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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 replayed 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
01:16feel like crass commercial exercises intended to distend dying or creatively bankrupt IP. Again,
01:23legacy sequels can work when they come from a place of genuine heart and creativity, but too often they
01:29simply rake over stories and character types that we've already seen while showering us in member
01:36berries. With 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 by Paul
02:45Greengrass's intense and kinetic direction. Throughout the film, Greengrass extensively utilized
02:51intentional shaky cam work during action sequences in order to heighten the chaotic realism of what we
02:57were seeing, giving it a full documentary vibe which, for a time, did feel refreshingly unique. But in the years
03:03that followed countless inferior filmmakers also used shaky cam cinematography, yet without Greengrass's
03:10shrewd understanding of visual language. The Bond Supremacy's precise editing ensured that we always
03:17knew the spatial geography of any given moment, no matter how much camera shake there was. Yet for many
03:23action directors, the 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 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 fans
03:53will 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
04:17part bombed, which 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 compartmentalized
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 even
05:04sparked a trend of similarly inclined artsy horror films in the years that followed, such as The Witch,
05:11Get Out, Hereditary Midsummer, The Lighthouse, Us, St. Maud, and Relic, and many of them were released
05:17by A24, and many of them, especially the ones I just said, were really, really good. However, this
05:23soon led 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,
06:07visceral, experimental horror films. It's not just a new thing.
06:105. 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 less
06:26grounded and realistic fashion. The success of Batman Begins and especially its sequel,
06:32The Dark Knight, prompted Hollywood to use that restrained style as the template for retooling a
06:37glut of stagnant franchises, whether it suited them or not. Perhaps the most immediately divisive
06:43example is the DCEU's Man of Steel, which gives Superman the dubious grimdark treatment,
06:49no matter the inherent hopefulness and optimism of Superman in the comics.
06:54There are far, far worse examples though, like the Kirsten Stewart starring Snow White and the
06:59Huntsman, Josh Trank's Fantastic Four and 2018's Robin Hood to name just a few.
07:054. 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 Wetter
07:25Digital was hired to create a lifelike CGI model of Walker from existing footage which would then be
07:31mapped 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 seams 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 Rogue
08:04One and Harold Ramis as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters Afterlife. And while the estates of each actor did
08:10sign off on their inclusion, does that really make it right?
08:143. The Matrix Made Bullet Time Hollywood's Favourite New Trick
08:18The Matrix is unquestionably one of the greatest action movies, if not movies period, of all time.
08:24Yet its groundbreaking, Oscar-winning visual effects were so freaking cool that Hollywood spent the next
08:30decade or so shamelessly attempting to one-up them. The Matrix's big, splashy VFX coup was of course,
08:37bullet time, an advanced version of slow motion whereby the camera moves through the space of a scene
08:42while time is slowed, giving the audience otherwise impossible coverage of an awesome action beat.
08:49There are certainly movies that have managed to co-opt bullet time in interesting ways, I mean,
08:53take the jaw-dropping bomb explosion at the start of Swordfish for one, and I know,
08:58Swordfish, 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
09:11coming-of-age comedy 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 on
09:26Netflix, and how the service's content algorithm struggled to decide whether customers would like it or not.
09:33Because 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 competition, such that today,
09:55you're unlikely to be recommended anything even remotely outside of your comfort zone.
10:00Despite the massive libraries that streaming services offer, the algorithm will aim to steer
10:05you towards movies most likely to guarantee the attention of your eyeballs, in turn,
10:10de-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.
10:231. 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 films
10:34of the entire 1990s, if not of all time. As brilliantly conceived as it is though, its distinctive
10:40dialogue and inventive narrative structure inspired an entire generation of young screenwriters and
10:46filmmakers to produce their own inferior knockoffs. We were inundated with a deluge of hip, darkly
10:53comedic crime movies filled with too-cool-for-school characters, pointlessly non-linear storytelling,
10:59and a story that wasn't explicitly about much in the traditional sense. A few of those examples could
11:06include things like Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead, Reindeer Games, Eight Heads In A Duffel
11:12Bag, and The Big Hit, each 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 soon.

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