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They looked like disasters but they changed cinema forever. These 10 terrible movies were secretly groundbreaking.
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00:00Hollywood understandably loves nothing more than pushing the boundaries of what movies can show
00:05us, because there's an awful lot of money in big screen experiences you can't get anywhere else.
00:11And when filmmaking ingenuity combines with captivating storytelling,
00:15you get all-timer groundbreaking works of cinema. But sometimes you get movies that break new
00:20ground in one way, but are also quite bad. So here's to you, bad innovative movies.
00:26Your sacrifice wasn't in vain, I think. I'm Ewan, this is WhatCulture, and here are terrible movies that were actually
00:34groundbreaking.
00:36Howard the Duck featured the first digital wire removal in cinema history.
00:40Even accepting that the MCU has made a fair effort to redeem Howard the Duck,
00:471986's George Lucas produced movie based on the character continues to be regarded as one of the worst movies of
00:53all time.
00:54But it should still get some flowers for pioneering a facet of modern filmmaking which we as audiences take completely
01:01for granted,
01:02and yet played a vital part in the production of classics such as Back to the Future Part 2, Terminator
01:072 Judgment Day, and The Matrix.
01:10Prior to 1986, there was no visual effects process for removing wires,
01:15and so common techniques involved either painting wires to be the same colour as the background,
01:20or shining a hard light on them to make them close to invisible.
01:25But of course, this is far from a perfect process,
01:28and on higher definition re-releases of older movies,
01:32it's often quite easy to see said wires regardless.
01:35And yet, Howard the Duck was the first film in history to erase wires digitally.
01:41For the opening sequence in which Howard is launched out of his apartment,
01:45Lucasfilm created a program called Layer Paint,
01:47which allowed them to paint out the offending wires frame by frame.
01:51An arduous process, yeah, but the end result is absolutely seamless,
01:55no matter the film's overall quality.
01:57As such, the technique was quickly adopted by countless other big-budget Hollywood movies,
02:02and digital wire removal is trivial enough today that it can be easily carried out on home computers.
02:08Jason X was the first fully digitally edited movie.
02:12Jason X certainly has its defenders,
02:15because, let's be honest, a Jason in space movie can't be all bad.
02:20But yeah, it's not one of the stronger Friday the 13th movies.
02:24There is something of an untold history about the film, though,
02:27that came to light in recent times courtesy of Colin Cunningham,
02:31a VFX artist who worked on the movie.
02:34On the podcast No Such Thing Is A Bad Movie,
02:36Cunningham said that Jason X was actually the first Hollywood film to be fully digitally color graded,
02:41with the film footage being scanned into what's now called a digital intermediate,
02:46allowing all editing and color work to happen without the film negative ever being touched.
02:51Though the Coen Brothers' Oh Brother Where Art Thou is often credited with this honor,
02:55this is only because Jason X spent almost two years sitting on a studio shelf
02:59before being released in the US.
03:01But in Jason X's case, it went beyond mere digital color work
03:06to also have its effects and editing completed entirely on computers.
03:10So here's to you, Jason X.
03:12God bless your cryogenic kills and industry advancements.
03:16Sex Drive pioneered on-screen texting.
03:19Sex Drive came and went in 2008 without making much of a dent,
03:23flopping both critically and commercially,
03:25and in turn joining the glut of sex comedies attempting to fashion themselves as the next
03:31American Pie, Euro Trip, or Superbad set.
03:34But credit must also be given where credit is due,
03:37because while on the surface it doesn't appear to offer up any filmmaking innovations whatsoever,
03:43Sex Drive was actually the first movie to utilize a stylistic flourish that's now extremely common.
03:50It was the first film of note to use animated graphics to show characters texting one another in a scene,
03:55with protagonist Ian's text messages often being typed up on screen in real time just as he's writing them.
04:02It seems like such a simple, even quaint technique in a modern era where it's commonplace,
04:08but 15 years ago, it was practically unheard of.
04:11The Lion King was the first movie shot entirely in virtual reality.
04:16Jon Favreau's 2019 remake of The Lion King is a textbook example of a groundbreaking failure,
04:22a film which touts mesmerizingly photorealistic digital animals,
04:27yet in turn sacrifices all the soul and heart of the 2D animated original.
04:32I pray each year that Disney stops these remakes because they are all proper death of cinema stuff.
04:38Just rancid.
04:39But anyway, one thing you can maybe argue Favreau's remake has going for it
04:45is that it was the first ever movie to be shot entirely inside of virtual reality.
04:50On Favreau's prior 2016 remake of The Jungle Book,
04:54he made limited use of VR tech to map out the movie's heavily digital world.
04:58But for The Lion King, he shot the entire movie,
05:02except for the opening shot, which was actually filmed in Africa, in a VR space.
05:07During shooting, Favreau would don a VR headset to enter the various digital environments created
05:14for the film, allowing him to line up shots, choose lighting setups,
05:18and then have his camera operators perform the required camera movements for special viewfinders
05:23while walking it through the studio.
05:25Yeah, I can't be the only one thinking of the bit in Community
05:28where the Dean enters virtual reality right now, right?
05:31Favreau walking into a digital Africa and screaming,
05:34Jesus wept, while the rest of the cast all look unconcerned.
05:39Cool innovation though, I guess.
05:41Star Trek Generations was the first movie to have its own website.
05:45Despite being sold on the fan-serving thrill of Captains Kirk and Picard,
05:50played by William Shatner and Patrick Stewart respectively,
05:52teaming up for an improbable adventure,
05:54this actually ends up being a rather brief and not terribly charming part of Star Trek Generations.
06:01But Generations did nevertheless pull off a cinematic first.
06:05It was the first movie in history to have its own promotional website,
06:09narrowly beating out Stargate which released later that year.
06:12Given that only around 11 million people had internet access around the globe in 1994,
06:17it's impressive that the website was still viewed millions of times in the lead up to Generations' release.
06:22Or maybe not.
06:24Trekkies are a global force, and yeah, this is spectacularly on-brand for 90s nerddom.
06:30In the years that followed, it simply became another facet of movie marketing that every film had its own website.
06:36And Star Trek Generations is the one that made it all happen.
06:46You can actually visit the website too still, which is really fun.
06:50Still doesn't beat the Space Jam website for me though.
06:53And yeah, actually, while I'm here,
06:55let me know your favourite retro 90s movie websites down in the comments below.
06:59Mainly so I can visit them and vicariously relive that sweet 90s nostalgia.
07:04The Room was the first film shot on film and digital at the same time.
07:08Much as Tommy Wiseau's The Room is an undeniable cult classic in its own way,
07:13by any conventional metric, it's an awful movie.
07:17A failure in almost every way that a film can be.
07:20And yet, Wiseau's disaster piece does lay claim to a hilariously dubious, yet still strangely impressive honour.
07:28It is the first film to ever be shot on film and digital simultaneously.
07:33Yeah, for reasons that would likely only ever be clear to Wiseau himself,
07:37he wanted to become the first director to pull off this odd technical feat,
07:41which he achieved by having a custom camera rig built,
07:45which could house two cameras,
07:47one shooting on 35mm and the other digital.
07:50This reportedly required Wiseau to employ two camera crews to operate the dual rig
07:55and cause substantial slowdowns during production.
07:58It's an interesting feat, sure,
08:00but ultimately you have to ask one thing.
08:03Why?
08:04The final film is comprised solely of 35mm footage anyway,
08:07and the digital version has never been released.
08:10So what was the point beyond just because we could?
08:13Classic Wiseau.
08:14Future World was the first movie to use 3D CGI.
08:18Though it's often assumed that 1982's Trom was the first movie to use 3D CG effects,
08:25that's not actually quite right.
08:28An entire six years earlier,
08:30Westworld sequel Future World took an impressive stab at it,
08:33no matter the tawdry quality of the movie otherwise.
08:37The lack of Westworld writer and director Michael Crichton's involvement
08:41looms large throughout the woefully uneven follow-up,
08:44which is honestly just a bit of a slog to get through.
08:47But Future World nevertheless earned a firm place in VFX history
08:51during its memorable clone creation sequence,
08:54where digital 3D images of hands and faces are shown being synthesized.
08:58Never before had a major feature film contained 3D CG,
09:02and though its appearance in Future World is only brief,
09:06it nevertheless blew the doors open,
09:08allowing a swath of superior films to use the tech,
09:10Star Wars, Tron, and The Abyss, for instance,
09:14in the years that followed.
09:15Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk was the first 120 FPS feature film,
09:21and Lee's 2016 drama Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
09:24fell far short of its early awards buzz,
09:27receiving wildly mixed reviews for its unconvincing and mawkish drama,
09:32despite a solid central performance from actor Joe Alwyn.
09:36The sticking point for many critics and viewers alike, however,
09:39also happened to be the film's big technological innovation,
09:42Lee's decision to shoot and exhibit it at 120 frames per second.
09:46Rather than stick to the tried and true typical cinematic frame rate of 24 FPS,
09:53Lee shot the movie with five times that many frames,
09:56making it the first feature film in history shot and screened at 120 frames per second,
10:02far outpacing Peter Jackson's Hobbit films,
10:05which opted for 48 FPS by comparison.
10:08Oh, and because that wasn't enough, Lee also released it in 3D.
10:12While the 128 FPS presentation was massively polarizing,
10:17it's still impressive and ballsy that Lee dared to go there at all.
10:21Final Fantasy The Spirits Within was the first quote-unquote photorealistic CGI animated film.
10:28Though widely touted by Sony as cinema's next big event film,
10:322001's Final Fantasy The Spirits Within was a colossal letdown,
10:37a beautiful but ultimately hollow vessel that flopped hard at the box office
10:41and quickly evaporated into the cultural ether.
10:44But it's important to remember just how widely lauded the film was for its technological breakthroughs.
10:50Chiefly, Final Fantasy The Spirits Within was the first quote-unquote photorealistic computer animated feature film ever made,
10:58a truly tectonic filmmaking achievement for 2001,
11:01enough that many feared the lifelike animated humans
11:05could one day end up replacing flesh and blood actors within a matter of years.
11:10And even though The Spirits Within's visual imperfections are considerably more apparent when viewed today,
11:15in terms of pure visual verisimilitude, it's still a staggeringly impressive piece of work.
11:22The Possession of Hannah Grace was the first feature film shot on a mirrorless camera.
11:26The Possession of Hannah Grace is a supernatural horror film that quickly came and went in 2018,
11:31releasing two near universally negative reviews,
11:35yet grossing an impressive $43 million at the box office against a mere $7.7 million budget.
11:42A big part of the reason that director Diedrich Van Roijgen was able to keep the film's price tag solo
11:47was his decision to shoot the film not with a conventional cinema camera like an Arri Alexa,
11:52but with a mirrorless full-frame camera, which any printer could quite conceivably buy in a store.
11:58The Sony A7S II, to be precise.
12:01This made the film the first feature ever to be shot on a mirrorless camera,
12:05in turn proving that prosumer camera products could absolutely stand up to far more expensive options.
12:12The A7S II launched for $3,000 in 2015,
12:15which is just a fraction of what renting an Arri Alexa with all the necessary equipment would cost for a
12:20few weeks,
12:20and yet, looking at the final film, you'd never guess it was filmed on something an audience member might realistically
12:27own.
12:28While Hollywood as a whole hasn't started using mirrorless cameras en masse,
12:32because comparatively cinema cameras are more user-friendly and can stand up to far more abuse on a film set,
12:38The Possession of Hannah Grace did show what was possible with comparatively inexpensive gear.
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