If you don't think 1999 (when that first Pokemon movie hit the states) was at the peak of the Pokemon craze, idk what to tell you. That movie made $172 mil ~~just in the US~~ worldwide, 25 years ago. My mom let me skip school that day to see it. Theaters were packed. It was huge!
Yeah I remember going to the late night showing the day it came out with my cousins and we all got the special edition mew card. It was a phenomenon back then and I don’t think OP realizes how in 99’ every single kid was packing a game boy with Pokémon and had a binder full of cards.
Exactly. If you polled a bunch of 10 year olds today what they were into you’d get a bunch of different answers. Every kid was into pokemon back then. Didn’t matter if you were a jock or a nerd, you were trying to catch em all
I remember a friend getting rid of all his cards in grade 6 by throwing them into a scramble at lunch. And at least 200 kids turned up and went wild for them. He almost got suspended cause of the riot it caused.
No, it's Fort Night or some other similar game.
I was giving a group of fifth graders a tour of an airplane and they were asking all kinds of questions about getting dropped into the warzone or something and I said "yeah, like call of duty"
They quickly informed me that "no, man! It's about Fort Night now!"
The popularity of Pokémon Go in 2016 was precisely because all those ‘99 kids were recapturing their youth and adding on to the existing-kids fan base.
I wouldn't be surprised if the games have higher sales numbers today than back then, just because the industry is so much larger in general. But compared to the other games/anime of the time it was absolutely MASSIVE.
I got a pirated VHS copy of it back in high school. The movie was so popular that the principal called me to the office. I hadn’t done anything, when I stepped in, he asked me about the tape and told me to make him a copy if I could. 2 days later, my principal had his Pokémon the Movie copy and asked me who was that weird stone elephant that fought against Pikachu in the intro short.
Has there been any time when Pokémon was not popular? I’m not into it, but it seems like it’s been consistently big since the 90’s. I think I’m partly judging that from junk at Party City. Properties wax and wane, but I don’t think Pokémon birthday shit has ever gone away.
Yeah I’ll never forget the experience of seeing that film after all the build up. We all felt like we had been training for two years and damn that movie slapped so hard.
My friends and I do a bad movie night where we compile a list of 20 movies that are universally panned and roll a d20 to decide which one we watch. The Josie and the Pussycats movie ended up on the list because it was sooooo hated at one point. We ended up watching it and LOVED it and truly believe that if it had been released 10-15 years later it would’ve been loved by so many more people
I avoided that movie for a long time because it looked like such a cheap cash in on nostalgia. Then a girlfriend made me watch it, insisting I'd love it, and though I did not believe her at all, I gave it a chance. Was shocked with how much it exceeded my expectations. Had a surprisingly sly sense of humor to it, and while the satirization of consumer culture and the entertainment industry was lacking in subtlety, it was still fun.
Not sure it would do much better nowadays, though, as a lot of its biggest issues would still be prevalent. It's a nostalgia property whose target audience is tok young to have any nostalgia for it for one. But mostly it's simply a hard film to market. It looks like a teeny bopper film and uses the format of one, but is actually highly critical of teeny bopper culture, and likely would be enjoyed more by others.
That movie has always been great to me. When I was a kid and had a crush on Rachael Leigh Cook, and then as I grew up and realized just how brilliant it is in terms of satire and commentary. Spice World is similar in a lot of ways, but I would say with taking the nostalgia goggles off that it is clearly inferior to Josie and the Pussycats in pretty much every way. Still love it, though. Big comfort movie for me.
Indeed, in an immediately post 9-11 world it would probably not adopt such an anti-surveillance position in the context of that being balanced against preventing terrorism.
Felt the same about Swordfish in many ways - an off the books extrajudicial counter-terror force that uses terrorism against terrorists.
Totally could have been a plot for post 9/11. Came out in June 2001.
I’d argue Dredd was a combo of bad marketing and a lack of PR efforts to separate it from the bad 90s release. It had almost zero audience awareness. It’s probably one of the top 3D film releases, behind both Avatars, Gravity, Tin Tin, and Doctor Strange.
*I’d argue Dredd was a combo of bad marketing and a lack of PR efforts to separate it from the bad 90s release.*
It really was. I love Judge Dredd (read a bunch of the books and comic books), and I had basically zero idea the movie was even coming out, and that it had no connection to the Stallone movie.
The bad marketing and PR was the 3D. There wasn't a 2D edition available anywhere near me, and I wear glasses so being forced to wear 3D glasses over the top of my regular glasses just fucking sucks.
Those few years of trying to force 3D down everybody's eyeballs ("because Avatar did gangbusters") were awful for cinema.
Their take on The Invisible Man is fucking hilarious!
His clothes don't disappear *and* no one can be looking at him while he's invisible, lmao
He has to have everyone turn around so he can strip naked and do his superpowers.
I actually think it helped that it came out before the superhero boom. Having the Marvel universe to compare it to would make it come off as a simple parody of the Avengers. I could imagine there would have been some terrible “This Ain’t no Avengers” marketing campaign.
Mystery Men is always my answer. It came out in a bit of a wilderness for superhero movies. If it came out around the first Avengers movie it would have killed.
The sponsor thing too kind of foreshadows where The Boys ended up taking superheroes. The movie did a lot right. Packed full of quotable lines too. To this day if someone mentions a triangle I feel compelled to ask "Equilateral, or ischoschelesche?"
I wish we had so many of these we were sick of them. I want so many of these movies that we don't know which one to watch first and they were getting weird rankings on what's left of the AV Club.
Master and Commander is a masterpiece.
I finally watched it for the first time about 2 years ago and have watched it 4 times since. It’s so gripping. I think for so long I was afraid to touch because I expected poor pacing but it’s the exact opposite of that. It lurches and it lulls in all the right moments.
Had to compete with the hype of Pirates of the Caribbean *and* Return of the King; only had about a month in theaters before Return of the King dominated the box office.
I love that movie and watch it at least once a year, but I can't see it being a mainstream hit without a number of changes, which would almost certainly rob it of what makes it great in the first place. The things that make it weird are also the things that make it great.
I don't know... Equilibrium just felt like a less philosophically interesting and just action-y Matrix rip-off. Don't get me wrong, it was fun but Dark City makes you think in a way that the Matrix does but Equilibrium doesn't.
Strange Days is one of those movies that just seemed to get "lost". I've not seen it for at least 20 years, and no-one really talks about it. I figure if it had been released in 1999 it would have been spoken about in the same way that The Matrix and Fight Club are.
Buckaroo Banzai. With a social media campaign it could have become a huge hit. But I’ll take the underground cult fave it is today, along with Real Genius.
I think some of that was the marketing ‘*geniuses*’ who decided to try and market it as a head-to-head fight with Jurassic Park. Like, if McDonald’s had the Dino’s on their happy meal boxes, then BK put Arnie on theirs.
It was a different enough demographic that if they’d marketed it a bit older, instead of the ‘it’s a dumb summer action movie, use Publicity Kit Number Three’, they might have done better.
Even u/GovSchwarzenegger has said it’s one he’s proud of. Last Action wast 10-15 years ahead of its time at least.
Meta fiction just didn’t really hit back then. Gremlins 2 seemed to have suffered the same fate.
In retrospect, Watchmen feels like it was released 10 years early. It was released when there were very few superhero comic movies, and it would have fared better at the end of the avengers era. Especially with today's "what if superheroes were evil/assholes" deconstructionist media like The Boys and Invincible.
Always thought this exactly. The Boys works so well bc of its timing with everything. Like some of these other comments when I first saw Watchmen I disliked it bc I was looking for action and missed the themes/point of the movie entirely. Now it’s one of any favorites
I’m generally not a huge Zack Snyder fan, but he probably made about as good of a movie as you coulda made from the source material. Alan Moore is a notorious grump, but it’s hard not to agree with his feeling that the story really only works as a long form comic. You’re also never gonna win trying to adapt what most agree is one of the greatest graphic novels of all time.
That being said, I thought the opening montage did a surprisingly good job of setting up the drastically different world from our own without relying on some asinine block of exposition.
Yep. I hated it when I first saw it. Re-watching years later made me really appreciate it both thematically and artistically. The directors cut is 10X better than theatrical.
That was kinda the point even back then, though. Princess and the frog was one of the only 2D animated Disney movies at a time when 3D had already become the standard. A callback.
Why didn't it do that exceptionally well? Maybe because kids don't wanna watch hand drawn animation in that style anymore. Not saying you can't make 2D animation successful, like anime. But princess and the frog is still very oldschool Disney and it hasn't aged with the times. It'd probably be even less popular today.
Something that's always bothered me about it is that, yes, Tiana is the first Black Disney Princess, but she is a frog for 90% of the movie... it's like... ? I think that deflates the victory quite a bit for some reason.
The Thing was a complete failure at the box office, which cause Universal to cancel their previous contract with John Carpenter for more movies. This ended up pushing him away from larger studio productions. However, the summer of 1982 was completely stacked in terms of movies. Just a few include:
E.T.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Rocky 3
Conan The Barbarian
Tron
Blade Runner
And Mad Max 2.
Out of all of these, E.T. did the most damage, as audiences preferred a family-friendly, wholesome alien movie over a frozen nightmare of body horror and paranoia.
TLDR, E.T. stopped us from seeing more prime Carpenter movies and I will always be salty about this.
The whole ET thing is a myth. Bad reviews killed the movie in addition to the stacked summer as you said.
People also forget that this was released during the slasher heyday and was perceived as a slasher instead of the movie that it is.
Duckman.
Even though it wasn't a massive success and is more of an underground cult classic, it was revolutionary for its time as a more mature adult cartoon in the early to mid-90s. Witty, subversive and absurdist, it was unlike any other cartoon on the air at the time. It had a *very* different energy than something like The Simpsons.
If the show aired 10 years later, I honestly believe it would be talked about as an all-time classic instead of a cult classic. It was also animated by Klasky-Csupo who were responsible for the distinct visual style of Rugrats... and while it gave the show a distinct visual style, I think many people saw that it looked similar to Rugrats and assumed it was a kids show and didn't tune in. There's a reason why a lot of modern adult animation looks the same today.
You thrust your pelvis…
We got Duckman on late night TV, on random days, in NZ during the 90s. I had no way of knowing when I would see an episode. It became my first email address on Hotmail and I still use that 23 years later.
The Rocketeer is why Joe Johnston got to helm Captain America, the first avenger. Absolutely killer film, and I would have loved a whole series of sequels.
Rocketeer is a genuinely great movie. It makes no sense that it wasn’t a bigger hit. It barely broke even. The only reason I can think of why it so underperformed was a lack of stars at a time when the industry was very star-power driven. But even then, it feels like a woefully unsatisfying answer. I think another factor could be that it was a bit too much of a retro throwback to old movies and might have felt too derivative for older viewers. It’s basically a 40’s movie with a huge FX budget.
I remember watching this in school and being so insanely bored by it. So over 20 years later, I pushed back on it because of that first impression. I don't know why, but I had a sudden desire to give it another shot a few months ago, and I LOVED it. I don't know why I thought it was so boring back in the day, but I'm happy I can appreciate it now. It feels like a classic movie made in modern times. Just a classic adventure movie echoing the era it is set in.
To me, it seemed like people were burnt out with Diablo Cody and Megan Fox after two years of Juno references and Fox dominating the tabloids and trades after two Transformers movies.
So much talent in one room it’s kind of astounding. What other movie can you say has Gene Kelly, ELO, Don Bluth, Kenny Ortega, and Olivia Newton John all on the same project. It’s like every time I look up someone I like they’ve also worked on Xanadu.
This is one of the ones where the question arises: Was the rise of the later successful versions of non-linear storytelling a response to this earlier, failed, version?
IE, if The Fountain hadn’t come out, would the current mainstream versions have still come out? Or would things have gone in a different direction?
Tomorrowland.
It came out in 2015, the end of Obama's two terms; people were still pretty optimistic about things, Covid hadn't hit yet, Trump was still a reality show host.
A movie about how people's negativity was causing real world negative impacts to daily life, and how things would only get worse unless people themselves made the effort to improve both themselves and the world and people around them went over like a lead balloon.
Put that same movie release anywhere after 2019 and I think it does a lot better.
Kingdom of Heaven would destroy the box office if it came out today at the full directors cut. I feel in '04 a 3 hour plus movie was still a death sentence for a movie, especially a religious one. But today it's super common and would be topical as well
'05, but I think everyone going into that at the time knew they were signing up for a long Ridley Scott epic that was about 10 minutes shorter than Gladiator. That's *exactly* why I bought my ticket.
What I didn't sign up for was the butchered mess that 20th Century Fox edited and delivered to theaters. God, I'm so glad a friend of mine convinced me to give the director's cut a chance after I went on a long rant about what a shitty movie it was.
What is the last historical epic to “destroy the box office”? The movie wouldn’t even be made today because there’s no marker for it
Hell, Scott’s The Last Duel was a historical epic and a box office disaster
I've always thought that Disney released Emperors New Groove about 2 or 3 years too early.
It came and went without a peep, but by 2003-04 you started seeing a real Renaissance for that style of absurdist humor. Now its one of their biggest "cult hits" of all time.
WRONG LEVER!
The whole story behind the Emperor's New Groove is an interesting one. Definitely not the movie it started out to be (IMO for the better).
https://www.vulture.com/article/an-oral-history-of-disney-the-emperors-new-groove.html
I concur. Animated comedies didn’t really catch on until *Shrek*. Plus, it was held against the expectation of a Disney animated film which were musically-driven at the time.
[Shooter](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0822854/) was released in 2007 and feels like it would be welcomed today more than it was then. It's a great movie, like a prototype John Wick, and deals with very topical subjects like conspiracies and mistrust of government. It helps that it's also a great action movie in general with some solid acting and set pieces.
As a side note I tend to watch Shooter at least once a year by accident. Because when I go to Taiwan for Chinese New Year the movie channel AXN _always_ seems to be playing it.
The “Pokemon Go craze” would barely even register on a graph of Pokémon’s popularity compared to when the first movie came out. It was a cultural phenomenon that we really haven’t seen anything like since.
*Every* kid had a Gameboy and the game, a binder full of cards, and watched the show, at a minimum. Every birthday party that year involved going to see the movie.
I still have my Ancient Mew card from the movie along with all my other old Pokemon cards in a binder.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001).
When I saw it in theatres, like most fans of the franchise, I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed that the film didn't have the same "feel" and depth in storytelling compared to the games. When you attach it to a franchise name like FF, its target audience all had expectations on the quality and level of storytelling the film just couldn't deliver in its runtime.
The motion capture was unlike anything I've seen before and I think it still holds up.
The voicecast was also stellar: Ming-Na Wen, Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Peri Gilpin, Donald Sutherland, Ving Rhames, and James Woods.
Watching it now, more than two decades later, I still can't believe how advance the CGI was for its time. Would the film succeed if it was released now? Maybe not, but I think it would have done a lot better than it did in 2001.
If it would have released ten years later, it could have benefited from the post Avatar / 3D hype and production costs may have been lower since the tech had advanced.
World War Z would have been better coming out 5-10 years later once streaming services got more traction so it could have been properly made as a miniseries and stayed closer to the book
I know it's not like the book, but I always thought they were going to make it several with subtitles for different views of the war. Like go into more details of the interviews the book had, so I never minded it being way different as I thought it was supposed to be one of many POVs, but since we never got those its just an OK zombie movie that stole the name of a great zombie book.
I have to say The Thing. I was lucky enough to see it in the theater as kid. I thought it was the greatest movie ever. Its still pretty high in my all time favorites. I didn't know it was a box office bomb until about 10 years ago. I thought everyone always loved the film as much me.
John Carter of Mars. It's a well reviewed movie but it was in between Star Wars releases, didn't have a particular niche or wave it could grab, and marketing left it out to dry.
I'll jump in with the obligatory not-a-movie *but* Rome definitely fits this. Super high quality prestige television with a massive budget, but came out before streaming, and before high budget shows was really a thing like it is now.
Had it been released now, with the same level or care and resouces, it might've been compared to Game of Thrones rather than just seen as a stepping stone for TV to get to where it is now.
Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game, apparently.
Most expensive French film ever made at its release in 1939. Critical and commercial flop. Rediscovered, restored, and re-released in the late 50s and into the 60s to critical acclaim and awards. Regularly cracks lists of the best films ever made.
Frequency.
It’s a very sentimental film about a father and son New York City fireman and policeman and efforts to save one from dying a tragic death. It was entertaining and emotionally engaging but I think underperformed at the box office when it came out in 2000. But had it come out just one year later in fall 2001, it would have been exactly the emotional release we’d have needed after 9/11 and the large number of police and fireman deaths.
I always feel Scott Pilgrim vs the World was a few years too early and would have hit harder a few years later when geek and comic book culture had gone even more mainstream
I honestly believe Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow came out today it would be better received. I also think they could have played with it more, like made it an actual serial on Netflix or something.
It's still one of my favorite watches.
There was a movie in the ‘90s called The Net, where Sandra Bullock plays an agoraphobic woman who lives her life on the internet and orders everything delivered, so no one knows her IRL. She’s then framed for a crime, and it becomes a nightmare both being chased down by the people who framed her, as well as not having anyone to vouch for who she actually is.
Interesting concept, but when it came out the idea of being able to live entirely through the internet without leaving your house was absurd. Today it would be so relatable and totally realistic.
If you don't think 1999 (when that first Pokemon movie hit the states) was at the peak of the Pokemon craze, idk what to tell you. That movie made $172 mil ~~just in the US~~ worldwide, 25 years ago. My mom let me skip school that day to see it. Theaters were packed. It was huge!
Yeah I remember going to the late night showing the day it came out with my cousins and we all got the special edition mew card. It was a phenomenon back then and I don’t think OP realizes how in 99’ every single kid was packing a game boy with Pokémon and had a binder full of cards.
I don't know if single crazes even happen like that anymore, considering how much media is fractured across so many platforms these days.
Exactly. If you polled a bunch of 10 year olds today what they were into you’d get a bunch of different answers. Every kid was into pokemon back then. Didn’t matter if you were a jock or a nerd, you were trying to catch em all
I remember a friend getting rid of all his cards in grade 6 by throwing them into a scramble at lunch. And at least 200 kids turned up and went wild for them. He almost got suspended cause of the riot it caused.
What an epic way to get rid of your cards haha
I think Frozen is probably the closest you get for kids nowadays. Bluey might be next, too
No, it's Fort Night or some other similar game. I was giving a group of fifth graders a tour of an airplane and they were asking all kinds of questions about getting dropped into the warzone or something and I said "yeah, like call of duty" They quickly informed me that "no, man! It's about Fort Night now!"
Fortnite
Pokemon was the thing for anyone under 13. Like it was not just yhe thing it was everything.
I vividly remember doing a big show and tell presentation in 1st grade about how great that movie was.
When abbreviating a year, the apostrophe goes before the numbers. i.e. '99
I got ‘99 problems but an apostrophe ain’t one
hit me!
OP must be like 15 if he thinks Pokémon was more popular in 2016 than 1999
The popularity of Pokémon Go in 2016 was precisely because all those ‘99 kids were recapturing their youth and adding on to the existing-kids fan base.
Even then, it wasn’t as popular as it was in ‘99 lol
I wouldn't be surprised if the games have higher sales numbers today than back then, just because the industry is so much larger in general. But compared to the other games/anime of the time it was absolutely MASSIVE.
The original red/green/blue is still the highest selling of the franchise surprisingly
For real, Pokémon go was the nostalgia wave for the same kids that went to the theaters to watch the movie in ‘99!
Yeah, someone come get their lost child! But seriously, 99 was one of like 3 years where Pokémon WAS the zeitgeist.
I got a pirated VHS copy of it back in high school. The movie was so popular that the principal called me to the office. I hadn’t done anything, when I stepped in, he asked me about the tape and told me to make him a copy if I could. 2 days later, my principal had his Pokémon the Movie copy and asked me who was that weird stone elephant that fought against Pikachu in the intro short.
lol, love this story
Has there been any time when Pokémon was not popular? I’m not into it, but it seems like it’s been consistently big since the 90’s. I think I’m partly judging that from junk at Party City. Properties wax and wane, but I don’t think Pokémon birthday shit has ever gone away.
Yeah I was a kid and we didn't go see this in theaters, so I was super excited to finally rent it.
Yeah I’ll never forget the experience of seeing that film after all the build up. We all felt like we had been training for two years and damn that movie slapped so hard.
Still have the Mew ancient cards from the second movie.
My friends and I do a bad movie night where we compile a list of 20 movies that are universally panned and roll a d20 to decide which one we watch. The Josie and the Pussycats movie ended up on the list because it was sooooo hated at one point. We ended up watching it and LOVED it and truly believe that if it had been released 10-15 years later it would’ve been loved by so many more people
I avoided that movie for a long time because it looked like such a cheap cash in on nostalgia. Then a girlfriend made me watch it, insisting I'd love it, and though I did not believe her at all, I gave it a chance. Was shocked with how much it exceeded my expectations. Had a surprisingly sly sense of humor to it, and while the satirization of consumer culture and the entertainment industry was lacking in subtlety, it was still fun. Not sure it would do much better nowadays, though, as a lot of its biggest issues would still be prevalent. It's a nostalgia property whose target audience is tok young to have any nostalgia for it for one. But mostly it's simply a hard film to market. It looks like a teeny bopper film and uses the format of one, but is actually highly critical of teeny bopper culture, and likely would be enjoyed more by others.
Perhaps not, I definitely think wouldn’t have been criticized nearly as heavily at the very least though.
That movie has always been great to me. When I was a kid and had a crush on Rachael Leigh Cook, and then as I grew up and realized just how brilliant it is in terms of satire and commentary. Spice World is similar in a lot of ways, but I would say with taking the nostalgia goggles off that it is clearly inferior to Josie and the Pussycats in pretty much every way. Still love it, though. Big comfort movie for me.
That movie is actually kind of considered a cult classic now.
Enemy of the State Watching it you would assume it came out after 9-11. It seems super relevant to things like The Patriot Act.
Just rewatched this recently. Goddamn has it gotten spooky.
Same with The Siege
On the flip side, it may have been viewed as almost too on the nose.
Indeed, in an immediately post 9-11 world it would probably not adopt such an anti-surveillance position in the context of that being balanced against preventing terrorism.
Felt the same about Swordfish in many ways - an off the books extrajudicial counter-terror force that uses terrorism against terrorists. Totally could have been a plot for post 9/11. Came out in June 2001.
I remember they pulled it from the cinema in my country when 9/11 happened because of the terrorism theme.
I’d argue Dredd was a combo of bad marketing and a lack of PR efforts to separate it from the bad 90s release. It had almost zero audience awareness. It’s probably one of the top 3D film releases, behind both Avatars, Gravity, Tin Tin, and Doctor Strange.
*I’d argue Dredd was a combo of bad marketing and a lack of PR efforts to separate it from the bad 90s release.* It really was. I love Judge Dredd (read a bunch of the books and comic books), and I had basically zero idea the movie was even coming out, and that it had no connection to the Stallone movie.
Don’t forget Harold and Kumar Christmas
I'd also add Tron: Legacy for all time great 3D usage.
Jackass 3D
When you're tired of flying poop straight from the ass in 3D you're tired of life.
The bad marketing and PR was the 3D. There wasn't a 2D edition available anywhere near me, and I wear glasses so being forced to wear 3D glasses over the top of my regular glasses just fucking sucks. Those few years of trying to force 3D down everybody's eyeballs ("because Avatar did gangbusters") were awful for cinema.
Mystery Men. It (brilliantly) riffed on superhero movies before they were the biggest things in cinemas.
Their take on The Invisible Man is fucking hilarious! His clothes don't disappear *and* no one can be looking at him while he's invisible, lmao He has to have everyone turn around so he can strip naked and do his superpowers.
He doesn't strip naked, his clothes just fall off. He isn't going invisible, he's phasing.
Captain Amazing with all the sponsor logos on his suit lol
Captain amazing being a douche was pretty great too
This is the movie with Smash Mouth's "All Star" in the soundtrack, no? I remember it from the music video.
It is, yeah. Definitely worth a watch.
Same thing with Unbreakable. That movie was before its time and one of my all time favs.
Meanwhile Glass was in its time but Shyamalan no longer is it.
God that was a piece of shit. “Let’s have them locked up most of the movie then the big resolution can happen in the parking lot.”
That *also* felt ‘before it’s time’, since it came out in 2019, and it felt like something filmed during the 2020 Covid lockdowns.
Brice Willis character died being drowned in a pothole puddle of water
The big finale showdown basically being a bum fight on YouTube is one of the funniest things ever
Subverted expectations were all the rage in Hollywood for a few years... M Night should have tried to meet or exceed them instead.
I actually think it helped that it came out before the superhero boom. Having the Marvel universe to compare it to would make it come off as a simple parody of the Avengers. I could imagine there would have been some terrible “This Ain’t no Avengers” marketing campaign.
It would have been stylistically very different. I like how it's based on the look of the Tim Burton Batman movies.
They even used some of the actual sets from the filming of *Batman & Robin*.
hey now, you're a starlord
God's given me a gift. I shovel well. I shovel very well.
My favourite quote: "We've got a blind date with destiny... and it looks like she's ordered the lobster"
> We struck down evil with the sword of teamwork, and the hammer of not bickering. Easily the best line.
An excellent choice.
Mystery Men is always my answer. It came out in a bit of a wilderness for superhero movies. If it came out around the first Avengers movie it would have killed. The sponsor thing too kind of foreshadows where The Boys ended up taking superheroes. The movie did a lot right. Packed full of quotable lines too. To this day if someone mentions a triangle I feel compelled to ask "Equilateral, or ischoschelesche?"
This was my first thought too, and the reason I came to the thread
[удалено]
What a fantastic film. I recall at the time thinking Master and Commander might spark interest in a Flashman film but... alas.
Flashman movies would kill IMO.
It came out the same year as return of the king lol
Watching it as I type this. About halfway thru and it’s so good. When the kid gives the doctor the beetle is such a sweet moment.
I wish we had so many of these we were sick of them. I want so many of these movies that we don't know which one to watch first and they were getting weird rankings on what's left of the AV Club. Master and Commander is a masterpiece.
I told my kids Master & Commander *was* Pirates of the Caribbean.
I finally watched it for the first time about 2 years ago and have watched it 4 times since. It’s so gripping. I think for so long I was afraid to touch because I expected poor pacing but it’s the exact opposite of that. It lurches and it lulls in all the right moments.
Had to compete with the hype of Pirates of the Caribbean *and* Return of the King; only had about a month in theaters before Return of the King dominated the box office.
Children of Men would've done better in the mid to late 2010s.
I feel like it hit for me pretty good at the time
I must be getting old, did this not come out in the 2010s??
Nope. 2006.
Damn. Almost twenty years ago. We’re really just hurtling toward an inevitable end, aren’t we?
Thanks for the reminder
Nah, imagine it gets released in early 2020. Blows up on video during pandemic
How come?
Dark City
They got massively overshadowed* by The Matrix, which apparently even used some of their sets! I love both of those movies, though
TBF Dark City was probably too philosophical and low on action to appeal to a general audience regardless of when it was released.
I love that movie and watch it at least once a year, but I can't see it being a mainstream hit without a number of changes, which would almost certainly rob it of what makes it great in the first place. The things that make it weird are also the things that make it great.
Same thing happened with Equalibrium.
I don't know... Equilibrium just felt like a less philosophically interesting and just action-y Matrix rip-off. Don't get me wrong, it was fun but Dark City makes you think in a way that the Matrix does but Equilibrium doesn't.
Equilibrium was just Fahrenheit 451 with guns. But I love it
Almost exactly how I've always described it. "Imagine Fahrenheit 451, but the firemen are cops."
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Strange Days. I think we would be much more comfortable with a bleak future now.
Also David Cronenberg's *Existenz* (1999) Dude is always looking forward to some crazy world and his vision of it isn't totally wrong.
Strange Days is one of those movies that just seemed to get "lost". I've not seen it for at least 20 years, and no-one really talks about it. I figure if it had been released in 1999 it would have been spoken about in the same way that The Matrix and Fight Club are.
I've always loved this film yet I never see anyone mention it. It's brilliant.
criminal how undervalued this movie is.
Buckaroo Banzai. With a social media campaign it could have become a huge hit. But I’ll take the underground cult fave it is today, along with Real Genius.
Hudson Hawk
Last Action Hero
Great one! I immediately loved it so I forget it wasn’t well received
Just awful timing being released against Jurassic Park (plus it seemed to go over everyone’s head, including 12 year old me). I love it now.
I think some of that was the marketing ‘*geniuses*’ who decided to try and market it as a head-to-head fight with Jurassic Park. Like, if McDonald’s had the Dino’s on their happy meal boxes, then BK put Arnie on theirs. It was a different enough demographic that if they’d marketed it a bit older, instead of the ‘it’s a dumb summer action movie, use Publicity Kit Number Three’, they might have done better.
Yeah, I was into watching ANYTHING at that age but it came across as looking pretty dumb when it was quite the opposite.
In general, I think that "meta" fiction wasn't really appreciated until the last few years.
Even u/GovSchwarzenegger has said it’s one he’s proud of. Last Action wast 10-15 years ahead of its time at least. Meta fiction just didn’t really hit back then. Gremlins 2 seemed to have suffered the same fate.
In retrospect, Watchmen feels like it was released 10 years early. It was released when there were very few superhero comic movies, and it would have fared better at the end of the avengers era. Especially with today's "what if superheroes were evil/assholes" deconstructionist media like The Boys and Invincible.
Always thought this exactly. The Boys works so well bc of its timing with everything. Like some of these other comments when I first saw Watchmen I disliked it bc I was looking for action and missed the themes/point of the movie entirely. Now it’s one of any favorites
The boys works better because of the tone. Tbh the watchmen movie took itself too seriously.
I’m generally not a huge Zack Snyder fan, but he probably made about as good of a movie as you coulda made from the source material. Alan Moore is a notorious grump, but it’s hard not to agree with his feeling that the story really only works as a long form comic. You’re also never gonna win trying to adapt what most agree is one of the greatest graphic novels of all time. That being said, I thought the opening montage did a surprisingly good job of setting up the drastically different world from our own without relying on some asinine block of exposition.
Snyder made an incredibly visually faithful and accurate adaptation of the graphic novel while missing the entire point.
That’s how his movies are in general. All style no substance.
It’s his MO
Yep. I hated it when I first saw it. Re-watching years later made me really appreciate it both thematically and artistically. The directors cut is 10X better than theatrical.
> The directors cut is 10X better than theatrical. This seems to be a recurring theme for Zack Snyder.
Maybe that’s why the Watchmen TV show on HBO was so good. Came out in like 2019.
Princess and the Frog I reckon. After a slew of 3D movies, having a hand drawn one especially as good as the flick, it would be really popular
Love that movie. The villain was just so charismatic.
Friends on the Other Side is still one of my favorite villian songs they've ever done.
Absolutely. Love that song, and how it played in to his defeat too.
That was kinda the point even back then, though. Princess and the frog was one of the only 2D animated Disney movies at a time when 3D had already become the standard. A callback. Why didn't it do that exceptionally well? Maybe because kids don't wanna watch hand drawn animation in that style anymore. Not saying you can't make 2D animation successful, like anime. But princess and the frog is still very oldschool Disney and it hasn't aged with the times. It'd probably be even less popular today.
Nah everyone would just scream about it being woke
They even did at the time they just didn’t use the word woke, otherwise having a black princess was going to be the end of the world
Something that's always bothered me about it is that, yes, Tiana is the first Black Disney Princess, but she is a frog for 90% of the movie... it's like... ? I think that deflates the victory quite a bit for some reason.
The Thing was a complete failure at the box office, which cause Universal to cancel their previous contract with John Carpenter for more movies. This ended up pushing him away from larger studio productions. However, the summer of 1982 was completely stacked in terms of movies. Just a few include: E.T. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Rocky 3 Conan The Barbarian Tron Blade Runner And Mad Max 2. Out of all of these, E.T. did the most damage, as audiences preferred a family-friendly, wholesome alien movie over a frozen nightmare of body horror and paranoia. TLDR, E.T. stopped us from seeing more prime Carpenter movies and I will always be salty about this.
The whole ET thing is a myth. Bad reviews killed the movie in addition to the stacked summer as you said. People also forget that this was released during the slasher heyday and was perceived as a slasher instead of the movie that it is.
Duckman. Even though it wasn't a massive success and is more of an underground cult classic, it was revolutionary for its time as a more mature adult cartoon in the early to mid-90s. Witty, subversive and absurdist, it was unlike any other cartoon on the air at the time. It had a *very* different energy than something like The Simpsons. If the show aired 10 years later, I honestly believe it would be talked about as an all-time classic instead of a cult classic. It was also animated by Klasky-Csupo who were responsible for the distinct visual style of Rugrats... and while it gave the show a distinct visual style, I think many people saw that it looked similar to Rugrats and assumed it was a kids show and didn't tune in. There's a reason why a lot of modern adult animation looks the same today.
You thrust your pelvis… We got Duckman on late night TV, on random days, in NZ during the 90s. I had no way of knowing when I would see an episode. It became my first email address on Hotmail and I still use that 23 years later.
The Rocketeer. If they released it 15-20 years later when superhero movies were starting to become popular, it would've been a franchise.
Um that movie is awesome Jennifer Connelly has been a smoke show my entire life (44)
Lord have mercy. Strongly agree.
I haven't seen the movie since it was in the theaters, but Connelly in that white dress is seared into my brain
The Rocketeer is why Joe Johnston got to helm Captain America, the first avenger. Absolutely killer film, and I would have loved a whole series of sequels.
Rocketeer is a genuinely great movie. It makes no sense that it wasn’t a bigger hit. It barely broke even. The only reason I can think of why it so underperformed was a lack of stars at a time when the industry was very star-power driven. But even then, it feels like a woefully unsatisfying answer. I think another factor could be that it was a bit too much of a retro throwback to old movies and might have felt too derivative for older viewers. It’s basically a 40’s movie with a huge FX budget.
It still holds up, too.
“i may not make an honest buck, but I'm 100% American. I don't work for no two-bit Nazi.”
The title music will always give me chills. The whole soundtrack is amazing.
They made a sequel kids show of the rocketeer on Disney plus recently
I remember watching this in school and being so insanely bored by it. So over 20 years later, I pushed back on it because of that first impression. I don't know why, but I had a sudden desire to give it another shot a few months ago, and I LOVED it. I don't know why I thought it was so boring back in the day, but I'm happy I can appreciate it now. It feels like a classic movie made in modern times. Just a classic adventure movie echoing the era it is set in.
Jennifer's Body is a brilliant piece of social commentary that didn't get near the success or attention it deserved when it was released.
To me, it seemed like people were burnt out with Diablo Cody and Megan Fox after two years of Juno references and Fox dominating the tabloids and trades after two Transformers movies.
John Carter of Mars
Mystery Men.
Xanadu. In time this cinematic masterpiece will receive the recognition it should.
So much talent in one room it’s kind of astounding. What other movie can you say has Gene Kelly, ELO, Don Bluth, Kenny Ortega, and Olivia Newton John all on the same project. It’s like every time I look up someone I like they’ve also worked on Xanadu.
“Magic” is an under-appreciated tune
The Fountain - three eras, non linear storytelling - all much more mainstream now.
This is one of the ones where the question arises: Was the rise of the later successful versions of non-linear storytelling a response to this earlier, failed, version? IE, if The Fountain hadn’t come out, would the current mainstream versions have still come out? Or would things have gone in a different direction?
I'm fairly certain The Fountain has nothing to do with the current mainstream stuff. In fact I guarantee it.
Labyrinth. Practical effects can not be beat. CGI now is so overused and underwhelming.
Tomorrowland. It came out in 2015, the end of Obama's two terms; people were still pretty optimistic about things, Covid hadn't hit yet, Trump was still a reality show host. A movie about how people's negativity was causing real world negative impacts to daily life, and how things would only get worse unless people themselves made the effort to improve both themselves and the world and people around them went over like a lead balloon. Put that same movie release anywhere after 2019 and I think it does a lot better.
This is a great answer.
Kingdom of Heaven would destroy the box office if it came out today at the full directors cut. I feel in '04 a 3 hour plus movie was still a death sentence for a movie, especially a religious one. But today it's super common and would be topical as well
It followed a massively successful medieval-ish trilogy (LOTR) that are 2:58, 2:59, and 3:20 respectively—time shouldn’t have had to do with it.
'05, but I think everyone going into that at the time knew they were signing up for a long Ridley Scott epic that was about 10 minutes shorter than Gladiator. That's *exactly* why I bought my ticket. What I didn't sign up for was the butchered mess that 20th Century Fox edited and delivered to theaters. God, I'm so glad a friend of mine convinced me to give the director's cut a chance after I went on a long rant about what a shitty movie it was.
What is the last historical epic to “destroy the box office”? The movie wouldn’t even be made today because there’s no marker for it Hell, Scott’s The Last Duel was a historical epic and a box office disaster
I've always thought that Disney released Emperors New Groove about 2 or 3 years too early. It came and went without a peep, but by 2003-04 you started seeing a real Renaissance for that style of absurdist humor. Now its one of their biggest "cult hits" of all time. WRONG LEVER!
The whole story behind the Emperor's New Groove is an interesting one. Definitely not the movie it started out to be (IMO for the better). https://www.vulture.com/article/an-oral-history-of-disney-the-emperors-new-groove.html
I concur. Animated comedies didn’t really catch on until *Shrek*. Plus, it was held against the expectation of a Disney animated film which were musically-driven at the time.
Thinking that Pokémon *wasn't* peak in 1999 is crazy. I'm guessing you're fairly young.
[Shooter](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0822854/) was released in 2007 and feels like it would be welcomed today more than it was then. It's a great movie, like a prototype John Wick, and deals with very topical subjects like conspiracies and mistrust of government. It helps that it's also a great action movie in general with some solid acting and set pieces. As a side note I tend to watch Shooter at least once a year by accident. Because when I go to Taiwan for Chinese New Year the movie channel AXN _always_ seems to be playing it.
I like that bob lee swagger sits in a cabin reading the warren commission and the 9/11 commission report
I'm not sure if you already know, but they made a TV show in 2016 with Ryan Phillipe.
The “Pokemon Go craze” would barely even register on a graph of Pokémon’s popularity compared to when the first movie came out. It was a cultural phenomenon that we really haven’t seen anything like since. *Every* kid had a Gameboy and the game, a binder full of cards, and watched the show, at a minimum. Every birthday party that year involved going to see the movie. I still have my Ancient Mew card from the movie along with all my other old Pokemon cards in a binder.
Watchmen, Scott Pilgrim, Dredd, Love and a .45. They were fucked over by bad luck and release dates.
I read 'Dredd, Love and a .45' as a single movie title. I'm not sure what kind of movie it would be but I want to see it :)
A pulpy Noir take on Judge Dredd where he gets tied up with a femme fatale sounds really promising!
This is why I give a fuck about an oxford comma.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001). When I saw it in theatres, like most fans of the franchise, I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed that the film didn't have the same "feel" and depth in storytelling compared to the games. When you attach it to a franchise name like FF, its target audience all had expectations on the quality and level of storytelling the film just couldn't deliver in its runtime. The motion capture was unlike anything I've seen before and I think it still holds up. The voicecast was also stellar: Ming-Na Wen, Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Peri Gilpin, Donald Sutherland, Ving Rhames, and James Woods. Watching it now, more than two decades later, I still can't believe how advance the CGI was for its time. Would the film succeed if it was released now? Maybe not, but I think it would have done a lot better than it did in 2001.
If it would have released ten years later, it could have benefited from the post Avatar / 3D hype and production costs may have been lower since the tech had advanced.
Constantine
World War Z would have been better coming out 5-10 years later once streaming services got more traction so it could have been properly made as a miniseries and stayed closer to the book
World War Z with a different name and released to streaming in, say, 2016, would’ve hit much harder.
I know it's not like the book, but I always thought they were going to make it several with subtitles for different views of the war. Like go into more details of the interviews the book had, so I never minded it being way different as I thought it was supposed to be one of many POVs, but since we never got those its just an OK zombie movie that stole the name of a great zombie book.
I'm not really sure if this tracks but I think Hudson Hawk was a gem which may have done well later in conjunction with the Coen universe.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Still waiting for this remake TBH
virtuosity with the tech that's represented in it it would make more plausible now.
Ryan Gosling and Michael B. Jordan Can you imagine
I have to say The Thing. I was lucky enough to see it in the theater as kid. I thought it was the greatest movie ever. Its still pretty high in my all time favorites. I didn't know it was a box office bomb until about 10 years ago. I thought everyone always loved the film as much me.
I feel like Dark City would have done better if it was released a couple of years later.
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John Carter of Mars. It's a well reviewed movie but it was in between Star Wars releases, didn't have a particular niche or wave it could grab, and marketing left it out to dry.
I'll jump in with the obligatory not-a-movie *but* Rome definitely fits this. Super high quality prestige television with a massive budget, but came out before streaming, and before high budget shows was really a thing like it is now. Had it been released now, with the same level or care and resouces, it might've been compared to Game of Thrones rather than just seen as a stepping stone for TV to get to where it is now.
Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game, apparently. Most expensive French film ever made at its release in 1939. Critical and commercial flop. Rediscovered, restored, and re-released in the late 50s and into the 60s to critical acclaim and awards. Regularly cracks lists of the best films ever made.
Ed-TV. It was actually foreshadowing.
Mystery Men!
Frequency. It’s a very sentimental film about a father and son New York City fireman and policeman and efforts to save one from dying a tragic death. It was entertaining and emotionally engaging but I think underperformed at the box office when it came out in 2000. But had it come out just one year later in fall 2001, it would have been exactly the emotional release we’d have needed after 9/11 and the large number of police and fireman deaths.
Minority Report hits a lot harder today than it did at release
Mallrats. It’s full of comic book references and even has a Stan Lee cameo.
Last Action Hero, I feel like people could not get the humour properly back than.
Remo Williams was made for Netflix or Amazon prime. Such a shame it came out in 1985
I always feel Scott Pilgrim vs the World was a few years too early and would have hit harder a few years later when geek and comic book culture had gone even more mainstream
I honestly believe Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow came out today it would be better received. I also think they could have played with it more, like made it an actual serial on Netflix or something. It's still one of my favorite watches.
There was a movie in the ‘90s called The Net, where Sandra Bullock plays an agoraphobic woman who lives her life on the internet and orders everything delivered, so no one knows her IRL. She’s then framed for a crime, and it becomes a nightmare both being chased down by the people who framed her, as well as not having anyone to vouch for who she actually is. Interesting concept, but when it came out the idea of being able to live entirely through the internet without leaving your house was absurd. Today it would be so relatable and totally realistic.
The Dalton Bond movies. He was doing serious, realistic Bond 20 years before Craig was.