10 Best Picture Oscar Winners That Aged Terribly

Mel Gibson’s historically flexible 1995 smash, Braveheart, has aged so badly that it has become a shorthand for the incompetence of Academy voters to evaluate the worth of cinematic properties. Named the Worst Best Picture by Empire magazine, Braveheart might not necessarily be the absolute worst of the best (that would be A Beautiful Mind), but it’s hardly a serious piece of filmmaking.

Today, Braveheart is essentially a fun, cheesy, enjoyable romp. In fact, it now looks like a parody of a historical epic; if characters in a film were watching a film or a sitcom, it undoubtedly would look like Braveheart.

With its incredibly contrived set pieces, and its woefully misguided love story (complete with awkward and uncomfortable sex scenes) it’s hard to imagine how a bonkers movie like Braveheart could be taken seriously in 1995, let alone today. It is so stylistically of its time that it could have had Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme, and it probably wouldn’t lose any gravitas.

While scholars might have their problems with the treatment of the historical subjects in the film, that’s doesn’t even really matter in terms of why it has not stood the test of time. It’s dated simply because it’s classic 90s action, trying to be something far more serious.