Independence Day weekend can be a huge opportunity for movie studios and theaters. If they’ve got a genuinely good movie lined up, butts can easily start filling seats when people have more free time during the holiday. Tentpole movies can also win big, and it stands to reason that if a studio has spent a lot of money on a project, they’ll want the best possible chance of recouping it, even if all they’re offering is just another underwhelming sequel fresh off a CGI assembly line.
Yet some Independence Day weekend releases have become genuine classics over the years, and we’re here to celebrate them. You won’t find Transformers: Dark of the Moon or Despicable Me 4 on this list, but you will find some movies much more likely to be called “absolute cinema.”
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Back when Arnold Schwarzenegger was becoming a legitimate leading man and James Cameron was no longer thought of as the guy who made Piranha II: The Spawning, the director decided to make an action sequel to his 1984 horror hit The Terminator. It had already been established as a wise approach after he’d followed up Ridley Scott’s horror movie Alien by pumping Aliens with more action, but Carolco Pictures was still taking a massive gamble by financing it because Terminator 2: Judgment Day was the most expensive film of all time.
Cameron and co-writer William Wisher cooked up a fresh spin on the story this time around: Sarah Connor’s now-10-year-old son, John Connor, and a new T-800 from the future would become BFFs, but their ambitious vision would prove tricky to pull off. A gruelling L.A. shoot and the desire to use groundbreaking special effects added to the film’s challenges, but it was all worth it. Terminator 2 was a smash hit and is widely regarded as one of the greatest action movies. Unfortunately, the film’s success couldn’t save Carolco from its other losses; the studio filed for bankruptcy just four years later.
Back to the Future (1985)
“I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet,” Marty McFly realizes after wailing some 1980s freestyle rock guitar in front of a dance hall full of baffled 1950s teens. “But your kids are gonna love it.” Thankfully, the kids of 1985 were absolutely ready for Marty’s antics when Back to the Future was released on July 3 that year.
It wasn’t supposed to go down that way, though. Universal wasn’t even originally planning to release Back to the Future on the 4th of July weekend, but test screenings for the Michael J. Fox-starring sci-fi flick indicated that it would likely be a banger, so the studio moved up its release date. The rest is history. Back to the Future made almost $400 million at the box office from a $19 million budget and spawned two sequels. Not bad for a movie with a plot about a boy’s mom wanting to romance him when he accidentally takes the place of his young father at a pivotal moment in their past.
Independence Day (1996)
The first movie people think of as a big Independence Day weekend release is also the first of two Will Smith projects on this list. Many have tried to copy Roland Emmerich’s entirely unsubtle actioner in the years since Independence Day came along (including the director himself), but none have come close to the high-octane nonsense of the extraterrestrial invasion that just didn’t see Randy Quaid’s drunk ass coming.
Emmerich and co-writer Dean Devlin came up with the idea for the film after seeing a ton of sci-fi movies portray alien invasions on a smaller scale, and wondered what would happen if they created a scenario in which aliens launched a massive attack and began annihilating the human race. With this in mind, $75 million to spend, and Smith as a charismatic lead, the pair struck box office gold and left Twister and Mission: Impossible in the dust that year.
The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
A fun, fashion-centric comedy was never going to beat the likes of Superman Returns during 2006’s holiday weekend, but The Devil Wears Prada fared surprisingly well against that DC spectacle and endured far beyond it, with the mid-budget comedy proving that audiences will absolutely show up for a movie about a woman trying to make it as a journalist but finding her first boss quite the workplace abuser. We’ve all had that one boss who was great at their job but treated their employees like sub-human scum. We definitely haven’t all had to thwart one of Lex Luthor’s villainous plans. As a result, The Devil Wears Prada connected with people in a way that Superman just couldn’t quite manage, at least in 2006.
Unlike other belated sequels, The Devil Wears Prada 2 managed to dodge a straight-to-streaming release, a savvy decision by 20th Century Studios that led to this year’s follow-up movie also hitting it big. Will it be considered the kind of classic that the first movie is in a couple of decades? Probably not, but we’ll always have florals for spring.
South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut (1999)
Paramount rolled the dice on a South Park feature film being just as good as their animated hit show in 1999, and after pestering creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone to make one, they finally relented and churned out this musical black comedy that has stood the test of time despite some dated references.
Offensive and sharply satirical, the movie’s plot is generally fine but often takes a back seat to the songs written by Parker and Marc Shaiman, a frequent collaborator of the late Rob Reiner. “I’m Super,” “Kyle’s Mom’s a Bitch,” “Uncle Fucka,” and “Blame Canada” are now all up there with the most beloved Broadway tracks. The latter failing to win an Academy Award for Best Song that year remains one of the Oscars’ greatest injustices. Parker and Stone later responded by mocking the winner, Phil Collins, in several episodes of the show, and to this day, one of the only non-music-related things that some people know about Collins is the urban legend that he divorced his wife by fax. The cultural impact of the South Park show and this movie cannot be overstated.
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
For a lot of people, Spider-Man 2 remains the best of the wallcrawler’s movies. The second entry in Sam Raimi’s trilogy pits Peter Parker against scientist Dr. Otto Octavius, a sympathetic villain under the influence of mechanical tentacles after a fusion power demonstration gone wrong, and Alfred Molina plays Otto perfectly with a weary yet menacing approach that contrasts well with the first film’s sinister Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe).
Spider-Man 2 was a hit back in 2004 and often still makes it to the top five in superhero movie rankings, usually battling Christopher Nolan’s gritter The Dark Knight for supremacy, but Raimi’s movie set the blueprint for the Marvel Cinematic Universe that would get underway later in the decade with its clever balancing act of humor and outlandish action.
Armageddon (1998)
Brushing scientific accuracy, plausibility, subtlety, and realism straight into the nearest bin, Armageddon is a Michael Bay Experience of the highest order, boasting an incredible cast of actors who put 100% of their energy into a script with eye-watering lines like “You know we’re sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn’t it?” and “Requesting permission to shake the hand of the daughter of the bravest man I’ve ever met.”
Armageddon makes up for dialing ludicrousness all the way up to 11 by having so much fun it should be illegal, as a bunch of blue-collar boys head up into space to stop a massive asteroid hitting Earth. While a more realistic take on this scenario would arrive many years later with Don’t Look Up, Armageddon knew exactly what kind of high-stakes shenanigans people paid their good money to see and delivered. It’s a guilty pleasure, but a classic guilty pleasure nonetheless.
Coming to America (1988)
A huge success upon its release in 1988, Coming to America features Eddie Murphy at his best as Zamunda’s crown prince Akeem Joffer, who embarks on a quest to dodge an arranged marriage and find a strong, independent woman who isn’t interested in his wealth or royal standing. Along the way, there are jokes, yes, but also strong performances by James Earl Jones and John Amos, as well as Murphy and comedian Arsenio Hall, who play multiple characters in a way that genuinely works rather than irritates (check out some of Murphy’s other multi-role movies for comparison).
Paramount had no idea that Coming to America was going to hit big, let alone become a classic comedy. They even canceled press screenings after the movie bombed with a press screening in New York. It had been a rocky production, too, with Murphy and director John Landis on bad terms during and after production. Still, the studio was soon pulling a “Homelander relieved as crowd cheers” meme in real life after Coming to America soared.
Men in Black (1997)
It’s easy to forget that Men in Black is technically a Marvel movie. Adapted from Lowell Cunningham and Sandy Carruthers’ comic book series for Aircel (before it was acquired by Malibu and then Marvel), Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones admittedly still rock the mismatched buddy cop splash page vibe here in a truly odd sci-fi actioner with ambition to spare.
Barry Sonnenfeld’s 98-minute “French Connection with aliens” project became Sony’s highest-grossing film until it was beaten into submission by Spider-Man years later, and it remained the best in the franchise as it generated sequel after sequel until Smith and Jones were long gone. Danny Elfman’s memorable score for the movie was also key to its longevity, though the composer claims he was actually hired in a very offhanded way after running into star Vincent D’Onofrio on the set of Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners, by which time Men in Black was close to the end of its production.
Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
Big Trouble in Little China is the only box office bomb on this list. It also drew little in the way of critical praise when it was released, but John Carpenter’s delightful movie became a surprising cult classic after it hit home video and audiences finally understood that the director’s weird mashup of martial arts, comedy, action, and fantasy was actually the anti-white savior movie of their fever dreams.
After working with Kurt Russell in The Thing and Escape from New York, Carpenter reteamed with the amiable actor for Big Trouble in Little China, where he plays truck driver Jack Burton, a distinctly tongue-in-cheek spin on John Wayne who just can’t quite get past the level of hapless sidekick despite swaggering around with the confidence of a true American hero. It was a risky take and suffered financially for it, but the film deftly subverted audience expectations and influenced plenty of hit movies that followed, including The Mummy and Thor: Ragnarok.
The post 10 Independence Day Weekend Movie Releases That Became Classics appeared first on Den of Geek.
0 Commentaires