Weighed against the typical metrics, it’s completely justified and 100 percent accurate to call Kurt Wimmer’s Equilibrium a colossal flop.

Recommended Videos

The dystopian sci-fi actioner barely crawled past $5 million at the global box office, recouping just over a quarter of its $20 million budget, while a 40 percent Rotten Tomatoes score from 90 reviews indicates that critics weren’t exactly won over, with many of them decrying it as being uninspired, unoriginal, and derivative of many – and significantly better – movies.

However, over the last two decades, there’s been a sea change. Tap any action junkie on the shoulder in 2023 to press them for their thoughts on Christian Bale embarking on a rampage of revenge that leaves his enemies as little more than sliced, diced, and bullet-riddled husks, then there’s a distinct possibility that the overwhelming majority of them will do nothing but sing its praises.

It’s been quite the turnaround, but when you consider that over 250,000 Rotten Tomatoes users have decreed that the film is worth an 81 percent approval rating, it’s not a stretch to say that the unsung gun-toting misfire has only continued to grow in popularity with each passing year. Whether or not it deserves to is entirely up to you, but these days folks absolutely love it.

In a further indication of the remarkable staying power nobody could have seen coming back in 2002, Equilibrium is once again causing chaos at the top end of the streaming ranks, with FlixPatrol revealing it as one of iTunes’ biggest hits. Gun-kata can’t be here to stay, not if it ever really went away.