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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 effectingly united beloved legacy characters with a new cast of appealing heroes.
00:52But The Force Awakens' mammoth commercial success basically kickstarted the
00:56negatively bankrupt IP. Again, legacy sequels can work when they come from a place of genuine
01:03heart and creativity, but too often they simply rake over stories and character types that we've
01:09already seen while showering us in member berries. With the pandemic further heightening the risk
01:15factor of truly original blockbusters, expect to see Hollywood regurgitating the past even more
01:20aggressively in the years to come. 9. The Avengers made cinematic universes the next big thing.
01:27There's no denying the impressiveness of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a blockbuster franchise
01:32achievement, building a massive world of meaningfully interconnected films. It all began,
01:38as you probably know, with 2008's Iron Man, but the first MCU film to truly prove how satisfying a shared
01:44universe can be was 2012's Avengers, which brought the prior solo movies together into a fantastically epic
01:52superhero team up. Its massive box office success and the MCU's continued dominance has caused every
01:59major movie studio to chase its coattails ever since, attempting to spin off every property that they own
02:06into its own lucrative cinematic universe.
02:09Number 8. The Bond Supremacy taught a generation of action directors about shaky cam.
02:14The Bond Supremacy is a remarkable sequel to The Bond Identity, and one elevated significantly by Paul
02:21Greengrass's intense and kinetic direction. Throughout the film, Greengrass extensively utilized intentional
02:27shaky cam work during action sequences in order to heighten the chaotic realism of what we were seeing,
02:33giving it a full documentary vibe which, for a time, did feel refreshingly unique.
02:39But in the years that followed, countless inferior filmmakers also used shaky cam cinematography,
02:44yet without Greengrass's shrewd understanding of visual language. The Bond Supremacy's precise editing
02:52ensured that we always knew the spatial geography of any given moment, no matter how much camera shake
02:57there was, yet for many action directors, the style just emboldened them to shoot tons of mediocre,
03:02scarcely comprehensible coverage and spliced it all together with quick cuts in the editing room.
03:08Number 7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows made two-part blockbusters acceptable.
03:13Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows wasn't the first ever movie to split itself in two,
03:18but it was the one to popularize the practice at a blockbuster level. In an attempt to squeeze a
03:23little extra cash out of customers, the final Harry Potter book was divided into two movies,
03:28and while many fans will defend the decision given the epic scope of that story,
03:32it unintentionally kickstarted a gross trend in the film industry.
03:37See, in the wake of the Deathly Hallows' release, many other blockbuster franchises pulled similar
03:42tactics, what with Twilight, The Hunger Games and Divergent all splitting their finales into two-parters.
03:49Though in Divergent's case, it actually backfired spectacularly as the first part bombed,
03:54which meant the second never actually got made.
03:56The most egregious example though must surely be The Hobbit, where Warner Bros. convinced Peter Jackson
04:01to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien's 310-page book into three movies totalling almost eight hours in length.
04:09The trend has definitely cooled in recent years, though studios have grown wise about how much
04:15audiences hate the part one, part two gimmick, and so tend to give their two-part movies titles that
04:20disguise their compartmentalised storytelling. 6. The Babadook sparked the infuriating debate
04:27about elevated horror. 2014's The Babadook received a rave reviews upon release,
04:33for its expert collision of conventional horror tropes with a more psychological character-driven
04:38component. The Babadook's success even sparked a trend of similarly inclined artsy horror films in
04:45the years that followed, such as The Witch, Get Out, Hereditary Midsomer, The Lighthouse, Us,
04:50Saint Maude, and Relic, and many of them were released by A24, and many of them, especially the
04:56ones I just said, were really really good. However, this soon led to the term elevated horror being
05:02coined, a designation signifying horror films which supplemented more traditional horror movie elements
05:08with themes and ideas from dramas or art movies. And ever since the phrase first gained traction in the
05:14mid-2010s, horror fans have been locked in a fierce, exhausting debate about the term's merits or lack
05:21thereof. To many, it seems understandably condescending to imply that any horror movie with a sliver of
05:27depth is placed on a pedestal above its genre brethren. Beyond tarring the bulk of the genre with the same
05:34brush, it also completely ignores the fact that elevated horror has existed for as long as horror has.
05:40There have always been psychological, visceral, experimental horror films. It's not just a new
05:46thing. Number five, Batman Begins, ushered in an era of needlessly gritty reboots.
05:52Batman Begins is one of the most influential movies of the 2000s, a gritty reboot of a beloved comic book
05:58IP, shaking off his goofy prior interpretations and treating him in a more or less grounded and realistic
06:04fashion. The success of Batman Begins, and especially its sequel The Dark Knight,
06:08prompted Hollywood to use that restrained style as the template for retooling a glut of stagnant
06:14franchises, whether it's suited them or not. Perhaps the most immediately divisive example
06:20is the DCEU's Man of Steel, which gives Superman the dubious grimdark treatment, no matter the
06:26inherent hopefulness and optimism of Superman in the comics. There are far, far worse examples though,
06:32like the Kirsten Stewart starring Snow White and the Huntsman, Josh Trank's Fantastic Four, and 2018's
06:39Robin Hood to name just a few. Number four, Furious 7 proved Hollywood could believably resurrect dead
06:45actors. Furious 7 is unquestionably one of the strongest films in the Fast and Furious franchise,
06:51and an oddly more impressive achievement considering the tragic death of Paul Walker mid-production.
06:56In order to complete Walker's role as Brian O'Connor, Peter Jackson's VFX company Wetter Digital was hired
07:02to create a lifelike CGI model of Walker from existing footage which would then be mapped onto
07:08body doubles played by Walker's brothers Caleb and Cody. The end result is genuinely terrific,
07:14with only a few distracting moments where the digital seams become visible. Given the enormous
07:19pressure on the production though, it's tough to argue with how this turned out. The problem,
07:24however, is that Furious 7 proved beyond any doubt that Hollywood could believably resurrect dead
07:30actors, and so in the years that followed we've had numerous films featuring long dead performers.
07:36The most prominent examples of course are Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One,
07:40and Harold Ramis as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters Afterlife. And while the estates of each actor did
07:46sign off on their inclusion, does that really make it right? Number three, The Matrix made Bullet
07:52Time Hollywood's favorite new trick. The Matrix is unquestionably one of the greatest action movies,
07:57if not movies period, of all time. Yet its groundbreaking Oscar-winning visual effects
08:02were so freaking cool that Hollywood spent the next decade or so shamelessly attempting to one-up them.
08:09The Matrix's big splashy VFX coup was of course Bullet Time, an advanced version of slow motion whereby the
08:16camera moves through the space of a scene while time is slowed, giving the audience otherwise
08:22impossible coverage of an awesome action beat. There are certainly movies that have managed to
08:27co-op Bullet Time in interesting ways. I mean, take the jaw-dropping bomb explosion at the start of
08:32Swordfish for one, and I know, Swordfish, what a weird drop, but yeah, it worked at the time.
08:37Number two, Napoleon Dynamite forced Netflix to improve their algorithm.
08:41Napoleon Dynamite is one of the most memorable indies of the 2000s, an ultra-quirky hilarious
08:47coming-of-age comedy that grossed an incredible $46.1 million on a mere $400,000 budget. In 2008,
08:57the Napoleon Dynamite problem was first coined, referring to the film's strong popularity on
09:02Netflix and how the service's content algorithm struggled to decide whether customers would like
09:08it or not. Because Napoleon Dynamite is such an ordered, difficult to categorize piece of work,
09:13it contributed to Netflix seeking to overhaul their algorithm, even offering a $1 million
09:19prize to anyone who could improve its effectiveness by 10%. In the years that followed, Netflix's
09:25algorithm became increasingly efficient, as did those of its streaming competition, such that today,
09:31you're unlikely to be recommended anything even remotely outside of your comfort zone. Despite the
09:37massive libraries that streaming services offer, the algorithm will aim to steer you towards movies
09:42most likely to guarantee the attention of your eyeballs, in turn de-incentivizing the exploration
09:48of more adventurous left-field works of cinema. There's actually a really good video on this on
09:53the YouTube channel called Now You See It, by the way, which I would definitely recommend checking out
09:57if this has piqued your interest. Number one, Pulp Fiction ushered in an era of obnoxiously cool crime films.
10:04Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is a stone-cold masterpiece, and one of the most influential
10:09films of the entire 1990s, if not of all time. As brilliantly conceived as it is though, its distinctive
10:16dialogue and inventive narrative structure inspired an entire generation of young screenwriters and
10:22filmmakers to produce their own inferior knockoffs. We were inundated with a deluge of hip, darkly comedic
10:29crime movies filled with too-cool-for-school characters, pointlessly non-linear storytelling,
10:35and a story that wasn't explicitly about much in the traditional sense. A few of those examples could
10:42include things like things to do in Denver when you're dead, Reindeer Games, Eight Heads in a Duffel
10:48Bag, and The Big Hit, each of which attempted to approximate the style and tone of Pulp Fiction
10:53without any of the skill at storytelling or character building.
10:57That's our list, I want something you guys think down in the comments below,
10:59what do you think about the influence that these movies had on cinema as a whole,
11:04and are there any other great movies you think kinda made other movies a bit worse?
11:09While you're down there as well, could you please give us a like, share, subscribe,
11:11and head over to whatculture.com for more lists and news like this every single day.
11:15Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.
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