Want to know the best John Travolta movies? How about the worst John Travolta movies? Curious about John Travolta’s box office grosses or which John Travolta movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which John Travolta movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
John Travolta (1954-) is a two-time Academy Award® nominated actor. His career has been one serious roller coaster ride filled some serious peaks and serious lows. A movie career can not start off any better than how Travolta’s did after the mega success of 1977’s Saturday Night Fever and 1978’s Grease. After 1983’s Staying Alive was destroyed by critics, his career took a turn for the worse. From 1983-1993 the only success he had was 1989’s Look Who’s Talking. Then came 1994’s Pulp Fiction….which turned Travolta back into a huge box office draw. From 1994 to 2009 he appeared in many box office successes with Get Shorty, The General’s Daughter, Face-Off, Wild Hogs and Michael being some of the bigger box office hits. Since 2009 things have slowed down for Travolta….can he reach the summit for the third time?….we hope so.
His IMDb page shows over 90 acting credits since 1972. This page will rank John Travolta movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in theaters were not included in the rankings.
John Travolta Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
John Travolta Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort John Travolta movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort John Travolta movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort John Travolta movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort John Travolta movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each John Travolta movie received.
- Sort John Travolta movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Adjusted John Travolta Adjusted Worldwide Box Office Grosses
Check out John Travolta’s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Pulp Fiction in Chronological Order
Steve’s John Travolta You Tube Video
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.
For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
When Travolta came along women over here adored him but men didn’t take to him immediately and where I worked he was disparagingly nicknamed “The Greaser”, a play on the title of his film Grease. In the book Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Parallel Universe [you know the place: where Brando can’t act and George Burns appears in films that he never acted in] the author sits on the fence by suggesting it was too early to make a call as to the measure of Travolta’s stardom.
However don’t let all that put you off nor the fact that The Work Horse doesn’t include Travolta in his 25 Greatest Male Legends 1950-2010. Bruce’s own figures [and The Work Horse’s personal generous praise of John’s career above] show that John ultimately became one of the biggest stars of the modern era. No sitting on the fence for me! John has in fact 20 domestic hits that crashed the Cogerson magical 100 million barrier in adjusted revenues [average of about $210 per movie] and in 16 of those he is the top billed star and in the other four the joint lead.
Moreover according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, just 17 of John’s global hits would have a combined purchasing power of $5.8 billion in 2019 dollars worldwide, an average of around $340 million per movie – wow!
“To be regarded as a true star you have to show you can pull your own weight at the box office. Most of the actresses nowadays who are hyped as stars would have been regarded as starlets**back in my day,” said the Great Bette Davis and for once her fierce rival Crawford agreed with her. John has not only made billions for producers but has also built up a personal fortune of $170 million according to Celebrity Net Worth. IMDB credits him with 52 acting awards and 60 noms.
**A female wannabe movie star whom studios promoted in secondary roles whilst she awaits major BOX OFFICE stardom.
BEST POSTERS in your video
1/Perfect [my own fave Travolta film] 2/Gotti 3/I am Wrath 4/The Forger 5/Domestic Disturbance 6/Wild Hoggs 7/Be Cool 8/Battlefield Earth 9/2 for Taking of Pelham 123 10/2 for The Punisher 11/foreign language one for Savages 12/two for Urban Cowboy 13/Get Laddie 14/Face/Off 15/2 for Blow Out 16/ 2 for Carrie
BEST STILLS
1/Sexy Jamie Lee 2/with Robin Williams 3/with the awful Mikey [the only Mr Gimme More film in which I have ever found HIM embarrassing] 4/Wild Hoggs 5/Broken Arrow 6/The General’s Daughter 7/The Punisher 8/Basic 9/Ladder 49 10/ with the wonderful Gene Hackman 11/Face/Off 12/Grease 13/Carrie 14/Sat Night Fever 15/and splendid iconic one from Hirsch Fiction.
ADDITIONAL RELATED TRIVIA: Travolta earned some of the worst reviews I have ever seen for Battlefield Earth and even friends of mine openly laughed at his character Terl. John had insisted on making it as a tribute to his personal Scientology Guru L Ron Hubbard who wrote the book. John poured millions of his own money into the project but the company that made the movie [Franchise Pictures] went bankrupt and a planned sequel was abandoned. It was therefore probably Travolta’s worst movie disaster project ever, but that’s not surprising as the Guru in the 2012 film The Master was based on the character of Travolta’s L Ron Hubbard and we have seen at first hand on this site how normally sensible people can be misled by these cult leaders.
Almost a Full House as you and WH agree on 5 of John’s Top 6 best Reviewed films. He includes Hairspray in his 6 instead of your choice of Grease. I back your choice but precedent suggests that my support for you will hardly annoy The Work Horse, who often seems to me to be influenced by the advice that up-and-coming Army officers get in training about how to deal with complaints from the ‘other ranks’: “Even in you’re not right, appear to be confident of your own stance!” Anyway your video is a 99% rated superb in my book.
Hi Bob and welcome back! Hope you had a lovely holiday! Barring a freak heatwave or two summer has been a washout so far in Manchester.
Thanks for the review, generous rating (ooh), box office info, trivia and comparison, always appreciated. Glad you liked the posters and stills.
Three films have secured John Travolta’s position among the pantheon of top rated film stars of the 20th century – Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Pulp Fiction. He hasn’t done as well in the 21st century, so far.
Four Travolta films have scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Pulp Fiction, Saturday Night Fever, Carrie and The Thin Red Line.
There are two scoring 9 out of 10 – Primary Colors and A Civil Action. Eight more scored 8 out of 10 including – Grease and Hairspray.
Pulp Fiction tops all the charts including mine and Bruce’s.
“My films have an interesting continuous effect. Grease for some reason never went away. Do you know that to this day, every year, the Hollywood Bowl charges $275 a ticket to sit in an audience with a 36-year-old film and sing along to it? I’ve never heard of anything like that in my life. So there is some magic to that particular film. There’s other films like The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind that don’t end either, but this has a continuous new audience, as opposed to, “oh, that’s an old movie”. No one looks at Grease as an old movie. It just keeps on living. That’s how I view it, as a gift to the public and myself as an ongoing thing.”
Travolta on dancing with Princess Diana at the White House in 1985 “There really was something lovely and girlish about her and I felt that I had taken her back to her childhood when she had probably watched Grease and for that moment I was her Prince Charming.”
HI STEVE
Great holiday thanks. Nobody in the place where I was staying mentioned Brexit which suggests it might be more of an obsession with us guys than people on the Continent.
Thanks also for your usual comprehensive feedback, quote and additional information. I agree with you about Grease, Sat Night fever and Pulp Fiction being John’s biggest claim to fame though I have never liked the last named myself. I was surprised that Bruce didn’t have Grease in his Top 6 Best Reviewed.
I’ve mentioned before that Cagney was John’s mentor and Travolta often stayed at the ranch of The Dirty Rat when the latter was alive. I’ve also told how Brando was one of the actors of whom John spoke highly in an interview though Travolta said that he preferred The Great Mumbler’s later work from Godpop onward to the earlier classics like Waterfront/Streetcar.
Good to see the bob and Steve video interaction on John Travolta. As for Grease versus Hairspray….I actually like Grease more too….heck it is one of the few musicals I have seen in theaters. The only other one I can think off is…Can’t Stop The Music…the first movie to win the Razzie for worst picture of the year. Good stuff from the both of you.
Hey bob cox…..good point on be cool and die hard 5…I agree with it 100%. “I loved love song for bobby long, did not like hairspray. I loved swordfish.”…I could have written this myself. Glad you were able to watch Steve’s Travolta vidoe…75% is a stout percentage. Good stuff.
Added Steve’s John Travolta You Tube Video To Our John Page. Our comment on his channel.
“John Travolta has been a star for almost my entire life. I remember kids at Elementary School talking about him on the television show…Welcome Back Kotter. Lots of ups and downs in his career….but the man has been making movies for almost 50 years! Lots of bad movies from 40 to 30….though I did like #30 Love Song For Bobby Long. I know it pains you that Battlefield Earth is rated so low. Movies 29 to 21…lots of hits…though they could be considered…”bad blockbusters”….look right at #28 Look Who’s Talking and #26 Wild Hogs…still do not know how this movie made so much money. #25 Be Cool is one of the worst sequels. The little seen #21 Lonely Hearts is actually a pretty good movie. Movies 19-11. Favorites would be #16 Swordfish and #11 A Civil Action. With the exception of #8 Hairspray….I like all of these movies…especially number one Pulp Fichtion, #7 Get Shorty (probably my favorite Travolta role), #10 Bolt (in heavy rotation at my house…even years later) and Grease…one of the few musicals I like. Of the Travolta movies listed here…I have seen all 40 of his movies….though there are a few on our UMR page that I have not seen. Voted up and shared.”
Hi Bruce, well I was going to include Battlefield Earth on the video no matter how low the score was. it’s like the holy grail for bad movie aficionados, a guilty pleasure to be savored, the ultimate ‘what were they thinking?’ sci-fi epic. 🙂
Your tally – all of them, mine 24 out of 40, Flora 2 – Grease and Saturday Night Fever. Thanks again for the comment, vote and share, much appreciated..
Hey Steve….I would have guessed that would have been your thinking when it comes to Battlefield Earth. I just finished Fiasco: A History of Hollywood’s Iconic Flops by James Robert Parrish….and he has an entire chapter on your movie. It is a very entertaining and informative book. One of the big problems during the filming of that movie was Travolta’s weight. His weight has never been noticed by me before…but when I saw one of the photos from Battlefield Earth in your video…I did notice how big he is in that photo. Glad to share your videos. Good stuff.
ditto on every movie mentioned.except be cool, a disappointment but great compared to die hard 5. I loved love song for bobby long, did not like hairspray. I loved swordfish. being agreeable is so out of character for it is getting weird. two of my favorite movies are phenomenon and Michael. I saw 30 of steve’s top 40. they let me use u tube in the office I am in today, yea.
Hi the other Bob. Thanks for checking out my video.
30 seen out of 40 is impressive. You’re definitely a fan.