What was the number one movie of 1999?
To a certain generation of cinephile, the movies released in 1999 represent everything great and magical about cinema. It’s why that year is regularly held up as one of, if not the, greatest in cinema history.
It’s hard to argue with this position, either, because ‘99 featured banger after banger in all kinds of genres. Some of the most spectacular, game-changing blockbusters of the modern era hit cinemas during these 12 months; several classic comedies made audiences roll in the aisles; thought-provoking adult dramas were a bountiful part of the mainstream cinematic diet; sleeper hits came out of nowhere and rearranged everything audiences thought about certain actors or genres; and there was still a thriving audience for romantic movies, whether they skewed funny or dramatic.
While many of these kinds of films are still made today, the majority of them have been relegated to streaming or arthouse theatres, with only the most reliable, branded IP blockbusters seeming capable of dragging people to the cinema. In ‘99, though, everything had an equal chance of hitting big at the box office, and this is reflected in a top ten that features the kind of variety the 2010s and ‘20s could only dream of.
The ‘anything goes’ nature of the movies in 1999 meant that filmmakers could swing for the fences with their boldest visions, and they stood a good chance of people actually showing up to reward that creative enterprise. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in two of the biggest hits of the year: M Night Shyamalan’s spooky drama The Sixth Sense, which came out of nowhere to become the second-highest worldwide grosser of the year, and The Matrix, an original sci-fi action masterpiece from a pair of unknown directors (the Wachowskis). It came fourth in the worldwide rankings, which surprised even Warner Bros, the studio that made the picture, and changed blockbuster cinema forever in the process.
Elsewhere, the top ten featured not one but two beloved Julia Roberts romcoms (Notting Hill and Runaway Bride), both of which would struggle to escape Prime Video purgatory today, and The Mummy, a swashbuckling take on the old Universal monster movies so different from what came before that it was, for all intents and purposes, a new story. Amazingly, ‘Best Picture’ winner American Beauty, the story of a man in midlife crisis, made $356million worldwide, and The Green Mile, a nearly three-hour Death Row drama, nestled just outside the top ten with a $286m gross.
So, what was the number one movie of 1999?
Fascinatingly, the 1999 top ten only featured three sequels, which is a far cry from today’s landscape of endless sequels, reboots, and reimaginings hoovering up the vast majority of the top spots. Two of these sequels weren’t dredging up decades-old franchises for one more chance to milk their audiences, either. Instead, Toy Story 2 and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me were follow-ups to unexpected hits from ‘95 and ‘97 that were both original stories at their inception.
However, perhaps in a harbinger of things to come, the number one movie of ‘99 arguably kick-started the pesky trend for resurrecting old movies with built-in fan bases. It was, of course, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, George Lucas’ feverishly anticipated prequel to his iconic space opera trilogy that had been 16 years in the making. This film was a cultural phenomenon like few other movies before it, mainly because audiences who were children when the original trilogy was released had grown into adult fans who raised their own kids on Lucas’ galaxy far, far away.
The Phantom Menace wound up making an astonishing $924million around the world, a full $252m more than its closest competition, The Sixth Sense. It was undoubtedly a gargantuan moneymaker that made every Hollywood bean counter ecstatic, but with the benefit of hindsight, it perhaps demonstrates that ‘99 wasn’t entirely the cinematic utopia it appeared to be.
The movie might have made a ton of money, but it was lambasted by critics and fans alike as a dismal addition to the franchise and a bitter disappointment for the legions of fans who placed so much stock in being able to relive their childhood nostalgia. Depressingly, that same description can apply to countless movies from the last couple of decades, showing that maybe Hollywood, as it tends to do, learned all the wrong lessons from ‘99.
