If I made a movie I would want it’s boxoffice run to look like this.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?p ... 019&p=.htm


What are your memories of Forrest Gump? How did it come into your life?
I remember seeing advertisements with the ‘box of chocolates’ quote. Tom Hanks was already well known but not stratosphere famous. I just knew the film was going to suck. As I stared at the sign, I thought. This looks bland, I thought. Why was this released in the summer. Everyone was still in a glow over The Lion King and highly anticipating True Lies.

The movie comes out and I start detecting a buzz. What sold me, I think, was a local news feature that showed clips of Gump meeting Presidents and inserting himself in key pivotal moments in history. This was after Jurassic Park so we had come out of the CGI dark ages. Still, I was shocked at how FX was being used so well in such a subtle way. I had never seen that before. Color me intrigued at this point.

‘Ok fine’ I’ll watch it. Once I saw the film, with its soaring soundtrack, Jenny, catchy quotes, Sinise, and of course Hanks - I was hooked.

1994 was a great year for cinema. I was right in the middle of it and have ‘as it happened’ recollections like the above for all the popular films of that year. Happy to share.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/ch ... 994&p=.htm

This came out when I was 8/9 years old, so I didn't appreciate it as much when I saw it back then. But even then I did enjoy it. I watched it again a few years later and enjoyed it even more. I haven't actually watched it in about 10 years or more and would like to give it another shot. It's one of those movies that everyone loves to shit on, but I've never seen what was so hateful about it. Sometimes it's OK to like something that's more or less two and a half hours of mindless fluff.

I do remember noting back then about how it was a marvel of film VFX that Gary Sinise was shown to have lost his legs. That impressed me even more than Forrest being injected into real world events.

I remember seeing a preview of it on Entertaiment Tonight and after summer biggies like TLK, Speed and True Lies - it felt like it could be solid hit (I had it pegged for $100-$120m). But nobody was prepared for what it would become.

I was 16 and studying 20th Century History that year and couldnt wait to see it. I absolutely loved it. It was the first film that i saw twice in theatres.

It was beloved at the time. It was only after it dominated the Oscars beating films like Pulp Fiction, Shawshank, Quiz Show, Ed Wood etc that sentiment began to change.

I also recall seeing a poster for Dumb and Dumber that parodied the "Gump Happens" posters with "Dumb Happens". Classic.

Hhmm, 94. I was in school and my brother worked at the local movie theatre so I could see movies often. I can't recall much sadly but I do remember that soundtrack being full of really great music I would sing too. Also, I have watched that film multiple times and it's always entertaining and a great story. I was happy he won that Oscar for the role.

Hhm Interview with a Vampire also came out in 1994 too and I definitely remember seeing that in that movie theatre.

The modern vibe keeps trying to tell me that I shouldn’t like this film so much and that it was mean to black & disabled people and how it’s generally a bad deal all-round for anyone not wishing to betray some kind of prejudice. It quietly dropped off top ten and classics lists and barely gets a cultural reference these days; yet it was also the most culturally impactful film of the 90s with ripples well into the 2000s, set benchmarks and crossed genres with an ease and scale we haven’t seen since. Like, everyone knew Titanic made more money, but Gump affected people much more deeply, and widely - its appeal had a unique completeness about it, like you’d lived a life just through the watching of it. The closest to that particular mark since, Boyhood, was about a million times milder in scope and vision, with none of the crowd-pleasing mainstream stuff - Gump, by comparison, was a landmark zeitgeist-capturing behemoth as re-watchable as anything ever put to film.

If a few clit-dicks out there want to get pissy about the PC-ness of certain character portrayals, they can go fuck their dead grandmothers if you ask me. Doesn’t matter if they were cremated, either: just add some solvent and putty her into a fuckable shape. Leave poor Forest alone.

This is how much I love this film: had a new housemate in Melbourne back in 2011 who one day mentions she hadn’t seen it before, so immediately cancelled the afternoon to drive to a shopping centre 40 minutes away, to trawl 5 different stores to buy the last physical copy (our downloads had been slowed) in the whole region probably - literally wasn’t doing anything else until we’d satisfied that she’d seen it. Sure I’m more manic about these things than most, but it’s almost like being told someone has cancer when you’re sitting on the cure.

Life without Forest Gump is just that, in my book: curable cancer.

I haven't seen it in a while but if it is as politically incorrect (in today's climate) as you indicate I love it even more.

I always wondered what would have happened if they successfully adapted the 2nd novel in the late 90s. Never read it, but I remember a lot of people liking it. But with lament right off of sixth sense, and well Hanks was still Hanks

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=fore ... orrectness

‘Fascist’ comes up a fair bit.

The fact such an aggressively sweet fantasy can be viewed that way, makes you realise why Noddy got such a raw deal.

It's a deserving classic and one of the sweetest, most heartwarming and life-affirming films you can watch. It's about being witness to the good and the bad of life, including death, abuse, injustice, trauma, separation, and pain and still maintaining innocence and wonder and seeing the positive side of life; the self-appointed culture commissars at major magazines trashing the film lately for being "problematic" will NEVER understand that as their entire worldview revolves around how there is NO possibility of redemption in life, and they can honestly swallow liquid iron. Haters gonna hate. <3

Awesome. Very well said especially the part in bold.

A Forrest Gump made today would be very different. Alot more tics on the PC checklist that it would need to check off. Favorite moments: anything with Gary Sinise, the run across the football field, reunion with Jenny near the end, Gump jumping off the shrimp boat

True. But I always go against that argument because you have to always think that if a film like Forrest Gump came out today, it didn't come out in 94. It didn't have countless knockoffs and other TV networks milking the idea. In which case, a film like Forrest Gump coming out today gets to actually be like Forrest Gump coming out today. It's totally unfair to judge a defining film in today's marketplace because of said film. You have to discount the incredible impact the film had.