Kevin Costner might be riding high after Yellowstone led to a long-overdue resurgence, but let’s not forget that it was the actor’s own hubris that effectively derailed his mainstream prospects initially, with 1997’s The Postman ranking as one of the worst and most misguided blockbusters of all-time.
It’s easy to see where he was coming from when it came to assembling the post-apocalyptic epic, seeing as his last feature as a director won widespread critical, box office, and awards season acclaim, with The Postman also adopting the tropes of the Western from Costner’s classic Dances with Wolves, albeit in a vastly different setting.
Of course, the results couldn’t have been more different. The $80 million exercise in excess earned just $5 million in its domestic opening weekend, and barely made it past $20 million globally. Even today, The Postman only holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of eight percent, and we haven’t even mentioned the fact it won every single Razzie it was nominated for after scooping Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Original Song.
In fact, The Postman was pinpointed as the reason why Costner vanished from the A-list entirely for the next decade and change, such was the level of disaster it brought on every single imaginable level. And yet, because even the hardiest of turds can find themselves being re-polished, Redditors have been trying to drum up support for underrated status.
Make no mistake about it, the film sucks incredibly hard, but it just goes to show how strong the lenses on the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia can be if one of the most notorious flops in the history of cinema can undergo a reappraisal more than 25 years on.