Films that wouldn't stand tall today?

Can anyone think of any quality or highly acclaimed pictures that wouldn't have been as successful if released say, tomorrow?

Obviously there are a few rules you'll have to apply for the sake of the thread for example you can't list a 1970s sci-fi because the CGI was rubbish by todays immaculate standards, certain things go without saying and aren't really worth discussing .

One of the major things I want Y'all to talk about is how audiences have changed over the years.

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I'm going to start with Blade Runner to get us up and running.

Some top Directors have said off the last 5 years, sci-fi has hit a brick wall as there isn't any 'good' original material out there. While this is true, I find that audiences aren't as thunderstruck when we watch a visually exquisite peace of aesthetically driven work. You could probably argue that this is related to the variety and caliber of the CGI we experience today which we now take for granted, but not for me.

Blade Runners practical based miniatures have accomplished the same level of quality, I just feel the modern audience isn't as bowled over by this kind of stuff now (Vistas and such). Visceral visuals have been a staple of sci-fi for the screen since it's beginning and when this is slightly lost on the audience, there's no doubt the genre has suffered because of it. Blade Runner having to live by it's story alone cuts the audience in half.

I'll take models and miniatures over CGI anyday.

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Same actually. Film making used to be about problem solving as much as art. Back then the task was to manipulate the space in front of a 35mm camera. This commonly involved using ingenuity and innovation to bring about a predefined goal. Now it seems it's about keeping it practical, until the first sign of trouble, then shifting the techies in. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate what the computer has done for the film industry, especially in the field of editing. Sometimes though, when you watch old VHS extras from behind the scenes, your jealous of the amount of fun film makers must have had thinking up way to trick the audience into believing what they wanted us too using duck tape and rubber tubing etc.

Duck tape and rubber tubing? where the hell was I going with that? lol

If anything, Blade Runner's reputation and stature has grown in recent years. It was a critical flop and only broke even financially when first released. I have always found it to be a slightly-better-than-average movie with some great visuals and music, but that's really beside the point compared to the apparent masses. Some people find it moving while I find it cold, but I still don't think it fits your criteria of the first post.

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If you are talking just about the scripts, most movies fifty years or older wouldn't be financed today including Casablanca.

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For me the culmination of blade runner was in the late 90s early 00s, but of course your rite, it did drag itself out of an early grave after it's miserable inceptive box office reception (critically and commercially).

However the past 10 years (recent years) have seen Blade Runner accumulate it's success by way of being regarded a classic. I wouldn't say people are necessarily growing to appreciate the film any. When they do, it's because their bias has been influenced by the films status. Things like shockingly dubbed audio "I got four skin jobs walking the streets" get brushed off as an attribute of the time.

I guess what I'm saying is, Blade Runners cult status protects it and every time we see it appear on a new list of 'top films' like the lists it's been added to below, the film get better in peoples heads. The point of this thread is that if it were to be released tomorrow without it's pre-exsiting baggage, I wouldn't see it being escalated to the same heights. Certainly not for the same reasons.

LOL, srsly? ... That's respectable

Agreed. I'm growing up in an era of CGI blockbusters, so you have no idea how refreshing it was to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey or Blade Runner for the first time.

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Gone With The Wind for sure. There is no way an audience that massive would show up in the theaters for a film that lasts 4 hours without it being the culmination of a running series like LOTR or Harry Potter (had that lasted 3 hours +). Look at Luhrmann's failed attempt Australia.

This movie never did stand tall.


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You may be right about GWTW, but you are omitting context and comparing it to an inappropriate flick. GWTW was the most-massively-popular book at the time of the film's release and had been for two years. Everybody (I'll admit it was especially women) who read popular literature or went to the movies was going to see that film, come hell or high water. It was an enormously big deal during the casting and filming process. Maybe there's nothing to compare it to because GWTW was even more popular than the Harry Potter books, at least per capita. The Potter books tended to be an hour shorter than GWTW though. What the heck was Australia based on and why would people want to see it from a pop culture standpoint?

Even so, that wouldn't be enough to do the trick. When looking at the adjusted total grosses of Deathly Hallows 2, it's embarrassed entirely by Gone With The Wind's adjusted gross. Even if it's the most popular book on planet earth, at 4 hours running time, it won't draw even a fifth of what it did back then.

Today they would release it in two parts and make more money.

They should remake GWTW with midgets.

Night of the Living Dead - who'd want to watch zombies that don't run?

Take GOTW's worldwide gross of 1939 400 Million which was unprecedented at the time and adjust it to today's inflation and you have

$6,292,000,000

Something Avatar hasn't come close to. And this was independently made (MGM had distribution rights).

I hope this was sarcastic. Cause running zombies do not a film make. Even now, Night of the Living Dead stands as a great example of horror film making. It's stark, unsettling, and judging on how many modern zombie films rip it off wholesale, I think it would still play just fine.

Oh, and just to be a smartass, to the original poster, yes, the CGI of the 70's was nothing like what we have now...because there wasn't any CGI. People had to be creative in coming up with special effects back then. That was a major part of why, as a kid, I was amazed by Star Wars. There was a bunch of people using model kits and such to create this world that was nothing I'd ever seen before. Now you can just computer up anything you want, and the thrill of that is gone for me.

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A lot of "classic" comedies don't hold up to the new standard of funny, but most of the "classic" dramas do. If someone can get a good script with good actors, there is no telling how successful a film can be.

I present Animal House as a movie that I have seen in my adult life that I never saw when I was younger (and wasn't alive when it came out) as a movie that I found to be almost not funny at all. On the other hand, Blues Brothers is still a classic comedy.

I feel just the opposite. I thin AH is hilarious and BB is rather strained and unfunny.

I was an adult when I saw both.

I think they're both completely unfunny and have both as an adult and a child.