Open Forum Friday: What Makes a Movie Influential?
Earlier this week, the folks over at Turner Classic Movies revealed their list of the 15 Most Influential Movies of All-Time. This inspired Brendon Connelly of /Film to put together his own list of the 10 Most Influential Movies of the Past 10 Years, which included some pretty unexpected choices such as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Polar Express and Coraline (to name a few). These movies in particular seemed to be selected based on their technical achievements, but it begs the question, have any of them really changed the direction of cinema? And can you even tell after only 10 years that a movie has been influential as opposed to just being trendy? (Is there a difference?)
Certainly some of the choices on Connelly’s list are hard to debate. The Matrix is the perfect example of a movie that seemingly changed the face of action movies forever, but I’m sure some would argue that the Wachowskis merely used the high-tech sheen of bullet-time to tell a standard hero’s journey without bringing anything truly new to the table. Still, do you have to create something new in order to be influential? On the flip side, both commercial success and critical acclaim can lead to copycats, but they may not leave a lasting impact. How do you define an influential movie? Are there different kinds of influence to consider? Which recent movies (if any) do you think will still be remembered 50 years from now? Give us your thoughts here on Open Forum Friday.
Comments (14)
Well, hardly any movies makes the 50-year mark really, but then again movies 50 years ago today were pretty shit, it’s hard to go 50 years into the future and see if things has changed as much as it has today, or if things has pretty much stayed the same more or less.
One of the movies I think will get dated is The Matrix, just looking at many of its effects today makes me believe it’ll get outdated pretty fast. The switch from animated-humans in various scenes is horrible and it is very easy to see the difference.
Posted by Kasper F. Nielsen on April 17th, 2009“Well, hardly any movies makes the 50-year mark really, but then again movies 50 years ago today were pretty shit…”
I’m sorry if I’m reading this the wrong way, but are you saying that movies from 50 years ago weren’t any good?
Posted by Wintle on April 17th, 2009In my opinion, most of the movies that are made before 1970′ish isn’t very good. But ofcourse that is just my view on things, but I just don’t like the more theater’ish feel of the acting of movies in the past. So, well, yes, the movies from about 50 years ago haven’t aged all that well.
Posted by Kasper F. Nielsen on April 17th, 2009I’m glad you gave a reason for your dislike, Kasper. I share your lack of enthusiasm for some theatrical elements in early cinema, but I do think there are quite a few movies from the first half of the 20th Century that are better than the majority of films we see today.
Posted by Wintle on April 17th, 2009Well the question is a bit broad to me, but since you talk about influence towards just cinema in a technical way in the post, it narrows it down some.
The Matrix is one my favorite movies of all time, but I never thought that it changed cinema. Can anyone name some films for me that were spawned or screwed over because of The Matrix? Could it be that it glorified martial arts in a sci-fi movie and now it must be glorified in other genres as well? Oh wait, we are talking about Bullet-time in the movie, right? Evolution of the slow-motion shot. Yeah, I can see all the movies it influenced. What other technical stuff did the Matrix have though?
Of Connelly’s list I actually think that Sky Captain is the most influential film of the last 10 years. I feel like this movie inspired George Lucas to do his trilogy in the same fashion as sky captain. But maybe he wanted to do it the way he did it all along. I dont really care. I definitely saw alot of green screen work after, I’d say, T2 or Jurassic Park. However, that goes past 10 years.
I would of picked Bourne Supremacy, Not Bourne Ultimatum. I don’t think there were too many new things introduced in Ultimatum to give it an edge over supremacy.
Picking movies like Children of Men for its long takes? I mean, you see directors like Brian DePalma who is famous for doing long takes already. Watch the opening scene of Snake Eyes. I guess it has to be on a more grand scale to be noticed.
I don’t get how Coraline can make it on the list. It just came out a few months ago. Who has it influenced? So the first stop motion animated movie to take advantage of the 3-d makes it influential? I guess it’s cool to assume that it will be, lol.
Posted by Pr1mal on April 17th, 2009Devin Faraci over at C.H.U.D did a great response to the /Film article.
Posted by swarez on April 18th, 2009http://bit.ly/3lmCN
Wintle: Ofcourse I am not writing ALL movies off, as an example I really like most of the westerns from the 60’s, but talking in general, I find most of the stuff to be dated in many ways, especially with the acting.
Which are some of the movies you find to have passed the task of time?
Posted by Kasper F. Nielsen on April 18th, 2009I think what Kasper was referring to, or at least this is my intepretation, is that 50 years ago, there were a lot more movies being released, and on average the quality was lower. The movies that have lasted and become classic, are greater for being so, but it left a lot of dreck behind. The influence of Sky Captain was in the adoption of a non-realistic stylized look that could only be done via green screen. It lead to the look of “Sin City” and “300″ and other movies with more subtle use of green screen. But I think it allowed the viewer to accept visually a more “comic book”-y kind of look and gave more creative freedom to filmmakers looking bring similar projects to the screen. It made it easier and cheaper, by not having to build gigantic sets, and props and other physical effects. I won’t say it’s necessarily made anything better, but we’re talking about influence here, and it could be a good or bad influence.
Posted by Maopheus on April 18th, 2009Kasper, are you referring to Spaghetti Westerns? I’ve been on a Spaghetti Western kick recently, and am having a little gathering tomorrow to watch the Man With No Name trilogy back-to-back.
I find a lot of older movies to be dated as well, but in many cases that’s what I most appreciate. There’s a great deal of techniques and styles in older movies that are interesting on their own and could be used to great effect in modern movies. I respect your dislike for certain aspects of early cinema even if I don’t understand it, and know many people who feel the same way (my own brother won’t watch anything in black and white), but I find a great deal of it fascinating.
Off the top of my head, a few pre-1960 films I enjoy include Paths of Glory, Frankenstein, Touch of Evil, The Blob, D.O.A., Casablanca, Bad Day At Black Rock, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kiss Me Deadly, It’s A Wonderful Life, Shadow of a Doubt, The Lady Eve, and on and on…
Posted by Wintle on April 18th, 2009Hehe, thanks for the link Swarez. Faraci seems to have read my mind and if I took to the time to write a whole repsonse article then that would be it pretty much.
Posted by Pr1mal on April 18th, 2009There is no way that Sky Captain influenced George Lucas. Episode 2 was dominated by green screen stuff, and it was released 2 years prior to Sky Captain. If anything, you could say Episode 1 and 2 had just as much of an impact if not more on using digital effects to create environments. But then again, I think the technology hurt the Star Wars prequels in giving them a too glossy, unrealistic quality. Sin City and Episode 3 were both being filmed before Sky Captain was even released, so I doubt that it had that much of an effect on those films.
Posted by rob on April 18th, 2009I should of proofread my stuff Rob, I wanted to be sarcastic there, hehe.
Posted by Pr1mal on April 18th, 2009And your about being released later than the new trilogy. Star Wars just came into mind more than Sin City because Sin City had the comic book feel and Sky Capt. and the new Star War trilogy didnt
Posted by Pr1mal on April 18th, 2009as much as I usually disagree with Kasper…I will say that I firmly stand on the opinion that the 1970’s were the peak of the art of “FILM”…and I say that as someone who wasnt even alive during that decade…not that that matters.
Posted by Bob The Slob on April 18th, 2009Leave a Reply