Sally
- Dead Poet’s Society
- Batman
- Lethal Weapon 2
- Weekend at Bernie’s
- Karate Kid III
I really enjoyed The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It got panned by the critics and didn’t do well at the box office, but seems to be being more accepted recently.
It’s a fun ride, but I don’t know if I can say it’s exactly a good movie. It’s trying to scratch that same adventure itch as The Mummy or Indiana Jones, but I don’t think it does it quite as well.
I don’t think The Emperor’s New Groove did well in the theaters, but it is one of the best Disney movies of its time.
Funnily enough it did fine at the box office but because it was positioned at the end of Disney’s “golden age” and made noticeably less than any other Disney movie of the era, they pivoted away from it to the point where many people assume it’s a DreamWorks or Universal animated flick.
Emperor’s New Groove and Lilo & Stitch were also two of the last few times Disney put out something original. The last two decades of Disney releases have mostly been franchises they’ve bought from others or remakes of older Disney films that weren’t even their original stories to begin with, e.g. Star Wars, MCU, 20th Century Fox, Pixar, a majority of Disney classics.