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10 Great Movies That Accidentally Made Cinema Worse
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00:00Brilliant movies can genuinely change lives, but sometimes they can also have an unfortunate
00:06unintended negative side effect on the whole industry. Perhaps a film's success sends the
00:12wrong message to Hollywood about what audiences actually want, or inspires a whole generation of
00:17filmmakers to rip off its stylistic and narrative achievements in massively inferior fashion.
00:23Whatever the reason though, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these are 10 great movies
00:28that accidentally made cinema worse. 10. Star Wars The Force Awakens popularized
00:34cynical legacy sequels. After suffering through the wildly uneven Star Wars prequels,
00:39The Force Awakens sure was a welcome return to form, a safe and familiar yet thoroughly entertaining
00:46space opera which affectingly united beloved legacy characters with a new cast of appealing heroes.
00:52But The Force Awakens' mammoth commercial success basically kickstarted the legacy sequel as
00:57we know it today. You know, the nostalgia soaked entries into flagging franchises that basically
01:03just replay the hits, while shuffling the legacy cast into supporting roles as younger actors try
01:09to carry the starring load. While these types of movies can work, they more often than not feel
01:16like crass commercial exercises intended to distend dying or creatively bankrupt IP. Again, legacy sequels
01:24can work when they come from a place of genuine heart and creativity, but too often they simply rake
01:30over stories and character types that we've already seen while showering us in member berries.
01:37With the pandemic further heightening the risk factor of truly original blockbusters,
01:41expect to see Hollywood regurgitating the past even more aggressively in the years to come.
01:469. The Avengers Made Cinematic Universes The Next Big Thing.
01:51There's no denying the impressiveness of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a blockbuster franchise
01:56achievement, building a massive world of meaningfully interconnected films.
02:01It all began, as you probably know, with 2008's Iron Man, but the first MCU film to truly prove how
02:07satisfying a shared universe can be was 2012's Avengers, which brought the prior solo movies together
02:14into a fantastically epic superhero team-up. Its massive box office success and the MCU's continued
02:22dominance has caused every major movie studio to chase its coattails ever since, attempting to spin
02:28off every property that they own into its own lucrative cinematic universe.
02:338. The Bond Supremacy Taught A Generation Of Action Directors About Shaky Cam.
02:38The Bond Supremacy is a remarkable sequel to The Bond Identity, and one elevated significantly
02:44by Paul Greengrass's intense and kinetic direction.
02:48Throughout the film, Greengrass extensively utilised intentional shaky cam work
02:52during action sequences in order to heighten the chaotic realism of what we were seeing,
02:57giving it a full documentary vibe which, for a time, did feel refreshingly unique.
03:03But in the years that followed, countless inferior filmmakers also used shaky cam cinematography,
03:08yet without Greengrass's shrewd understanding of visual language.
03:13The Bond Supremacy's precise editing ensured that we always knew the spatial geography
03:19of any given moment, no matter how much camera shake there was, yet for many action directors,
03:23the style just emboldened them to shoot tons of mediocre, scarcely comprehensible coverage
03:28and spliced it all together with quick cuts in the editing room.
03:327. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Made Two-Part Blockbusters Acceptable
03:37Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows wasn't the first ever movie to split itself in two,
03:42but it was the one to popularise the practice at a blockbuster level.
03:45In an attempt to squeeze a little extra cash out of customers, the final Harry Potter book was
03:50divided into two movies. And while many fans will defend the decision given the epic scope of that
03:56story, it unintentionally kickstarted a gross trend in the film industry.
04:01See, in the wake of the Deathly Hallows' release, many other blockbuster franchises pulled similar
04:06tactics, what with Twilight, The Hunger Games and Divergent all splitting their finales into two
04:12parters. Though in Divergent's case, it actually backfired spectacularly as the first part bombed,
04:18which meant the second never actually got made. The most egregious example though,
04:22must surely be The Hobbit, where Warner Brothers convinced Peter Jackson to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien's
04:27310-page book into three movies totaling almost eight hours in length. The trend has definitely
04:35cooled in recent years, though studios have grown wise about how much audiences hate the part one,
04:41part two gimmick, and so tend to give their two-part movies titles that disguise their compartmentalised
04:47storytelling. Number six, The Babadook sparked the infuriating debate about elevated horror.
04:532014's The Babadook received a rave reviews upon release, for its expert collision of conventional
04:59horror tropes with a more psychological character-driven component. The Babadook's success
05:04even sparked a trend of similarly inclined, artsy horror films in the years that followed, such as The
05:10Witch, Get Out, Hereditary Midsomer, The Lighthouse, Us, Saint Maude, and Relic, and many of them were
05:16released by A24, and many of them, especially the ones I just said, were really really good.
05:22However, this soon led to the term elevated horror being coined, a designation signifying
05:28horror films which supplemented more traditional horror movie elements with themes and ideas from
05:33dramas or art movies. And ever since the phrase first gained traction in the mid-2010s, horror fans
05:40have been locked in a fierce exhausting debate about the term's merits or lack thereof. To many,
05:46it seems understandably condescending to imply that any horror movie with a sliver of depth
05:52is placed on a pedestal above its genre brethren. Beyond tarring the bulk of the genre with the
05:58same brush, it also completely ignores the fact that elevated horror has existed for as long as
06:04horror has. There have always been psychological, visceral, experimental horror films. It's not just a new
06:10thing. Number 5, Batman Begins, ushered in an era of needlessly gritty reboots.
06:16Batman Begins is one of the most influential movies of the 2000s, a gritty reboot of a beloved
06:21comic book IP, shaking off his goofy prior interpretations and treating him in a more or
06:26less grounded and realistic fashion. The success of Batman Begins, and especially its sequel The Dark
06:32Knight, prompted Hollywood to use that restrained style as the template for retooling a glut of stagnant
06:38franchises whether it's suited them or not. Perhaps the most immediately divisive example is
06:44the DCEU's Man of Steel, which gave Superman the dubious grimdark treatment, no matter the
06:50inherent hopefulness and optimism of Superman in the comics. There are far, far worse examples though,
06:56like the Kirsten Stewart starring Snow White and the Huntsman, Josh Trank's Fantastic Four,
07:02and 2018's Robin Hood to name just a few. Number 4, Furious 7 proved Hollywood could believably
07:08resurrect dead actors. Furious 7 is unquestionably one of the strongest films in the Fast and Furious
07:14franchise, and an all the more impressive achievement considering the tragic death of Paul Walker
07:19mid-production. In order to complete Walker's role as Brian O'Connor, Peter Jackson's VFX company,
07:25Wetter Digital was hired to create a lifelike CGI model of Walker from existing footage which would
07:31then be mapped onto body doubles played by Walker's brothers, Caleb and Cody. The end result is
07:37genuinely terrific, with only a few distracting moments where the digital scenes become visible.
07:42Given the enormous pressure on the production though, it's tough to argue with how this turned out.
07:47The problem, however, is that Furious 7 proved beyond any doubt that Hollywood could believably
07:53resurrect dead actors, and so in the years that followed we've had numerous films featuring long
07:58dead performers. The most prominent examples of course are Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin in
08:03Rogue One, and Harold Ramis as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters Afterlife. And while the estates of
08:09each actor did sign off on their inclusion, does that really make it right? Number 3, The Matrix made
08:16bullet time Hollywood's favourite new trick. The Matrix is unquestionably one of the greatest action
08:21movies if not movies period of all time, yet its ground breaking Oscar winning visual effects were
08:27so freaking cool that Hollywood spent the next decade or so shamelessly attempting to one up them.
08:33The Matrix's big splashy VFX coup was of course bullet time, an advanced version of slow motion whereby
08:40the camera moves through the space of a scene while time is slowed, giving the audience otherwise
08:46impossible coverage of an awesome action beat. There are certainly movies that have managed to
08:51co-op bullet time in interesting ways. I mean, take the jaw dropping bomb explosion at the start of
08:56Swordfish for one, and I know, Swordfish, what a weird drop, but yeah it worked at the time.
09:01Number 2, Napoleon Dynamite forced Netflix to improve their algorithm. Napoleon Dynamite is one of the most
09:07memorable indies of the 2000s, an ultra quirky, hilarious coming of age comedy that grossed an
09:12incredible $46.1 million on a mere $400,000 budget. In 2008, the Napoleon Dynamite problem was first
09:23coined, referring to the film's strong popularity on Netflix and how the service's content algorithm
09:29struggled to decide whether customers would like it or not. Because Napoleon Dynamite is such an
09:35odd and difficult to categorize piece of work, it contributed to Netflix seeking to overhaul their
09:40algorithm, even offering a $1 million prize to anyone who could improve its effectiveness by 10%.
09:48In the years that followed, Netflix's algorithm became increasingly efficient,
09:52as did those of its streaming competitions, such that today, you're unlikely to be recommended anything
09:57even remotely outside of your comfort zone. Despite the massive libraries that streaming services offer,
10:03the algorithm will aim to steer you towards movies most likely to guarantee the attention of your
10:09eyeballs, in turn de-incentivizing the exploration of more adventurous left-field works of cinema.
10:15There's actually a really good video on this on the YouTube channel called Now You See It,
10:19by the way, which I would definitely recommend checking out if this has piqued your interest.
10:23Number 1, Pulp Fiction ushered in an era of obnoxiously cool crime films.
10:28Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is a stone-cold masterpiece, and one of the most influential
10:33films of the entire 1990s, if not of all time. As brilliantly conceived as it is though,
10:40its distinctive dialogue and inventive narrative structure inspired an entire generation of young
10:45screenwriters and filmmakers to produce their own inferior knock-offs. We were inundated with a
10:51deluge of hip, darkly comedic crime movies filled with too-cool-for-school characters,
10:57pointlessly non-linear storytelling, and a story that wasn't explicitly about much in the traditional
11:04sense. A few of those examples could include things like things to do in Denver when you're
11:09dead, Reindeer Games, Eight Heads in a Duffelbag, and The Big Hit, each of which attempted to
11:15approximate the style and tone of Pulp Fiction without any of the skill at storytelling or character
11:20building. That's our list, I want something you guys think down in the comments below, what do you
11:24think about the influence that these movies had on cinema as a whole, and are there any other great
11:29movies you think kind of made other movies a bit worse? While you're down there as well could you
11:34please give us a like, share, subscribe, and head over to whatculture.com for more lists and news like
11:38this every single day. Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.
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