The People Have Spoken – 12 Movies Critics Hated That are Now Legendary

Critics and audiences don’t always arrive at the same verdict. Sometimes critics change their minds, too. A movie can open to hostile or sharply divided reviews, struggle at the box office, or simply leave reviewers wondering what they just watched—then find a devoted audience over time.

These 12 movies weren’t all roundly panned. Some were savaged, several split critics down the middle, and a few remain crowd-pleasers that reviewers still greet with a raised eyebrow. What they share is staying power. Critics get the first word. Time occasionally asks for a rewrite.

• Director: Stanley Kubrick
• Stars: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, and Scatman Crothers
• Release Date: May 23, 1980

Initial reviews were mixed, with detractors calling the film slow, emotionally cold, and less frightening than expected. Over time, viewers embraced the very qualities that bothered some reviewers: its suffocating pace, precise visuals, unnerving performances, and refusal to explain every horror waiting inside the Overlook Hotel.

• Director: Frank Capra
• Stars: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, and Henry Travers
• Release Date: December 20, 1946

This one was never universally disliked—several prominent critics praised it from the start. Others found it overly sentimental or too long, and its original theatrical run fell short of expectations. Later television broadcasts introduced it to new generations, who connected with its darker undertones, hopeful finish, and James Stewart’s deeply human performance.

• Director: Stanley Kubrick
• Stars: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, and Douglas Rain
• Release Date: April 3, 1968

Critics were sharply divided. Some immediately recognized the film as a technical and artistic landmark, while others found it slow, opaque, and emotionally distant. Audiences kept returning for its groundbreaking effects, classical score, enormous ideas, and famously unexplained ending. Apparently, giving people something to argue about for decades is not the worst strategy.

• Director: David Fincher
• Stars: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter
• Release Date: October 15, 1999

Reviews were polarized rather than uniformly bad. Critics objected to the violence, nihilism, and risk that the film’s satire could be mistaken for an endorsement of the behavior it depicted. Later viewers embraced David Fincher’s visual style, the performances, the dark humor, the anti-consumerist anger, and a twist that made an immediate second viewing almost mandatory.

• Director: Jon Turteltaub
• Stars: Nicolas Cage, Harvey Keitel, Jon Voight, Diane Kruger, Sean Bean, Justin Bartha, and Christopher Plummer
• Release Date: November 19, 2004

Critics were not sold on the movie’s improbable history, conveniently placed clues, or familiar action formula. Audiences were not looking for a civics lecture. They enjoyed the fast-moving treasure hunt, likable cast, family-friendly suspense, and the sight of Nicolas Cage trying to steal the Declaration of Independence with an entirely straight face.

• Director: Ridley Scott
• Stars: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos
• Release Date: June 25, 1982

Some early critics admired the film’s appearance but found its story slow, confusing, or emotionally remote—especially for a movie marketed as science-fiction action. Home video and later cuts gave viewers time to reconsider it. Fans fell for its rain-soaked atmosphere, production design, haunting score, and questions about memory, identity, and what actually makes someone human.

• Director: Brian De Palma
• Stars: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Robert Loggia
• Release Date: December 9, 1983

Reviews were fiercely divided. Detractors hammered the movie’s length, profanity, brutality, and wall-to-wall excess, while defenders saw a deliberately grotesque version of the American success story. Fans turned Al Pacino’s performance, the operatic rise and fall of Tony Montana, and the film’s endlessly quoted dialogue into a lasting piece of popular culture.

• Director: John Carpenter
• Stars: Kurt Russell, A. Wilford Brimley, T. K. Carter, David Clennon, Keith David, and Richard Dysart
• Release Date: June 25, 1982

Few movies on this list took a worse beating. Critics complained that the gruesome effects overwhelmed the story and compared it unfavorably with the more restrained 1951 adaptation. Viewers later recognized what those effects helped create: a tense, deeply paranoid horror film with an excellent ensemble, remarkable practical effects, and an ending that refuses to let anyone relax.

• Director: Alfred Hitchcock
• Stars: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, and Martin Balsam
• Release Date: June 16, 1960

Critical opinion was divided, with some reviewers dismissing the movie as tawdry, gruesome, or beneath Alfred Hitchcock’s talents. Audiences turned those objections into selling points. They flocked to its suspense, shocking narrative turn, Anthony Perkins’ unsettling performance, and a shower scene that became one of the most recognizable sequences in film history.

• Director: John McTiernan
• Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Elpidia Carrillo, Bill Duke, and Richard Chaves
• Release Date: June 12, 1987

Initial reviews were mixed, and some critics saw little beyond a thin plot, bulging muscles, and very loud gunfire. Fans appreciated how efficiently the movie blends action, science fiction, and horror. Its shift from swaggering commandos to frightened prey, along with the creature design, jungle tension, and quotable cast, helped it outlast plenty of more respectable movies.

• Director: Louis Leterrier
• Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Mélanie Laurent, Isla Fisher, Common, Dave Franco, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman
• Release Date: May 31, 2013

Critics took issue with the thinly drawn characters, improbable mechanics, and an ending that could feel less like a clever reveal than a cheat. Audiences were considerably more forgiving. The cast, slick presentation, rapid pace, elaborate magic tricks, and heist-movie twists made it an entertaining crowd-pleaser and helped launch a franchise.

• Director: Terry Gilliam
• Stars: Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro
• Release Date: May 22, 1998

Critics were polarized, with detractors calling the film exhausting, repetitive, and almost deliberately shapeless. Fans—particularly readers of Hunter S. Thompson—embraced Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro’s performances, Terry Gilliam’s hallucinatory visuals, and the movie’s commitment to turning a drug-fueled trip into a warped autopsy of the American dream.