Rachel Talley's “Tank Girl” is now praised as the chaotic sci-fi film we need in our modern dystopia, but for a few years after its original release in 1995, it was largely known as a huge box office flop — to the point of significantly damaging director Rachel Talley's career. In an interview in 2020 Entertainment WeeklyTalalay admits she was upset with her adaptation of the British comic series of the same name for a long time. “It was a disaster. I couldn't talk about it for 10 years,” Talalay said.
However, over the years “Tank Girl” has overcome its initial lack of popularity and has been embraced by a legion of fans as a groundbreaking example of feminist, counter-cultural, avant-punk sci-fi cinema. As Talalay realized how much the film meant to so many people, her relationship with it changed as well, until she eventually stopped being upset by its commercial failure. Eventually, she came to an important realization: “I wasn't ashamed of it, I was ashamed of the feeling of this giant movie prison I was still in.”
“Tank Girl” remains a divisive film to this day, but Talalay is now proud of its roughness, and she accepts the fact that not everyone likes it. “I always said, 'I want to make a movie that you give either a one or a ten,'” the director told EW.
