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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
00:33Popularized Cynical Legacy Sequels After suffering through the wildly uneven
00:38Star Wars prequels, The Force Awakens sure was a welcome return to form, a safe and familiar,
00:44yet thoroughly entertaining space opera which effectively united beloved legacy characters
00:49with a new cast of appealing heroes. But The Force Awakens' mammoth commercial success basically
00:55kickstarted the legacy sequel as we know it today. You know, the nostalgia soaked entries into flagging
01:01franchises that basically just replayed the hits, while shuffling the legacy cast into supporting
01:07roles as younger actors try to carry the starring load. While these types of movies can work,
01:14they more often than not feel like crass commercial exercises intended to distend dying or creatively
01:21bankrupt IP. Again, legacy sequels can work when they come from a place of genuine heart and creativity,
01:28but too often they simply rake over stories and character types that we've already seen while
01:34showering us in member berries. With the pandemic further heightening the risk factor of truly original
01:40blockbusters, expect 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. It all began,
02:02as you probably know, with 2008's Iron Man, but the first MCU film to truly prove how satisfying a
02:08shared universe can be was 2012's Avengers, which brought the prior solo movies together into a
02:14fantastically epic superhero team-up. Its massive box office success and the MCU's continued dominance
02:22has caused every major movie studio to chase its coattails ever since, attempting to spin off every
02:28property that they own into its own lucrative cinematic universe.
02:338. The Bond Supremacy Taught A Generation Of Action Directors About Shaky Cam The Bond Supremacy is a
02:40remarkable sequel to The Bond Identity, and one elevated significantly by Paul Greengrass's intense
02:46and kinetic direction. Throughout the film, Greengrass extensively utilized intentional shaky cam work
02:52during action sequences in order to heighten the chaotic realism of what we were seeing, giving it a
02:58full documentary vibe which, for a time, did feel refreshingly unique. But in the years that followed,
03:04countless inferior filmmakers also used shaky cam cinematography, yet without Greengrass's shrewd
03:11understanding of visual language. The Bond Supremacy's precise editing ensured that we always knew the
03:17spatial geography of any given moment, no matter how much camera shake there was, yet for many action
03:23directors, the style just emboldened them to shoot tons of mediocre, scarcely comprehensible coverage
03:28and splice 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 popularize the practice at a blockbuster level. In an attempt to squeeze a little
03:47extra cash out of customers, the final Harry Potter book was divided into two movies, and while many
03:53fans will defend the decision given the epic scope of that story, it unintentionally kickstarted a gross
03:59trend in the film industry. See, in the wake of the Deathly Hallows' release, many other blockbuster
04:05franchises pulled similar tactics, what with Twilight, The Hunger Games and Divergent all splitting their
04:11finales into two-parters. Though in Divergent's case, it actually backfired spectacularly as the first part
04:17bombed, which meant the second never actually got made. The most egregious example though must surely be
04:22The Hobbit, where Warner Brothers convinced Peter Jackson to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien's 310-page book
04:29into three movies totaling almost eight hours in length. The trend has definitely cooled in recent
04:36years, though studios have grown wise about how much audiences hate the part one, part two gimmick,
04:42and so tend to give their two-part movies titles that disguise their compartmentalized storytelling.
04:486. The Babadook Sparked The Infuriating Debate About Elevated Horror
04:542014'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 even
05:04sparked a trend of similarly inclined, artsy horror films in the years that followed, such as The Witch,
05:11Get Out, Hereditary Midsomer, The Lighthouse, Us, St. Maud, and Relic, and many of them were released by
05:17A24, and many of them, especially the ones I just said, were really really good. However, this soon
05:24led to the term elevated horror being coined, a designation signifying horror films which
05:29supplemented more traditional horror movie elements with themes and ideas from dramas or art movies.
05:35And ever since the phrase first gained traction in the mid-2010s, horror fans have been locked in a
05:41fierce, exhausting debate about the term's merits or lack thereof. To many, it seems understandably
05:48condescending to imply that any horror movie with a sliver of depth is placed on a pedestal above its
05:54genre brethren. Beyond tarring the bulk of the genre with the same brush, it also completely ignores the
06:00fact that elevated horror has existed for as long as horror has. There have always been psychological,
06:06visceral, experimental horror films, it's not just a new thing.
06:115. Batman Begins, Ushered in an Era of Needlessly Gritty Reboots
06:15Batman Begins is one of the most influential movies of the 2000s, a gritty reboot of a beloved comic
06:21book IP, shaking off his goofy prior interpretations and treating him in a more or less grounded and
06:27realistic fashion. The success of Batman Begins, and especially its sequel The Dark Knight,
06:32prompted 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 gives Superman the dubious grimdark treatment, no matter the inherent
06:50hopefulness and optimism of Superman in the comics. There are far, far worse examples though, like the
06:57Kirsten Stewart starring Snow White and the Huntsman, Josh Trank's Fantastic Four, and 2018's Robin Hood
07:03to name just a few. 4. Furious 7 Proved Hollywood Could Believably Resurrect Dead Actors
07:10Furious 7 is unquestionably one of the strongest films in the Fast and Furious franchise,
07:15and an all the more impressive achievement considering the tragic death of Paul Walker mid-production.
07:20In 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,
07:31which would then be mapped onto body doubles played by Walker's brothers Caleb and Cody.
07:36The end result is genuinely terrific, with only a few distracting moments where the digital
07:41scenes become visible. Given the enormous pressure on the production though, it's tough to argue
07:45with how this turned out. The problem, however, is that Furious 7 proved beyond any doubt that
07:52Hollywood could believably resurrect dead actors, and so in the years that followed we've had numerous
07:57films featuring long dead performers. The most prominent examples of course are Peter Cushing
08:02as Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One, and Harold Ramis as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters Afterlife,
08:08and while the estates of each actor did sign off on their inclusion, does that really make it right?
08:143. The Matrix Made Bullet Time Hollywood's Favorite New Trick
08:18The Matrix is unquestionably one of the greatest action movies, if not movies period of all time,
08:24yet it's groundbreaking, Oscar-winning visual effects were so freaking cool that Hollywood
08:29spent the next decade or so shamelessly attempting to one-up them. The Matrix's big,
08:34splashy VFX coup was of course Bullet Time, an advanced version of slow motion whereby the camera
08:40moves through the space of a scene while time is slowed, giving the audience otherwise impossible coverage
08:47of an awesome action beat. There are certainly movies that have managed to co-op Bullet Time in
08:52interesting ways, I mean, take the jaw-dropping bomb explosion at the start of Swordfish for one,
08:57and I know, Swordfish, what a weird drop, but yeah, it worked at the time.
09:012. Napoleon Dynamite Forced Netflix to Improve Their Algorithm
09:05Napoleon Dynamite is one of the most memorable indies of the 2000s, an ultra-quirky, hilarious coming-of-age
09:11comedy that grossed an incredible $46.1 million on a mere $400,000 budget.
09:19In 2008, the Napoleon Dynamite problem was first coined, referring to the film's strong popularity
09:26on Netflix and how the service's content algorithm struggled to decide whether customers would like
09:32it or not. Because Napoleon Dynamite is such an odd and difficult to categorize piece of work,
09:37it contributed to Netflix seeking to overhaul their algorithm, even offering a $1 million prize to
09:44anyone who could improve its effectiveness by 10%. In the years that followed, Netflix's algorithm
09:50became increasingly efficient, as did those of its streaming competitions, such that today,
09:55you're unlikely to be recommended anything even remotely outside of your comfort zone. Despite the
10:01massive libraries that streaming services offer, the algorithm will aim to steer you towards movies
10:06most likely to guarantee the attention of your eyeballs, in turn de-incentivizing the exploration
10:12of more adventurous left-field works of cinema. There's actually a really good video on this on
10:17the YouTube channel called Now You See It, by the way, which I would definitely recommend checking out
10:21if this has piqued your interest. 1. Pulp Fiction Ushered In An Era
10:25Of Obnoxiously Cool Crime Films Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is a stone-cold
10:31masterpiece, and one of the most influential films of the entire 1990s, if not of all time.
10:37As brilliantly conceived as it is though, its distinctive dialogue and inventive narrative
10:42structure inspired an entire generation of young screenwriters and filmmakers to produce their own
10:48inferior knockoffs. We were inundated with a deluge of hip, darkly comedic crime movies filled with
10:55too cool for school characters, pointlessly non-linear storytelling, and a story that wasn't
11:01explicitly about much in the traditional sense. A few of those examples could include things like
11:07things to do in Denver when you're dead, reindeer games, eight heads in a duffel bag, and the big hit,
11:13each of which attempted to approximate the style and tone of Pulp Fiction
11:17without any of the skill at storytelling or character building.
11:21That's our list, I want something you guys think down in the comments below, what do you think about
11:24the influence that these movies had on cinema as a whole, and are there any other great movies you
11:30think kind of made other movies a bit worse? While you're down there as well, could you please give
11:34us a like, share, subscribe, and head over to whatculture.com for more lists and news like this
11:38every single day. Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you
11:43soon.
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