In 1941, they would've had a cow. Quentin would be just getting out of San Quentin about now. It also works the other way. When I look back at Easy Rider or Blazing Saddles , I wonder what kind of hallucinogenic I was on. Yet, in my youth, those were amazing films at the time, just like Happiness and Something About Mary today.
Film distributors try to hype the hell out of a picture to get asses in theater seats.
They don't know what a movie is until the audience tells them if it's a masterpiece or a piece of shit. Everybody predicted that Titanic would tank before it came out. They said the same about Star Wars. Nobody knows how to make a masterpiece. The people who worked on Cleopatra, Heaven's Gate, Ishtar, and possibly The Avengers, thought they were making masterpieces.