Some movies are timeless, and others aren't. The qualities that made them endearing to audiences upon release persist through the years. Lots of films still hold up, despite how long it's been since they debuted.

Other movies, however, made a splash upon their initial release only to have their luster fade. Let's look at a collection of potentially great movies (many of them award-winning) that have staggered in their test against time.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The marketing campaign for The Blair Witch Project was genius. The filmmakers took advantage of the nascent Internet by creating a website that led audiences to believe that the movie was truly made from the found footage of a missing student film crew.

This makes The Blair Witch Project an exciting, mysterious viewing experience, if you don't know that it's actually fiction. Once you learn the reality, however, it dissipates the movie's impact and reveals it for exactly what it is—a low-budget horror flick featuring twenty-somethings chaotically running through the woods.

Since The Blair Witch Project, Hollywood has been supersaturated with the found footage-style horror films. If a studio released The Blair Witch Project today, it would probably go straight to Redbox.

Braveheart (1995)

The simplistic conflict in Braveheart makes it feel like a relic from a bygone era. The movie portrays the rebellious Scottish commoners, led by William Wallace (Mel Gibson), as simple but virtuous.

The English and nobles, depicted as corrupt, perverse, mustache-twirling villains, wouldn't pass muster with audiences that have grown more sophisticated since Braveheart's 1995 release.

War, as shown in more contemporary movies like Saving Private Ryan, is a frightening, chaotic experience.

Braveheart also glorifies William Wallace's bloodlust as the solution to conflict, something today's audiences would take issue with, considering the growing number of high-profile, violent conflicts occurring around the world with no end in sight.

Forrest Gump (1994)

The popularity of Forrest Gump can be, in part, attributed to baby boomer nostalgia. This segment of the audience got to vicariously relive the high and low points of their youth through the titular character, including the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the Vietnam War, and the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.

The movie doesn't have the same resonance for younger audiences, however, since these are historical events and not experiences they lived through. As the hype around the movie dissipated, its troubling theme became more apparent. The filmmakers could have made a movie about a mentally challenged man who overcame various setbacks and prevailed.

Instead, Forrest Gump is not in charge of his own destiny. He blunders his way into fame and fortune. Forrest does what he's told and everything works out for him, more or less. Those who go against the grain, like Jenny and Lieutenant Dan, end up enduring tremendous hardships.

Hackers (1995)

Hackers was among several subculture movies that film studios released in the late-1990s. In this case, the filmmakers wanted to exploit the emerging cyber-culture.

More believable to mainstream America at the time, the movie's references to technology are now outdated, and the visual representations of hacking are ridiculous and seem only there to make the activity seem more exciting than it really is.

Today's tech makes everything in Hackers seem quaint (one of the characters marvels at a laptop with a 28.8 bps modem, which would have taken hours to download a single song off iTunes), but it's the universally unlikable characters who may have aged worst of all.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)

Many '90s kids grew up watching this adventure film. Unfortunately, Robin Hood isn't as daring as you might remember.

Chief among the movie's problems was the filmmakers' decision to cast Kevin Costner as Robin Hood. His accent is all over the map—ranging from none to sounding like a Renaissance Festival performer. Costner's chemistry with Maid Marion (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) was nonexistent.

Fortunately, the late Alan Rickman is still awesome as the Sheriff of Nottingham—his scenes are the highlight of the movie.

If you had the misfortune of watching the extended cut, then you're treated to an odd subplot where the Sheriff wants to spread Satanism across England. Speaking of which, the movie's tone is a wildly uneven combination of swashbuckling, Erroll Flynn-style adventure and dark witchcraft better suited to a horror film.

Titanic (1998)

Titanic became a phenomenon as teenage girls flocked to the movie in droves. As the hype wore off, however, what we were left with was a cliched love story hampered by bland acting.

The majority of the scenes between Jack (Leonardo Dicaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) could have taken place almost anywhere, and the overt focus on the romance makes the abject tragedy of the Titanic's sinking feel like an afterthought.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

We love the whip and fedora as much as anyone. But with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, franchise partners George Lucas and Steven Spielberg proved that they weren't always as ahead of their time as they appeared.

When the movie was released in 1984, many parents took issue with its occasionally grotesque violence and overall dark tone, but for today's audiences, what really stands out is this Indiana's casual attitude toward racial stereotypes.

From its paranoid approach to Indian culture to its use of a cute little Asian kid for comic relief, there's a lot about Temple of Doom that would end up in a screenwriter's wastepaper basket today…even if the sum total of the movie is still pretty awesome.

Superman (1978)

The posters promised "you'll believe a man can fly," and in 1978, they weren't far off the mark. When Christopher Reeve took to the skies in the first Superman movie, those action sequences represented some of the most seamless special effects work audiences had seen, and the film's blend of light humor and boom-pow action reflected mainstream comics without tipping too far into camp.

It's still arguably the best of the original Superman trilogy (and definitely light years beyond the franchise's low point, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace). But what looked amazing in '78 seems pretty hokey today, and while Reeve was a very talented actor, he didn't quite have the super physique we've come to expect from our big-screen heroes.

All of which would be easy enough to look past if it weren't for the final act, in which Superman saves Lois Lane from death by flying around the Earth so fast that he rewinds time. If it were that easy, couldn't he just do it every time a major bad guy shows up?

Batman (1989)

Tim Burton's Batman changed everything for superhero movies, proving they could make a ton of money while appealing to an audience that wasn't all too young to drive.

At the time, most comics adaptations died in development, and the ones that did make it to the screen tended to be kid-friendly at the expense of compelling action and real dramatic stakes.

Batman ended all that with a relatively grounded take on a hero whose previous journeys to the screen were infamously campy, and loaded it up with a cast of famous faces like Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Kim Basinger.

But as is so often the case with influential movies, Burton's Batman paved the way for films that took its best qualities and kept improving upon them until the original ended up looking a little silly by comparison.

Action, effects, and superhero aesthetics have all come a long way since 1989, and as much as we love Nicholson's Joker, he doesn't seem like much of a threat next to the one Heath Ledger gave us in The Dark Knight nearly 20 years later.

TRON (1982)

Just like any computer you'll ever buy, movies about technology are instantly dated as soon as they roll off the assembly line. The cutting edge took a little longer to catch up with TRON (in fact, some of the stuff it depicts is still firmly in the realm of science fiction).

But the incredible special effects that were the movie's main selling point in 1982 are mostly downright laughable today. Compounding the problem is the fact that underneath all those fancy visuals, TRON isn't all that interesting: between the lightcycle races and deadly disc battles, it's fairly slow-moving and occasionally just silly.

The ideas behind the film were sturdy enough to support the belated (and even more effects-driven) TRON Legacy in 2010, but once again, a compelling story played second fiddle to eye candy, and a planned second sequel fizzled in development.

Top Gun (1986)

Top Gun was the perfect movie for its time. Beautifully filmed with cool action sequences and a gorgeous, talented cast (not to mention an outstanding soundtrack), it cemented Tom Cruise's status as one of the decade's most bankable leading men while summing up the red-blooded military fervor of the late Reagan era.

Yet as much fun as Top Gun was (and still is), there's a lot about the movie that seems awfully silly in the 21st century, not the least of which is the large assortment of unintentionally hilarious lines the actors were forced to spout.

If its long-discussed sequel ever actually materializes, we're hoping we get characters who seem like they're human beings instead of cartoon characters brought to life…and we're betting we don't get a prolonged beach volleyball sequence that plays like a commercial for the world's weirdest resort.

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