Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), based on the popular namesake novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, and starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable as Bligh and Christian, respectively. The film's story was presented, says Dening, as "the classic conflict between tyranny and a just cause"; Laughton's portrayal became in the public mind the definitive Bligh, "a byword for sadistic tyranny". The two subsequent major films, "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962) with Trevor Howard and Marlon Brando, and "The Bounty" (1984) with Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson, largely perpetuated this image of Bligh and that of Christian as tragic hero. The latter film
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962 film) English accent" and the direction for "looking suspiciously like a multiple hack job." "Time" wrote that the film "wanders through the hoarse platitudes of witless optimism until at last it is swamped with sentimental bilge." The film holds a rating of 72% on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes based on 18 reviews, with an average score of 6.5/10. Given its enormously inflated budget of $19 million, the film was a box office flop, despite being the 6th highest-grossing film of 1962. It grossed only $13,680,000 domestically, earning $9.8 million in US theatrical rentals. It needed to make $30 million to