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Your life may not be a TV show, but you're still being lied to.
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00:00Lies about movies used to spread like wildfire, and without any official way to disprove it,
00:05anyone from a sneaky kid on the playground to that drunk guy in a bar could spout nonsense
00:10about your favourite films, and for all you knew, they'd be right.
00:14Sure, there's an alternate ending to Raiders of the Last Ark, where the Ark burns the US
00:18logo off the box it's contained in.
00:20Oh, of course, Flair Witch is based on a true story.
00:23Now, with the internet at our fingertips, you'd think it'd be easy to verify what's
00:27truth and what's a stinking lie.
00:28Oh, how naive.
00:31So, with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture here with 10 Lies About Famous Movies You Probably Believe.
00:38Number 10. Snow White was the first feature-length animation.
00:42Snow White is the film that started it all.
00:44Disney had already found success with Mickey Mouse, but this was something bigger.
00:48The studio's first full-length animation was a major step forward for the company and the medium,
00:54crafting many of the conventions that remain in children's films to this day.
00:58But the truth?
00:59There had been plenty of animations before.
01:02It shouldn't cheapen Snow White of its achievement in terms of the impact it had on cinema, but
01:07it really wasn't the first.
01:09That honour goes to Pinto Colvig, whose feature creation was released in 1915, a whole 22 years before Snow White.
01:18Like many smaller films from the time, it's been lost, presumably forever.
01:22But that doesn't hide the fact it, along with the handful of silhouette or stop-motion films that came out
01:27in the intervening years, beat Snow White to the punch.
01:30It's unlikely there was any bitterness, though.
01:33Colvig went on to design the Disney logo and voiced Goofy, so clearly he was welcome at the House of
01:38Mouse.
01:38Number 9.
01:40Man of Steel
01:41It was out of character for Superman to kill Zod.
01:44Man of Steel was, to put it lightly, a mess, made more disappointing because there was clearly an interesting deconstruction
01:51of a character we all knew, hidden under the washed-out colour palette.
01:54It performed well, but not well enough to stop Warner Bros going all-in and enlisting Batman to save the
02:01sequel.
02:02One of the biggest complaints from audiences was the relentless, mind-numbing action, all of which culminated in Superman snapping
02:09General Zod's neck.
02:10A travesty, this was one of the worst changes to the mythology Zack Snyder and co. had made.
02:16But the truth? He's done it before.
02:18There are a lot of changes made to the mythology of Kal-El that felt forced just to give the
02:23story a new feel, but killing Zod isn't one of them.
02:27It's Batman, not Superman, who has that no-killing rule.
02:30Go back to Superman 2.
02:32The climax of the film has our hero depower Zod and his followers before throwing the General down a cavern
02:37in the Fortress of Solitude.
02:39If that is a murder, then the 80s clearly had a different moral code.
02:43Man of Steel made a lot of mistakes in trying to update the character, but the killing of an almost
02:48unstoppable villain who stated he'll destroy the Earth isn't one of them.
02:52Number 8.
02:53Harry Potter
02:54J.K. Rowling told Alan Rickman Snape's big twist.
02:58The undoubted hero of the Harry Potter series is Severus Snape, the seemingly one-note potions master who, through a
03:05series of increasing reveals such as he was a Death Eater, Harry's dad bullied him, became the most well-rounded
03:11character in the films.
03:12This all culminated in the final moment revealed that all along he'd been in love with Harry's mother, turning seven
03:19books and eight movies worth of arsehole behaviour into hidden compassion.
03:23Of course, as the legend goes, Alan Rickman knew all this already.
03:27To convince him to take the role, series creator J.K. Rowling had told him all this way back at
03:33the start.
03:33But the truth is, she vaguely hinted at it once.
03:37We know Rowling does indeed plan ahead, with the first totally child-aimed book containing plenty of hints to later
03:44developments.
03:45Dumbledore's chocolate frog card mentions dark wizard Grindelwald.
03:48But more than that, we know she and publisher Bloomsbury were very tight on secrecy.
03:54Which is why it shouldn't be surprising that while Rowling knew Snape would always be on Team Potter, Rickman certainly
04:01didn't.
04:01Number 7. Batman Begins
04:04The Joker card tease is a direct foreshadowing for The Dark Knight.
04:08With films like The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel so forward-thinking, planning ahead at the behest of the
04:14story at hand,
04:15it feels strange for a big blockbuster to not be setting up whatever may be down the line.
04:20So if a slight nod to the fans is made, we immediately jump on it as some deep foreshadowing.
04:25When Batman Begins, a film whose villains were previously untouched on the big screen and thus knew too many audiences,
04:31dropped the Joker card in the final scene, it was clear to everyone that we were going to get someone
04:37a little more familiar the next time around.
04:39But the truth is, it was a little wink to fans, nothing more.
04:43Although what the card suggested would go on to be perfectly explored in The Dark Knight,
04:48Nolan never intended it to be anything more than something to get audiences thinking.
04:52At the point the film finishes, Batman has just established himself as the protector of Gotham,
04:58and a good visual cue to cement this is to show that the stories we're more familiar with from previous
05:03TV and film incarnations are just around the corner.
05:06Nolan is notorious for only ever focusing on one film at a time,
05:11so even if the card was intended to be something more concrete for the series, in his mind he was
05:16definitely going to be the guy exploring it.
05:19Number 6. Avatar
05:20James Cameron was making Avatar for a decade.
05:24In an alternate reality of cinema, we got Avatar ten years early, an idea he'd written a treatment for back
05:30in 1994.
05:32James Cameron's plan was to make the film immediately following his equally massive Titanic,
05:36but the limitations of the time meant he had to first work on getting the technology up to scratch.
05:41When the film finally arrived in late 2009, it was reported the director had been working on it for over
05:47ten years, making this a stupendous achievement.
05:51But the truth is, he kept pretty busy in those intervening years.
05:55You know this claim is greatly exaggerated when Cameron actually released a film in the interim, Ghosts of the Abyss,
06:02a documentary about the wreck of the Titanic.
06:04In fact, it was only after Abyss in 2003 that he began pushing on Avatar, and even then he was
06:10looking at other projects.
06:12The film wasn't greenlit and thus provided with money to properly push forward on the tech until late 2005, so
06:19in reality, he was making the film for four years.
06:23Number 5. Psycho
06:24The shower scene contains no actual nudity or violence. Psycho was such a progressive film that you could make a
06:31movie just about its clashes with the censors, and it'd be a damn sight better than the muddled Hitchcock.
06:36The first film to show a toilet flushing and also dealing with a psychological subject that could easily be sexually
06:43misconstrued.
06:44Oh, spoiler, the killer's a guy dressing up as his dead mother.
06:46The biggest point of contention was the shower scene. A series of rapid cuts depicting the stabbing of Marion Crane,
06:54the sequence is a masterclass of suggestion.
06:56Despite what you may think, you never see any nudity or actual stabbing. But the truth is, there's one shot
07:03that shows the stabbing.
07:04The claim, which was mainly made to get the film past the censors, that the shower scene is gore-free
07:10is easy to state when proving otherwise requires re-watching the whole film, which was difficult pre-home video.
07:17Nowadays, we can go through the Blu-ray frame by frame and see that actually there's one split-second shot
07:23of the knife penetrating Marion's skin.
07:26Very slight and devoid of gore, it's subconsciously a key contributor to the scene's shock factor.
07:32Number 4. The Truman Show
07:34There's an official psychological condition named after The Truman Show.
07:39The Truman Show is about a guy whose entire life is in fact a TV show. His hometown is contained
07:45in a massive dome, his friends and family are actors, and the town's obsession with branded items is product placement.
07:52Everything that happens is overseen by a control booth in the sky, and it's all built so he'll never find
07:57out the truth.
07:58If that gets you questioning your own reality, then you'll not be surprised to hear there's an official name for
08:04that, The Truman Show Delusion.
08:06But the truth is, it's a colloquialism. The word official may be a bit misleading. The Truman Show Delusion is
08:12simply the name attributed to an existing condition.
08:15It doesn't actually appear in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. It's the equivalent of calling filicide the
08:23Star Wars condition.
08:24The notion of a person's life being part of a fabricated reality is an old one, and the TV show's
08:30specific subgroup formed part of a Twilight Zone episode, as well as sharing many elements in sci-fi writer Philip
08:37K. Dick's time out of joint.
08:39People believing it is just an extension of the typical delusions of grandeur.
08:443. Planet of the Apes
08:46Planet of the Apes is Earth. The ending of Planet of the Apes is so iconic that giving it away
08:52barely constitutes a spoiler.
08:54The film's final image is even on the cover of the DVD. But the truth is, it was planned to
09:00be a different planet.
09:01It may seem like an attempt to replicate the original's shock value, but the twist at the end of Tim
09:06Burton's remake, Mark Wahlberg returns from a non-Earth planet dominated by apes to discover the same thing has happened
09:13to our home, is actually much more in keeping with the original concept.
09:17Pierre Ball's novel, off which the whole series is based, has Earth and the titular planet to be two very
09:23distinct worlds, both on which the apes rise.
09:26It was only in early drafts of the film, written by Twilight Zone's Rod Serling, that the twist worked its
09:32way into the story, changing the scope of the franchise forever.
09:372. Titanic
09:38Titanic is an inaccurate account of events. The main criticism, exacerbated by the centenary of the ship's famous sinking of
09:47the ship,
09:47a couple of years back, tends to be aimed at Rose and Jack. Not their dialogue, in the broad scope
09:52of the film it works, but the fact that they didn't exist, taking focus from the real tragic events.
09:58Couple that with claims that the steerage passengers were never locked down below decks, and it all looks like one
10:04big expensive fabrication.
10:06But the truth is, outside of character specific events, the sinking is spot on.
10:11Yes, those points are solid examples of James Cameron adding drama to already dramatic events, but for the most part,
10:18his take on the sinking is, for the time, pretty exact.
10:22The one big mistake the film makes is that it's now been determined the ship never stood vertical in the
10:28water.
10:28But as that was only figured out by a team containing Cameron, no less, after the movie's release, we'll let
10:34them off.
10:351. Blade Runner
10:37Blade Runner has lots of very different versions. Is Deckard a replicant? It's one of the biggest unanswered sci-fi
10:44movie questions.
10:45Depending on which version of Blade Runner you watch, you get a different answer.
10:49Confusing audiences and critics alike upon initial release, the film has since become regarded as a classic.
10:56Noteworthy not only for its visual style, which is still imitated to this day, but the fact that there's so
11:02many different cuts of the film out there for fans to paw over for clues.
11:06But the truth is, it's all clever marketing. Do you know what other film has countless cuts? Every freaking film
11:13ever made.
11:14Few films, however, have the same studio interference as Blade Runner that allow for such a big marketing trick.
11:20Aside from two different director's cuts, one from 1992 and one from 2007, all the other versions are basically the
11:29same.
11:29They're either from different stages of production or feature slight cuts for international TV release.
11:35Ultimately, it boils down to three key differences. Whether there's a voice-over, original release only.
11:41Whether there's a happy ending, all pre-1992 releases. And whether there's the bit with the unicorn, the two director's
11:48cuts.
11:49Everything else is minor, and while interesting from a behind-the-scenes perspective, they don't deserve the mystique they've been
11:56given over the years.
11:57And yes, for our money, he really is a replicant.
12:00And that concludes our list. If you can think of any more that we missed, then do let us know
12:05in the comments below.
12:06And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
12:09Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias just by
12:14searching Ellie Littlechild.
12:15I've been Ellie with WhatCulture. I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.
12:20I hope you will see Emily Becker as if you are looking back up again.
12:20Go again.
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