Accidental Aesop: A meta example. This film's production is a good cautionary tale of how being a Perfectionist can blow up in your face. Had Michael Cimino been a bit more pragmatic about how to achieve his artistic goals for the film, a lot of its issues could've been avoided. It's also a great reminder about keeping your ego in check and just as quickly as you can be on top, you can also just as quickly lose it as Michael Cimino went from being a major name in the movie making business to having his career destroyed by this film.
Better on DVD: The Blu-Ray release is the version restored closest to Cimino's original vision.
Common Knowledge: "Heaven's Gate bankrupted United Artists" isn't exactly what happened. In a nutshell, in 1981 UA's parent company Transamerica decided to refocus on their core business of insurance and investments, and started selling off their other assets. Heaven's Gate had certainly been a major contributor to UA's recent underperformance, but there were other factors like many of UA's former clients preferring to do business with the old UA regime now at Orion Pictures, plus other questionable moves by UA's new regime, presiding over several other flops and paying exorbitant amounts to acquire film rights for high profile books. Even then, thanks largely to the success of Moonraker and Rocky II, plus smaller hits like Raging Bull and Caveman, the studio was breaking even. Then MGM owner Kirk Kerkorian suddenly swooped in and offered Transamerica $380 million (over a billion dollars in today's money) to buy UA, and it was simply too good of a deal for them to pass up.
Complete Monster: Frank Canton, here lacking any of his more sympathetic qualities, is the head of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association who intends to kill 125 immigrants and claim them as anarchists, with the support of the President of the United States. Canton ambushes and murders the train station master when he tries to warn the town about his arrival. Canton then has his men rape Ella Watson. When his enforcer Nathan D. Champion discovers this, he kills the one rapist who escaped in front of Canton, who shows no concern over his death and personally executes a captured immigrant. While fighting with the immigrants, Canton brings in the cavalry to rescue his own men, and threatens to shoot James Averill for insurrection when he points this out. Canton later ambushes Averill, Ella, and John H. Bridges, the only survivors of the battle, killing both Ella and Bridges before he himself is shot by Averill.
Ending Fatigue: With a runtime of 3 hours and 36 minutes, this is one of the biggest complaints, with the view that the film doesn't have nearly enough plot to fill out its running time. In particular, the epilogue,—a Distant Finale with Averill back among the New England aristocracy— a wholly disconnected scene that Cimino added purely for artistic gravitas, is viewed as completely unnecessary.
Improved by the Re-Cut: The 216-minute Director's Cut was widely praised for restoring the film's many Scenery Porn scenes and making the plot easier to follow, and helped play a significant in the film's reevaluation from a cinematic disaster to an underrated masterpiece.
Many people consider this as the film that ended the New Hollywood and scapegoated the entire generation as Prima Donna Directors. In actual fact, at the time of the film's release, funding was already drying up for ambitious projects and the film industry was already bought out by corporations who sought to follow the trend of Star Wars.
Other observers point out that the similarly Troubled ProductionApocalypse Now was a box-office successnote Steven Bach in Final Cut draws this explicit comparison and that Heaven's Gate was also accompanied by other expensive films like Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979) and Warren Beatty's Reds, the former being a critical failure, an out of control production and a modest success, while the latter being successful and preserving Beatty's reputation. Spielberg himself enjoyed a couple of expensive flops in The '80s and The '90s such as Hook and Empire of the Sun yet his career did not quite sink as drastically as Cimino's. In many ways, Cimino's behavior was not especially excessive for his time, and he had success with The Deer Hunter to justify his ambition and grit, yet this one failure ruined his Hollywood career for good.
There's also the argument that the film's failure was a result of negative publicity about the film's production reported in the news before the film's release. Negative publicity had damaged the reception of Ishtar (a late-80s Box Office Bomb that like Heaven's Gate is now seen in a better light) and this in turn put more pressure on the producers who released a cut-down version to critics which didn't make sense, and only made things worse. This practice of cutting down and sabotaging releases also led to other instances in The '80s such as Blade Runner and Brazil whose Re-Cut version released later proved to be successful.
A big issue in the film's reputation is that Steven Bach's book Final Cut shaped a lot of the public perception of its Troubled Production, but, while it's a very well-written and candid book, Bach, as the UA exec in charge of production, wasn't an impartial observer, and one of the subtexts of the book is actually really important in understanding what happened: five UA executives quitting at the start of 1978 to form Orion Pictures, leaving a less-experienced group (including Bach) to take over at UA. The UA leadership giving Cimino free rein, then bungling the release, needs to be kept in mind in the whole situation (Bach to his credit admits this, but focusing the book on Cimino's excesses, entertaining though they were, deflected too much of the blame). Bach's co-head of production, David Field, also felt that Bach used Final Cut as an attempt to deflect blame away from himself.
Canton's reaction to Nate's shooting of one of Ella's rapists in his tent.
Canton: Not in here!
Anyone checking out the film these days with its name having become so notorious is probably a bit nonplussed to find out the movie has that title because of a roller rink.
Older Than They Think: The story of the Johnson County War had already been featured in a few films before Heaven's Gate. In fact, a 1976 Made-for-TV Movie called The Invasion of Johnson County (with Bill Bixby and Bo Hopkins) hit a lot of the same story beats Cimino would later use, including Frank Canton and Nate Champion as characters amid the fictionalized storyline. In general, the stock Western plot of settlers versus cattle barons was a conscious echo of the Johnson County events, with Shane (novel and film) especially taking the central Johnson County conflict and giving it a mythicized treatment.
Protection from Editors: The main reason why the film's budget spiraled so ludicrously out of control; Cimino's contract said that short of outright firing him, the producers could not interfere with the film's writing or filming process in any way. The contract did allow the producers to make and release their own cut (which they ultimately did), but Cimino ended up creating such a long, dense plot that the producer's cut turned out to be a barely comprehensible mess.
Questionable Casting: The producers were initially confused at Cimino wanting to cast French actress Isabelle Huppert as the female (American) lead. Few people would argue that Huppert is in any way a bad actress, but her role in this film is probably the one that divides critics the most; in particular, the producers and many critics shared the opinion that her dialogue is fairly incomprehensible at times. Of course, one of the producers tried Executive Meddling. Cimino's response? "Go fuck yourself." According to Steven Bach in Final Cut, the executives fought him every step of the way on Huppert, since she was practically unknown to most Americans, and didn't have leading lady looks (the most flattering description for Huppert that Bach can muster is "mousy"). They finally gave up once they realized he was infatuated with her. Depending on who you want to believe, either Cimino was prepared to quit if they didn't agree to Huppert, or UA was prepared to drop the project if he didn't back down, before UA president Andy Albeck stepped in and supported Cimino. David Field, Bach's co-head of production at UA, feels that winning the battle over Huppert marked the point where Cimino basically took control of the film once and for all.
Romantic Plot Tumor: The Love Triangle between Averill, Champion, and Ella takes up a great deal of the movie; detractors point out what little chemistry she has with both men.
Signature Scene: The Roller Skate dance sequence, complete with David Mansfield introducing the dance by skating around with the violin.
So Okay, It's Average: What some viewers now see the film as. While the cinematography, sets, and production design are generally seen as absolutely beautiful, the story and characters aren't viewed as all that interesting or engaging.
What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Michael Cimino argued that he simply wanted to make a compelling story, not a political one. That didn't stop some critics from calling him a Communist and the film left-wing propaganda. Granted, the film was about poor immigrants being unfairly slaughtered by rich elitists with full support from the American government; surely Cimino must have known how politically-charged that subject matter is. It didn't help when he gave an interview around the time of the edited version's release saying that he wanted to show the birth of the American mentality that ultimately led to Vietnam.
