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Film History of the 1990s

Film History of the 1990s


The Era of Alternative or Independent ("Indie") Cinema and the Rise of CGI; the Decade of Re-Makes, Re-Releases, and More Sequels

Part 3
The 1990s Decade



Film History of the 1990s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Film History by Decade
Index | Pre-1920s | 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s
1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s

James Bond Films in the 90s:

Not unexpectedly, Agent 007 James Bond films flourished in the 90s (all with Pierce Brosnan), although there was a six year gap between the 16th film, Licence to Kill (1989) and the next Bond film, due, in part, to prolonged litigation over rights to the James Bond character stretching back 40 years. [The conflict was between Kevin McClory, a producer and coscreenwriter of Thunderball (1965), who attempted to claim a piece of MGM's 1ドル billion James Bond franchise by specifically asserting, in 1997, that he was co-owner of the Bond character. The case, between MGM/UA and Sony, was finally settled by the courts in the late 1990s]:

Major Blockbusters: Phenomenal Successes

[画像:Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace - 1999]Since the making of Jaws (1975), studio executives were primed toward making blockbusters to meet the bottom line. In the 90s, many of the greatest box-office hits of all time (in the top twenty) were made and marketed with sophisticated publicity and merchandising campaigns:

[画像:The Sixth Sense - 1999]But the biggest box-office (294ドル million) and critics favorite - and psychological thriller - was writer/director M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense (1999) - about a 9 year-old boy (Haley Joel Osment) who saw ghosts of dead people (with the memorable tagline "I see dead people") all around south Philadelphia, and who shared his ghostly experience with child psychologist Bruce Willis. The mysterious film from an unknown director generated much talk over its unexpected twist ending. [There were at least five films famous for their gripping twist or surprise endings in this decade: The Crying Game (1992), Se7en (1995), The Usual Suspects (1995), and Fight Club (1999) could be added.]

Hollywood was relieved (and recouped its costs) when its traditional kind of blockbuster did well in the summer of 1991, evidenced by James Cameron's expensive sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). It featured superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger ("Hasta la vista, baby!") as a T-800 cyborg, and incredible, quicksilver "morphing" effects of the opposing, molten-metal T-1000 android (Robert Patrick) produced with high-powered Silicon Graphics super-computers). [画像:True Lies - 1994]It was the first film with a 100ドル million budget. [Cameron had written and directed the earlier low-budget The Terminator (1984) with modest success. Likewise, he had transformed Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) into a big-budget sequel titled Aliens (1986) .]

Writer/director Cameron's next film (with secret agent Arnold Schwarzenegger as Harry) was True Lies (1994) - a Bond-like spy-adventure packed with special effects, thrills, an exciting jet and car chase over the Florida Keys, and tongue-in-cheek comedy about how Harry's wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) didn't know his occupation. [It was the first movie with a budget to exceed 100ドル million, and eventually grossed 365ドル million.] Ridley Scott closed the decade with the Best Picture, multiple-Oscar winner Gladiator (2000), a computer-enhanced Roman Empire sandals-toga epic with Australian actor Russell Crowe as the virtuous and wronged Maximus who sought revenge in the Coliseum.

The Phenomenon of Titanic:

[画像:Titanic - 1997]Writer/director James Cameron solidified his reputation as the undisputed king of mega-blockbusters in this decade with his studio-shared (Fox and Paramount) Titanic (1997) (grossing 600ドル million in the US alone, and 1ドル.8 billion worldwide for the studios). It was the first film with a budget exceeding 200ドル million. Titanic retold the spectacular, epic-disaster of the 1912 ill-fated, maiden voyage cruise of the R.M.S. Titanic, when it was pierced by an iceberg. The tense scene of the sinking of the ship was created with state-of-the-art digital effects and a life-size version of the ship. In addition, a secondary love story between star-crossed lovers - poor passenger Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and upper-class Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), told in flashback by an older Rose (Gloria Stuart) slowly built to the inevitable conclusion.

The melodramatic film was notable for many milestones:

It also featured Celine Dion's popular song: 'My Heart Will Go On.' The mega-hit even surpassed Steven Spielberg's box-office blockbusters: Jurassic Park (1993) and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).

Minor Films Were Also Successful:

Other successful films were small, comparatively cheap, and often independently-produced films that unpredictably soared at the box office:

Special-Effects Laden Films:

Two special-effects-laden, predictably-scripted apocalyptic disaster films racked up huge profits. Both were about destructive meteors or asteroids hurtling toward Earth - in the same year:

At the close of the decade, another chapter of the Star Wars saga appeared after a sixteen year lapse: George Lucas' computer-generated return to his epic saga with the first sci-fi space episode, an inferior but financially successful prequel Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) .

The eerie horror film Interview with the Vampire (1994) was based on Anne Rice's novel, and starred Tom Cruise as a decadent vampire in New Orleans who converted Brad Pitt to blood-sucking and immortality. And Clint Eastwood's latest directing and acting project, Space Cowboys (2000) used high definition television (HDTV) technology for the first time in a Hollywood feature.

The Wachowski Brothers' The Matrix:

[画像:The Matrix - 1999]Writers-directors Andy and Larry Wachowski's second feature film (following Bound (1996)) was the ambitious and inventive virtual-reality flick The Matrix (1999) . It starred Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss and Keanu Reeves, and won four Academy Awards (all in sound, editing, and visual effects technical categories). Slacker hacker Thomas Anderson/Neo (Keanu Reeves) was called as a messianic figure to save the world (of approximately the year 2199) from virtually indestructible Sentient Agents. The blockbuster's wild popularity was due to its combination of comic-bookish plot, mysticism, philosophical complexity, computer-enhanced digital effects of its unbelievable action scenes, flying bullet-dodging ("bullet-time") and intriguing virtual worlds in which reality was redefined as a computer simulation. It helped to illustrate what the future would be of futuristic sci-fi action films with slick and smart plots, and jaw-dropping action.

Big Losers, Flops and Bombs: Turkeys of the 90s Decade

See this site's major sub-section on Greatest Flops and Box-Office Disasters. There were a number of expensive blockbusters that seemed like they would be sure-fire, instant successes for studio bosses, but there were no guarantees. It was becoming clear that expensive, star-studded films with reliable adventure, horror, fantasy or crime genre plots, or with state-of-the-art special effects and huge marketing campaigns, didn't necessary mean success at the box office. Unless Hollywood could sell its films to foreign markets, or find lucrative profits from the video market or cable/satellite TV industry or other outlets, many films were doomed to fail and lose money due to bloated budgets. The disturbing trends begun in 80s continued into this decade, with unimaginative, vanilla-flavor plots, poor artistry, inferior production values, and hackneyed scripts.

Despite massive production budgets and elaborate marketing and distribution campaigns (Hollywood studios had been transformed into money-making factories that were spending approximately 70ドル million per feature film by the late 1990s), the following films were major flops or were reviewed highly critically:

  1. [画像:The Bonfire of the Vanities - 1990]The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), director Brian de Palma's flop adaptation of Tom Wolfe's best-seller; mis-cast with Tom Hanks as the central character - a Wall Street broker.
  2. Hook (1991), another high-budget film from Steven Spielberg, was an odd and savagely-criticized updating of the Peter Pan legend. It starred Robin Williams (as Peter Pan), Dustin Hoffman (as Captain Hook), and Julia Roberts (as Tinker Bell).
  3. Director Michael Lehmann's Hudson Hawk (1991) was Columbia/TriStar's ill-fated, unfunny, and poorly-executed attempt at a heist flick (with homage to Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1955) and Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun (1988)). It starred Danny Aiello, Andie MacDowell, and self-indulgent Bruce Willis in this vanity project as a reformed cat burglar who stole priceless da Vinci art pieces around the world. The film's budget of over 60ドル million brought in US box-office of only about 17ドル million.
  4. Director Renny Harlin's (star Geena Davis' husband! and known for Cliffhanger (1993)) and MGM/Carolco's bloated Cutthroat Island (1995) was one of the biggest flops of the decade (with an eventual budget of 100ドル million and box-office of only 10ドル million). The pirate movie was an adventure tale with horrible acting, a deficient script, continuity problems, and logistical issues due to being filmed on two continents (in Malta and Thailand). Harlin's film starred B-list actor Matthew Modine opposite Geena Davis who was cast in the unlikely role of Captain Morgan Adams - a swashbuckling pirate queen in search of treasure; Carolco (makers of the Rambo series, Terminator II: Judgment Day (1991), and Total Recall (1990)), didn't survive after the film's failure.
  5. Showgirls (1995) - a sleazy, big-budget 'adult-oriented' film that became a camp classic instead; the outlandish film was both a critical and commercial failure, and grossed only 20ドル million (half of its budgeted cost); Elizabeth Berkley (of TV's Saved By the Bell) starred as a stripper turned Las Vegas showgirl-dancer in a soul-less, exploitative plot with repugnant characters; the film was considered senseless, violent, and actually sexually boring; the film was the second pairing of director Paul Verhoeven (known for RoboCop (1987) and Basic Instinct (1992) ) and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (also for Basic Instinct (1992)).
  6. [画像:Showgirls - 1995]Star/director Kevin Costner's and Warners' over three-hour long futuristic sci-fi epic The Postman (1997) with Costner in the title role as a Shakespeare-quoting, Messiah-like postman (with homage to the Australian Mad Max films); based on David Brin's fantasy post-apocalyptic novel, the laughable film was budgeted at 80ドル-100 million, with a US box-office of only about 18ドル million.
  7. Godzilla (1998) was an over-produced blockbuster from the team of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich; with an unwisely-redesigned monster-creature from the Japanese classic.
  8. Battlefield Earth (2000) was best known for being devoted Scientology member and spokesperson John Travolta's greatest all-time turkey; also noted for its ridiculous dialogue and poorly executed special effects, the unappealing film was a miserable adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard's science-fiction novel, and believed to be a propagandistic recruitment tool for the self-help 'religious' Church of Scientology; the 75ドル million flop was released at the same time as Ridley Scott's acclaimed Gladiator (2000).
  9. The tasteless, vulgar, "middle-aged sex comedy" about marital infidelity, Town & Country (2001) failed miserably, with a budget of 85ドル-90 million (double the original budget), and a box-office of only about 7ドル million; it featured an impressive cast: Warren Beatty and Garry Shandling as cheating husbands on their wives Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn. The three-year production was so plagued with script problems and re-shoots that the studio postponed the film's opening date 13 times!

Other Films With Critical Reviews or Failed Box-Office Results:

Although Jim Carrey received the first of many 20ドル million Hollywood salaries in the decade for his appearance in director Ben Stiller's dark, unsettling comedy The Cable Guy (1996), the film failed miserably. A lot of lesser horror films failed at the box office, such as the sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) (scriptwriter Kevin Williamson's original film in 1997, a follow-up to Scream, fared slightly better) and Urban Legend (1999).

Plot Line Derivatives for 90s Hollywood Films:

To retread well-known and well-accepted plots, storylines, or film properties from the past that would potentially provide guaranteed profits, Hollywood studios looked to comic book characters or superheroes, sports figures, popular TV shows or animations, or videogames for inspiration for live action films (and their sequels), such as:

Other examples illustrated how intellectually-bankrupt things had become in the 1990s. Studios also refurbished old ideas with sequels or adaptations of novels, such as:

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