Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
It’s a shame that children nowadays don’t understand the pop-culture phenomenon that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The animated series was one of the most-watched and beloved programs on TV while the toys sold like hotcakes and were hot-sellers over Christmas. It was Turtle-mania in every sense of the word.
Still, Hollywood didn’t want to gamble on a live-action film in 1990, fearing it wouldn’t perform at the box office at all. None of the major studios were interested in distributing it, so it was up to the then-independent New Line Cinema to put the $13.5 million Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie out into the world and pray for the best.
The critics and studios were shown the middle finger again as the audience lapped up the lean, green pic, turning it into a cult classic and creating another franchise. Oh, it also helped that it took in $202 million at the global box office, establishing it as the highest-grossing independent film at the time.
Thor: Ragnarok
By the time when Thor: Ragnarok was announced, you could hear the collective “meh” on the internet. The God of Thunder hadn’t achieved much since 2011’s Thor and become a bit of a wet rag in the MCU. Did he really deserve a third solo film?
Well, Marvel showed some balls by releasing Ragnarok so close to Justice League. While the latter had experienced a storied and troubled production, surely people would be more psyched for DC’s super-sized team-up than Thor, right?
As it turns out, the joke was on all of us. The threequel outperformed Justice League and made $854 million off a $180 million budget. Not only that, but it also became the highest-grossing film of the trilogy and the ninth-highest-grossing MCU film to date. Perhaps its biggest achievement, though, was how it reenergized Thor and gave him a new purpose as he soared in popularity once again.
