An article by Nicholas Barber on the BBC website in December 2015 traced the history of the critical reception of "Heaven's Gate" and concludes: "so much of "Heaven's Gate" is patently splendid that it is mind-boggling that anyone could pronounce it an 'unqualified disaster'. And the scenes which were slammed in 1980 as being symptomatic of waste and excess – the Harvard waltz, the massed rollerskating – are the scenes which take your breath away." Reflecting on the depicted negative attitudes to immigrants, he writes: "However unwelcome "Heaven's Gate" may have been in 1980, there hasn't been a more urgently topical film in 2015." The film holds a 59% score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 46 reviews with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Heaven's Gate" contains too many ideas and striking spectacle to be a disaster, but this western buckles under the weight of its own sprawl." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "average or mixed reviews". Cinemos has the film rated at 3.57 out of 5.