It takes a lot to check off two unwanted milestones at once, but when the conversation turns to both the worst blockbusters to have emerged since the turn of the millennium and the biggest box office bombs in history, then 2005’s Stealth is present and accounted for on both fronts.
Vaunted as a cross between Top Gun and 2001: A Space Odyssey from the director of The Fast and the Furious and xXx despite nobody asking for such a thing to exist, Sony nonetheless decided it was a good idea to spend a whopping $135 million on a movie that everyone could have predicted from a mile out was going to be a disaster.
In fairness, that was about the only front on which Stealth managed to live up to expectations after it was summarily dragged round back and executed by critics on its way to a 13 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, while a $79 million take from theaters saw it lose an estimated $100 million by the time the dust had settled on an interminable CGI-laded adventure that had all the personality and verve of a neglected sock.
Thank the stars for Netflix, then, with subscribers continuing their penchant for resurrecting even the most forgotten flops from Hollywood’s elephant graveyard, dusting them off, and then launching them to a completely undeserved new lease of life. Per FlixPatrol, Stealth has taken to the skies and debuted as one of the streaming service’s top-viewed titles on a global level, so where were all these people when it was selling tickets at full price 18 years ago? Nowhere to be found, because that was the smartest choice.