27 Movies That Didn’t Stand The Test Of Time Despite Being So Popular At First
The first time you watch a new movie can be an awesome experience and you might end up falling in love with that movie. But occasionally, when the bliss of the first impression goes away, you start thinking about what you have watched. And then you realize that the movie doesn’t really make sense or even is poorly made. This way a cherished movie can very easily become a hated one.
Today, let’s take a look at what internet folks named to be movies that once were critically acclaimed masterpieces and now are hated by a bunch of people.
More info: Reddit
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Idiocracy was a beloved farcical comedy and is now viewed as a dystopian documentary from 3-5 years in the future
I am waiting on Bohemian Rhapsody. It's a biopic that is 90% made up and none of the critics seem fit to mention this.
Freddie Mercury did not leave the band to make a solo record while under the bad influence of some gay Svengali only to get diagnosed with AIDS and get back together with the boys for their stellar Live Aid performance.
The band never broke up before Live Aid. In fact I know someone who seen them tour a couple of months before Live Aid. He wasn't even the first guy in the band to have a solo record. He didn't perform at Live Aid knowing he was going to die because he didn't actually get his diagnosis until almost 2 years later which is also around the time when he got around to firing Paul Prenter.
Also the portrayal of Freddie as a gay man feels like some weird throwback to the 1980s when all gay characters in movies for portrayed as sad, conflicted and persecuted. He was a good looking superstar who by all accounts thoroughly enjoyed his ridiculously opulent hedonistic lifestyle.
This is a movie that in the end genuinely tries to make you believe that Queen alone saved Live Aid and by extension Africa....oh and they also invented overdubbing and audience participation.
I HATE how Freddie was portrayed. I feel he was done a complete injustice, regardless of the storyline. I hate how they made him seem so stuck up and pretentious, and the way he reacted to the media and his family was so out of character. I have watched nearly all the Queen and Freddie Mercury documentaries, and he was not like that at all. In real life, he was sweet and shy. Plus, those teeth were absolutely ridiculous, like a parody on SNL. He was extremely self-conscious of his teeth and didn't flash them all over the place. Also, when they showed him writing new songs, it was just ugh. Like he really sat at a piano and just glorified in how amazing he is for what he just created. He did not do that. If they stayed true to Freddie's real life story, it would have been so much better. So much of his life was altered or left out and it would have been such a good movie if they focused on everything they glossed over or changed, it would have been a much better movie and represented him in a much better light. I hope they do a true to life biopic on freddie that isn't such a travesty. I love you dearly, Freddie. Wish I could have seen you once in person. Queen opened their tour recently near me, and I thought about it, but just can't bring myself to watch a Queen concert without Freddie in it.
Armageddon was probably the most watched movie from the 90s and everyone hates it because Hollywood magic doesn't explain science.
Screw you guys, that movie is fantastic and I have multiple science degrees that don't care
Avatar. I don’t know if would say hated, but I do feel more people are saying it’s overrated today than they did when it came out
Always thought of it as an overly-long, boring take on the "white savior" trope.
Well, technically a show not a movie, but from what I hear the ending of Game of Thrones basically f****d itself into oblivion and now no one talks about it anymore.
I haven’t seen anyone mention Captain Philips yet. Apparently the real life guy was warned to take a much wider berth around the Horn of Africa specifically bc of the threat of pirates, but he wanted to save time and ope! What do you know, there were pirates! Apparently the crew was pissed the movie made him look like such a hero when the situation was basically his fault.
Debbie Does Dallas.
On reflection, she really didn't do ALL of Dallas, so I have to ding it for lack of truth in advertising.
The Blind Side
I never liked the Tuohys and I only saw them as portrayed in that movie. They remind me of the Chrisleys. Just so over-the-top southern and fake and all about money and image. I recently watched them in real life on the tv specials covering their fraud. I knew they rubbed me the wrong way for a reason, and that was the fictional portrayal.
Song of the South won Oscars and had one of the most iconic Disney songs in the last half of the 20th Century. Now Disney has more or less scrubbed it completely from availability.
Because they know it is racist is the reason why they haven't released it in the US. It has been available in other countries. [ In 2017, after being inaugurated as a Disney Legend, Whoopi Goldberg expressed a desire for Song of the South to be re-released publicly to American audiences and stated, "I'm trying to find a way to get people to start having conversations about bringing Song of the South back, so we can talk about what it was and where it came from and why it came out".] wiki....And the books are still available. Racism is racism and history is history, the past can't be changed. Only the future.
American Beauty. I think when it first came out it received a lot of positive attention but these days it's perceived very differently.
That movie was so...awkward and hard to watch. And that was with my husband. I can't imagine watching it with my parents or something. So weird. Kevin Spacey creeps me out so much.
Then the movie makers succeeded. Kevin Spacey's character was *supposed* to creep you out.
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I totally disagree with this one as well. It was a great movie and it still is. If you can't separate the art from the artist, then I've got some really bad news about every song released, just as starters.
Yeah y’all are wrong, American Beauty is a classic. Quit white washing history and try to see a piece of art for what it is…Art
Love this movie, and Kevin spacey’s performance. Sometimes talented people are also terrible people
The most unrealistic part is that Kevin Spacey's character wasn't actually sleeping with the teenage boy next door.
Argo pretty much ignores all the backstory US had in Iran and makes Iranians look like a bunch of bloodthirsty people that hate Americans for no good reason and the Americans seem like some innocent bureaucrats caught in a bad situation.
In reality the US overthrew the Mohammad Mosaddegh government and installed a Shah that they had close relationships with. The US then played a critical role in founding the Shah's brutal secret police to keep him in power.
In the late 1970s the Iranian Revolution occurred and the Shah was overthrown. This Shah held a grip on power for over 25 years with US backing against the will of the people. As part of the revolution, pro-revolution students stormed the US embassy.
The Force Awakens. When it came out, the sentiment was overwhelmingly "Starwars is back" but in hindsight it really doesnt hold up at all
I am speaking for myself here, and don't know if this view is widely held, but Gravity is an absolute turkey and seems to have got by on the strength of its visuals alone. No real plot and absolutely HONKING script.
The female astronaut acted like she was an intern who had had two months training. She should have been confident, level-headed, and extremely knowledgeable and skilled. Instead she came off like a shrinking violet, more like showing, "Hey, this is a ditzy, silly female would barely manage to handle this situation." Very bad writing and directing when it came to her character. (I thought Bullock acted well with what she was given.) Also, this is NOT the type of movie that should get a pass for bad science. And it did have bad science in many ways.
Milo & Otis (1986)
At the time, it was the third highest-grossing film *ever* in Japan. It won the 1987 award for Most Popular Film at The Japanese Academy, was released in English in 1989, did well at the box office ($257 million box office in Japan and the United States; over 12 million theater tickets sold worldwide), and received generally favorable reviews.
Then came the animal abuse allegations.
I adored that movie as a child and now can never watch it again because that's all I see. As I got older, I would worry if the kitten hurt his eyes when he popped out of a sooty chimney, or was terrified when they filmed the river scene. You can tell it's a hot tub not a river, but that is still a real kitten nearly drowning in the rapids. Milo is terrified in that box. They could have just had meowing sounds coming from it and not actually put a real kitten downriver in a cardboard box.
I want to say The Last Jedi. For the first two weeks after release it was coasting on hype, with lots of critics describing it with the usual buzz-words: that it was “bold” and “creative” (which is why those words have become red-flags nowadays). I saw comments from audiences coming fresh out of the theater claiming that it was “the greatest Star Wars movie ever made, even better than The Empire Strikes Back!”
Then the hype died off fast and those same audiences started realizing they had issues with it. I started to see more and more complaints, things like how the payoffs set up by the Force Awakens were unsatisfying, and it killed off potential storylines for the next film by killing off Snoke before he was explained, killing off Luke before he could really do much, killing off Phasma before her rivalry with Finn could reach its zenith, and leaving the Resistance with only a handful of survivors.
With the exception of "better than ESB", the sentiment and comments in that first paragraph still ring true for me. I think it's a brilliant film, I thought Luke was given a wonderful ending (before the "Mark Hamill hated it" people come in, he never expressed "hate", and he has walked back those comments). With all the other criticisms in this post, to me it felt like trimming the fat, and what we had at the end of that film was a completely fresh slate, which we had never had before in Star Wars. It was all so promising, and then it was all brought crashing down in the next film: "THE DEAD SPEAK!..."
Last tango in Paris used to be hailed as a masterpiece until the actress spilled the beans about how scummy Brando and the director were
For a while there, Bird Box was hot s**t and THE movie that everyone had to see. Now it seems like most everyone thinks it's stupid
Wasn't American Sniper critically acclaimed until they found out the guy made a bunch of it up?
I haven't heard anything about that and neither has Google, apparently (although I didn't dig too deep). The book A Million Little Pieces and its sequel My Friend Leonard were completely falsified by James Frey and anyone who bought a copy got their money back.
somehow the tide turned on *Gone with the Wind* and people are unwilling to admit the plain fact that it is one of the greatest movies of all time by any measurable metric. Sad state of things really.
Blue is the warmest colour
was critically acclaimed for being a queer movie in an industry where there were very few.
then it turned out the director dude made it a nightmare for the leads to work in it. and this is not an unpopular opinion anymore, but the explicit scenes in the movie come across as p**n, and tbh it comes off a more hyper sexualised depiction of lesbians than celebration of a lesbian love story.
I loved this movie when it came, seeing women partly my age (I didn't age as fast as they did with time jumps after all :P) be so free with each other. I did think some sex scenes were over the top, but all in all, I left the movie feeling happy. Then came the reports of that f*****g director and I will be unable to ever watch it again. I still enjoy the graphic novel, though.
Lone Survivor. Or at least it should be hated. The only accurate part of that movie is that 3 SEALs died and Marcus was rescued by Mohammad Gulab and the Rangers/PJs. Everything else is utter b******t.
Navy SEALs in the public eye have a massive history of exaggeration and blatant lying and Marcus Luttrell is no different.
Frankly, I don’t blame them. Making $60-80k a year for a job that you’re highly likely to get killed/maimed doing that carries a 95% probability of imploding your personal life; all for a government that f***s it’s vets over at every opportunity? Go for it - lie your a*s off and make your millions.
It is sad that there is so much more this country should be doing for its veterans, but instead we need charity organizations to fill the gaps. What is truly sad is that this country still treats its vets a thousand times better than the majority of the rest of the world.
The Birth of a Nation
I initially thought of the 1915 film when I saw these words...which also fits this thread
Traffic (2000) won **4 Oscars** and had a 93% RT score.
Watched it recently... it's like a really preachy and flat episode of Narcos. IDK if it's "hated" today, but it seems pretty much forgotten. The other big acclaimed films that year (*Gladiator, Almost Famous, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich*) had a lot more staying power.
This list is strange to me. I'm confused at how people don't like a film because stuff in it wasn't true. I mean, these are all works of fiction, so there is always going to be artistic license. Sometimes it's a little, sometimes it's a lot. I could understand hate for documentaries that tell lies, but not fiction, especially now that, if you find a "based on/inspired by" film particularly interesting, the internet is right there for you to read up on it.
American Sniper. Chris Kyle was not a hero. He was an epic d0uchebag who lied about the number of medals he received, lied about punching Jesse Ventura (who sued Kyle’s estate and won), bragged about killing civilians, lied about shooting looters during Hurricane Katrina, lied about finding chemical weapons in Iraq, said killing people was “fun” and that he “loved” it, and then was murdered after deciding it was just a great idea to bring a guy with schizophrenia and PTSD to a shooting range. ‘Merica, f#ck yeah!
Gigi. I loved that movie so much when I was young. Now, I can't watch it. The scenery, the costumes, the accents, the songs! All beautiful. But the story? Oh my gosh so cringe.
I feel the same way. It's so problematic how her family is basically prostituting her.
Load More Replies... One I really hated was Birdman. Such a pretentious film full of Hollywood navel gazing. I love Michael Keaton but I can't stand that film. And I don't think it deserved the Best Picture Oscar.
I was most upset by 2021 version of The Stand. I know it's not a movie, but I adore that book and the original 1994 miniseries is amazing. The new one is just abysmal. They butchered everything and made it so much worse. It could have been great. I waited all through covid for it and it was a trainwreck. The casting was just WTF and they changed all the characters main likeable traits from the book. There was absolutely no reason to destroy the timeline and cut out most of the book. They could have changed the setting to current and just added to what was already there. That was such a bummer and still is.
Gonna need to make room for about 25 dogsheet MCU movies. Every one of them will age like guacamole set out about 1 hour too early.
Star Wars The Last Jedi and Star Trek (2009) ...JJ Abrams.....WHY......
Because they are both awesome. Historically accurate, heck no. Awesome, yes.
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I have seem almost none of these movies and may be happier because of that fact.
You know what movie does hold up over 20yrs later - bushwhacked, it was my fave as a 9-11 yr old and I found a dvd of recently, still just as funny 🤣
Films and TV shows are not always harmless. A notable example: The Birth of a Nation (1915). Innovative in technique, but pretty much a recruiting tool for the KKK. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation#Social_impact
Load More Replies... This list is strange to me. I'm confused at how people don't like a film because stuff in it wasn't true. I mean, these are all works of fiction, so there is always going to be artistic license. Sometimes it's a little, sometimes it's a lot. I could understand hate for documentaries that tell lies, but not fiction, especially now that, if you find a "based on/inspired by" film particularly interesting, the internet is right there for you to read up on it.
American Sniper. Chris Kyle was not a hero. He was an epic d0uchebag who lied about the number of medals he received, lied about punching Jesse Ventura (who sued Kyle’s estate and won), bragged about killing civilians, lied about shooting looters during Hurricane Katrina, lied about finding chemical weapons in Iraq, said killing people was “fun” and that he “loved” it, and then was murdered after deciding it was just a great idea to bring a guy with schizophrenia and PTSD to a shooting range. ‘Merica, f#ck yeah!
Gigi. I loved that movie so much when I was young. Now, I can't watch it. The scenery, the costumes, the accents, the songs! All beautiful. But the story? Oh my gosh so cringe.
I feel the same way. It's so problematic how her family is basically prostituting her.
Load More Replies... One I really hated was Birdman. Such a pretentious film full of Hollywood navel gazing. I love Michael Keaton but I can't stand that film. And I don't think it deserved the Best Picture Oscar.
I was most upset by 2021 version of The Stand. I know it's not a movie, but I adore that book and the original 1994 miniseries is amazing. The new one is just abysmal. They butchered everything and made it so much worse. It could have been great. I waited all through covid for it and it was a trainwreck. The casting was just WTF and they changed all the characters main likeable traits from the book. There was absolutely no reason to destroy the timeline and cut out most of the book. They could have changed the setting to current and just added to what was already there. That was such a bummer and still is.
Gonna need to make room for about 25 dogsheet MCU movies. Every one of them will age like guacamole set out about 1 hour too early.
Star Wars The Last Jedi and Star Trek (2009) ...JJ Abrams.....WHY......
Because they are both awesome. Historically accurate, heck no. Awesome, yes.
Load More Replies... I have seem almost none of these movies and may be happier because of that fact.
You know what movie does hold up over 20yrs later - bushwhacked, it was my fave as a 9-11 yr old and I found a dvd of recently, still just as funny 🤣
Films and TV shows are not always harmless. A notable example: The Birth of a Nation (1915). Innovative in technique, but pretty much a recruiting tool for the KKK. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation#Social_impact
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