The Flop Gets Rehabilitated Faster Than It Used To

Megalopolis (2024) opened to a reported $4 million on a budget of roughly $120 million. Within a year of its theatrical failure, substantial pieces of film criticism had appeared arguing that the film was misunderstood, that its ambitions had been discounted, that its specific visual and thematic choices deserved reconsideration, that the culture had not been ready. The reception cycle that would historically have taken twenty-five years had run its course in twelve months.

This is not an isolated case. Babylon (2022) was reassessed within eighteen months. Blonde (2022) was reassessed within two years. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) took longer but has been specifically relitigated across the last decade. Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) has already, within six months of its release, begun to receive specific critical defences.

I want to argue that the flop-rehabilitation cycle has specifically accelerated across the last decade, describe what has caused the acceleration, and consider what is being gained and lost.

What the historical cycle looked like

The classical flop-rehabilitation cycle, for roughly the twentieth century, ran on a twenty-five-year horizon. A film that failed commercially and critically on release would, if it was going to be rehabilitated at all, be rehabilitated by a second generation of critics and viewers who encountered the film separately from its initial reception. The specific reviews and box-office numbers would fade from cultural memory. The film itself would remain, and a new audience could encounter it without the framing that had damaged its initial reception.

Blade Runner (1982) is the textbook case. The film opened to mixed reviews and disappointing box office. It was, by the specific commercial standards of its moment, a flop. Over the next twenty-five years, specific critical reappraisals (Pauline Kael aside, much of the critical establishment warmed to the film), specific home-video rediscoveries (the Criterion laserdisc in 1987 was important), and specific director-cut releases (the 1992 Director’s Cut, the 2007 Final Cut) slowly rebuilt the film’s reputation. By roughly 2007, Blade Runner had been widely reclassified as a major achievement. The rehabilitation took a generation.

Heaven’s Gate (1980) is the adjacent case. Michael Cimino’s western was a catastrophic commercial and critical failure that has since been specifically rehabilitated, starting roughly with the Criterion restoration in 2012. The rehabilitation took thirty-two years.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) is a short-form version: it underperformed theatrically, became a home-video phenomenon across the late 1990s, and was critically secured by roughly 2004. Ten years.

The specific point is: the rehabilitation took time. The film needed to shed its initial reception, find a new audience, be approached fresh by a new critical cohort.

What the contemporary cycle looks like

Megalopolis has been relitigated within twelve months of release. Babylon within eighteen. Blonde within twenty-four. The Master (2012) was in the revisionist process within five years. The contemporary cycle is running at roughly one-fifth the speed of the historical cycle.

The acceleration is caused by several specific shifts.

The critical-essay ecosystem has expanded. There are, in 2025, specifically more critical outlets publishing specifically more critical essays than there were in 1985. Substack, various independent publications, specific podcast ecosystems, YouTube video essays, and the traditional print outlets together produce more critical output per film than was ever previously possible. Any given film therefore accumulates more critical commentary faster. The specific argumentative work that rehabilitates a flop is being done by many more people simultaneously.

Revisionist criticism has become its own genre. The specific practice of making the case for a dismissed film has become a specific critical register that writers can specifically work in. “Revisiting Babylon” as a pitch is, in 2024, a known pitch with known tropes. Writers looking for productive work will find the contrarian take on a recent flop to be a specifically receptive venue. This is a structural feature of the current critical ecosystem.

Streaming availability accelerates rewatching. A film that flops theatrically hits streaming within ninety days. Viewers who did not see the film in theatres can catch it at home, form their own opinion, and contribute to the rehabilitation conversation almost immediately. The specific delay that physical-media rollout used to impose on the rehabilitation cycle is gone.

Director reputation capital transfers faster. Francis Ford Coppola’s specific reputation as an all-time important filmmaker protects Megalopolis in ways that are activated almost instantly. Damien Chazelle’s specific reputation as a La La Land-era prestige figure protects Babylon. The reputation capital of the director is available as argumentative material the moment the flop happens, rather than needing to accumulate across decades.

What is gained

The acceleration has specific benefits.

Films get watched. A flop that is rehabilitated within a year is a film that people actually watch. A flop that is rehabilitated in 2045 is a film that might have been entirely forgotten by the time the rehabilitation arrives. The accelerated cycle means more contemporary flops are actually being seen.

Specific achievements are preserved. Coppola’s specific visual ambitions in Megalopolis are worth preserving for the film-historical record. The accelerated rehabilitation cycle ensures that the film’s specific achievements are documented and argued about while the film is still in people’s memories.

Commercial failure becomes less permanently damaging. The specific damage to a director’s ability to secure financing that historically resulted from a high-profile flop is somewhat reduced when the flop is being rehabilitated within eighteen months. Coppola can still work. Chazelle can still work. Todd Phillips can still work. The accelerated cycle has reduced the career cost of commercial failure for specific directors.

What is lost

The acceleration also has specific costs.

The film does not get to fail. The specific value of the classical twenty-five-year rehabilitation was that the film had to survive twenty-five years of being treated as a failure. The ones that survived were, substantially, the ones that deserved rehabilitation. The ones that did not deserve rehabilitation simply faded. The accelerated cycle reverses this filtering. Contemporary flops are being reassessed almost immediately, before the specific selective pressure of time has done its work.

Contrarian takes crowd out measured assessment. The specific incentives of the current critical ecosystem reward the contrarian essay more than the measured one. A piece titled “Actually Megalopolis Is a Masterpiece” generates more clicks than a piece titled “Megalopolis Has Specific Virtues and Specific Failures.” The accelerated rehabilitation cycle is producing arguments that are, on average, more overclaiming than the classical cycle produced.

The initial critical response becomes compressed. Critics writing about a new release are increasingly aware that the rehabilitation cycle will start within months. This affects the specific care with which initial reviews are written, because the reviewer knows they will either be proven right or pushed aside within a year. The specific seriousness of the first-response review has, I think, suffered.

The flop stops being a meaningful category. When every flop is rehabilitated within eighteen months, the category of “flop” stops carrying the specific cultural meaning it used to carry. A film that genuinely fails, in the specific sense that it should not be watched, becomes hard to distinguish from a film that failed commercially but deserves rehabilitation. The collapse of the category means the specific information a flop used to convey (which films to skip) is no longer reliably available.

What I want

I want flops to have to earn their rehabilitation. I want the critical ecosystem to slow down slightly, to let films settle into their reception before starting the revisionist work. I want the specific five-to-ten-year horizon (rather than the one-year horizon) to be the standard for when the rehabilitation conversation is legitimate.

This is not a call to withhold criticism from interesting failures. Coppola deserves critical attention. Chazelle deserves critical attention. The argument is specifically about timing. The first year after a film’s release is the year in which the initial reception is doing its own specific cultural work. The rehabilitation conversation can wait.

Megalopolis will still be available for reassessment in 2029. Most of what needs to be said about the film will be said better by critics who have had five years to think about it than by critics who are writing their takes six months after release.

The flop, as a cultural category, has value. It is a specific kind of filter. The accelerated rehabilitation cycle is eroding the filter, and I would like to see us slow the erosion.