Movies that made a big pop culture splash but are now disporportionately forgotten

Cafe Society
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I’m talking about movies that were quite popular and really seemed to capture the zeitgeist but which have now faded more than one might have expected. The fading is especially poignant if the movies were actually pretty original.

Let me give some counter-examples before I give examples. Star Wars, Back to the Future, and Pulp Fiction were huge in their day and, if anything, have only grown in stature over time (that is, they are more popular today than similarly popular movies from their time are today). So I’m talking about the opposite of that.

I have two examples, one from the 80s and one from the 90s, both of which I saw in the theater, and both of which really seemed “in the air” at the time and seemed “important” in terms of pop culture.

The first is A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

I don’t remember liking this movie. But it was everywhere. It had a wacky, edgy sense of humor (or so it tried to have, and people seemed to agree). It was as hip as anything was in 1988. It won an Oscar and got a bunch of nominations. It has a high 7.6 rating on IMDb, but does anyone talk or for that matter think about this movie any more? I see no evidence for it.

The second is There’s Something About Mary (1998)

Now this is a movie that I did love. I saw it in the theater twice definitely, and it may have been three times (it was so funny that I enjoyed seeing how other people reacted to its outrageous humor). It was tremendously popular, got a lot of press, and seemed one of the It movies of the year, if not the entire decade of the 90s.

But something happened to this movie; it has seemed to decay before my eyes in its reputation and between my eyes in its entertainment value. The 90s is a decade whose comedies have seemed to retain their appeal rather well: Dumb and Dumber, American Pie, etc. But this one just doesn’t seem that popular any more. At 7.1, its IMDb rating is healthy and would not seem to reflect its once stratospheric popularity.

Now, I could be wrong about the above movies: I may be overestimating their former popularity or underestimating their current status. Feel free to weigh in. And what movies do you have in mind that have similarly decayed over the years?

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St. Elmo’s Fire (1985) fits well into that category in my opinion

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I agree. It got a big Brat Pack boost at the time but is not grouped with The Breakfast Club at al. as an 80s classic, or even as a good watch.

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Crocodile Dundee. Despite being the second-biggest hit of 1986, other than a few “That’s not a knife” jokes, it’s been largely forgotten.

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Good one. Yeah, seems very dated now.

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Big Chill was a huge hit with my group.

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Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery was huge.

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Dark Crystal and Legend.

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I’m having a tough time thinking of examples of my own, but I think the all ones already mentioned are good.

Amazingly enough, I saw at least a decent chunk of every one of these (ETA: other than the two mentioned by Shakes), and it doesn’t surprise me that most of them have faded. (ETA: My opinion of most of them at the time was that they weren’t very good. Especially The Big Chill.) Even the two that I liked at the time - Croc Dundee and A Fish Called Wanda - I’ve practically forgotten.

I remember that I tried to watch St. Elmo’s Fire because it had that “if you liked The Breakfast Club, you’ll like this too” thing going for it. Despite being out of the target age group (I was already >30 in 1985), I really liked The Breakfast Club, but got bored with St. Elmo in the first half hour.

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The first that comes to mind is one I’ve mentioned here before: Dead Poets Society. It was one of the very few films that everybody in my age group saw in the theatres when it came out. We were all talking about how it was the film for our generation, quoting it repeatedly. By the mid-90s, none of my friends mentioned it in their favourite movies lists. It sort of just vanished from our collective minds.

Good call on Crocodile Dundee. It was the funniest thing ever then. It’s pretty much forgotten now.

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Maybe it’s not quite the same thing because it’s more recent but it seems like everyone has quickly just decided The Dark Knight Rises was a bad movie and swept it under a rug. Note I am not a huge fan of it either but it seemed the public’s opinion of it just turned on a dime after it came out.

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Freakin’ American Beauty - god, was that held up as an amazingly deep, insightful view of the desperate life of suburban Americans, or what?

What a load of crap.

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I see from IMDB that the most popular film released in the 1980s was…

(wait for it)

Beetlejuice.

(Beetle-what? I hear the under-30’s cry)

Not that that necessarily means it made a big pop-culture splash, but … I think (from memory) it did. Tim Burton! Winona Ryder!

Talking of Winona Ryder … how about Heathers. Not that it wasn’t a good movie (it was) - but does anyone still remember it much?

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Good example. I think like The Big Chill mentioned above, there is a species of series and very boring movies that manage to get some attention but quickly fade. Crap like On Golden Pond, The English Patient, etc. But I think Dead Poets is a particularly good example of such “meaning-y” movies.

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Yeah, I saw this one mentioned on a list recently of movies that have faded. 1999 is an interesting year, a huge year for movies. A lot have not survived their initial hype. Magnolia or Eyes Wide Shut, anyone?

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E.T. was a monstrously large cultural event when it came out, but almost none of that impact has lingered.

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When I saw the thread title I thought of Splash before I even finished reading it (because I saw the word splash).
Checking out wiki, it did almost 70 million at the box office and you’d probably have trouble finding people over 20 or 25 that have seen it, heard of it or even know who Daryl Hannah is.

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Add in Willow for the trifecta.

I do not think that this thread is supposed to be about movies that absolutely, positively rock. :slight_smile:

How about Natural Born Killers? It was shocking and had an edgy style. It was going to change the way movies were made. Whatever splash it made was overshadowed by Pulp Fiction which was released a couple of months later and actually had that impact.

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Avatar was the biggest thing ever for a while, but for a movie with that kind of box office it seems to have gone downhill really fast.

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Oh no, that one’s still awesome! Pause checks ID Oh. Officially not an under 30. Well, I hope someone’s schooling them in the wonderful-ness of this one. I for one love it!

Doesn’t this one still get quoted and mentioned? I feel like it’s gotten a bit of pop culture love. They made it into a musical, too, didn’t they? (Granted, what isn’t a musical?) I don’t think it has the traction of, say, a Clueless, but I think it at least approaches cult classic status.