Great things are not always appreciated in their time. Two or three movies are given a wide release per week and, occasionally, one of them is almost entirely ignored when audiences have the chance to see them on the big screen. When it comes to the horror genre, Slither, Near Dark, and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare all either underperformed or outright flopped. As for the comedy genre, Heathers, Dazed and Confused, and Office Space faced a similar fate. But there is no genre that has had some of its best movies unfairly passed over than science fiction. Fortunately, they don’t always stay fully under the radar.
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In time, people discover greatness. Cream rises to the top, and in the streaming era the vast majority of movies, new and old, are available with the press of a button. All you need is the recommendation. As the years have passed, these films have been recommended enough to both find their audience and earn the critics’ adoration, if they didn’t already have it.
7) The Iron Giant
A beloved (But traumatizing) favorite for every ’90s kid who grew up on it, The Iron Giant is a touching nostalgia-fest. But when it hit theaters, it faced some very stiff competition. The Sixth Sense was opening, The Blair Witch Project was continuing to expand and continuing to attract massive crowds, and both Runaway Bride and Deep Blue Sea were experiencing solid second weekends.
It just didn’t stand out in the crowded market, even though Tarzan was on its way out of theaters and Inspector Gadget was on week three. In fact, The Iron Giant made less its opening weekend than Inspector Gadget did its third, even though it’s about eight hundred times better than that live action adaptation. It was a financially disappointing beginning of Brad Bird’s directorial career, though he would rebound in a major way with his box office smash of a sophomore film: The Incredibles.
6) Dredd
One of the best comic book movies of the 2010s, Dredd is an intense, well-acted take on the IP that puts the ’90s version with Sylvester Stallone to shame even more than it already was. Yet, even on a restrained budget of at most $45 million, Dredd lost money at the box office.
Now, it’s seen as one of the best action movies of the 2010s. Its cult fanbase is so vocal and passionate that, to this day, there are still efforts for the movie to get a sequel. It would be great if that were to happen, as both Karl Urban and Olivia Thirlby were perfect in their roles.
Stream Dredd on HBO Max.
5) Donnie Darko
A movie that is hard to fully understand during your first viewing, Donnie Darko is a layered psychological sci-fi thriller that was, to be honest, never going to attract a substantial audience on the big screen, even with its all-star cast. It’s pretty depressing throughout. Intriguing, but depressing.
So perhaps it could be seen as understandable as to why it wasn’t widely released. The largest number of theaters it was in was 58 on its opening weekend, and the very next weekend that figure dropped down to 26, then 17, then 10, and so on. All in all, it made just over $500,000 domestically on a budget of $6 million. But the real reason why Donnie Darko was dumped into so few theaters has to do with 9/11. Its advertising featured a plane crashing into Donnie’s bedroom. Considering Donnie Darko was only about a month and a half after that terrorist attack, it was far too soon for viewers to see such imagery. But as time has separated it from that, viewers have found it, and now it’s considered one of the best and most influential independent films of its era.
Stream Donnie Darko on Prime Video.
4) Children of Men
High concept, jarringly intense, and dour, Alfonso Cuarรณn’s Children of Men is one of the most ambitious and unforgettable movies of the 2000s. And, while acclaimed by critics, it didn’t quite get the accolades it deserved. It was nominated for three Academy Awards (including Best Cinematography, courtesy of its engrossing long take sequences), but not Best Picture.
The reasons why it failed in theaters vary. For one, $76 million is a tad high for a thought-provoking sci-fi action thriller of its type. Two, the most theaters it was in during its expansion was 1,524, which isn’t even really a wide release. And three, it should have received more of a marketing push from Universal Pictures when it was being discussed as an awards contender. Fortunately, as people do, there were plenty who checked it out when it received Academy Awards nominations and loved it, so it didn’t take long for this film to find a larger audience than it did on the big screen.
3) Starship Troopers
One of the very best sci-fi action movies ever made, Starship Troopers is riveting, fun, and feels like it has real stakes. But critics sure didn’t get it at first. They thought it was pro-fascism like Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel by the same name. But it’s not, it’s the polar opposite. Like Verhoeven’s RoboCop and Total Recall it crafts an exaggerated, dangerous sci-fi world so it can deliver serious messages via a tongue in cheek approach.
Audiences didn’t understand it any better at the time. Starship Troopers, on a budget upwards of $110 million (very high in 1997, especially for something that wasn’t an established film property), opened to a respectable $22 million but quickly fell off. By the time it left theaters it had barely exceeded its budget, making it something that only reached profitability via its growing fandom courtesy of VHS releases, DVD releases, and the like. Now, it’s seen as the cult classic anti-fascism satire it was already destined to be.
Stream Starship Troopers on Paramount+.
2) The Thing
These days, The Thing is seen as one of John Carpenter’s two undisputed masterpieces, but that was very much not always the case. Like the next film on this list, The Thing had the misfortune of opening while E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was new in theaters.
Suffice to say, a lot more people chose to go see E.T. over Carpenter’s dour, body-morphing sci-fi horror masterwork. It only opened to a fifth of its $15 million budget. In subsequent years, however, it found its audience on home video. Before long, the cult following that formed thanks to home video led to a re-evaluation from critics, who basically flipped on their initial stance. When it hit theaters, The Thing was thought of as a gross-out movie that was both too gross and not nearly as concerned as it should have been with character development. Now, the practical effects are heralded as some of the best in film history and its appreciated for its characters’ reflection of Cold War paranoia.
1) Blade Runner
One of the five movies that made 1982 the greatest year in sci-fi film history, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner nonetheless kind of came and went from theaters. In fact, it was released the exact same day as The Thing, so Carpenter’s classic siphoned off some of the sci-fi lovers’ attention while, as mentioned, E.T. siphoned off the rest (i.e. most).
With a budget of $30 million, Scott’s film only netted $27.5 million when all was said and done. Even with about $14 million from overseas markets it wasn’t a success. Furthermore, just as many critics didn’t get it as those who did. It wasn’t until years later that it became a cult film, much less a classic. However, it was getting the respect it deserved about a decade later, seeing as how it was added to the National Film Registry in 1993.
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