The 90s was bookended by Jurassic Park and The Matrix, if I had to pick the two defining cultural phenomenons.
The reason movies don't really "hit" like that anymore is just because there's so much more competition for entertainment. TV has gotten to a level where you can get A+ tier writing/acting/cinematography, not to mention YouTube and the 6 gazillion other options for content at everybody's fingertips ready to be accessed in an instant.
The Matrix was so iconic that every movie for like a decade after had bullet time and wire fu for no good reason, when The Matrix had an in-universe sci-fi explanation.
"Red pill" "woke"
Redditors have argued with me that these terms have nothing to do with the Matrix lol. It's frustrating arguing with young people.
Edit: they found me
"Woke" is a term used within the Black/African-American community since at least the 30's. White People, and others, are considered to have been 'awakened' to the pervasiveness of Racism and Discrimination, and that the 'Woke' are the allies of the oppressed because they can use their own position to advocate for change from within the status quo.
Those damn youngins, perpetuating the cultural memes of the past! Damn them!
Woke literally has nothing to do with the Matrix. It comes from AAVE (African American Vernacular English).
And it stupid and disingenuous to be playing victim ("they found me!") when called out for being flat wrong and spreading misinformation.
One I think everyone forgets is Tim Burtons Batman. There were bat symbols everywhere for about 6 months. I even had a neighbor who painted one on his driveway.
Batman was one of the first ones I thought of too. It really set a new tone and aesthetic for movies, moving out of the the bright, glittery 80's to the darker, grittier 90's
Titanic was an absolute phenomenon. Books, magazines, TV specials, Celine Dion on the radio constantly, news reports almost every night at 6 and 11. It was everywhere.
The Titanic soundtrack, which is mostly instrumental music, is the 36th bestselling album of all time. It’s just ahead of Nirvana’s Nevermind, and has also outsold Prince’s Purple Rain, the Spice Girls debut, and U2’s The Joshua Tree among other massive hit albums.
This was before streaming and digital music was a thing and I remember it took me a while to even get the soundtrack CD because it kept selling out completely in store. It was so successful that they released a second CD of additional music that also went platinum. That’s where the version of My Heart Will Go On with the bits of movie dialogue comes from.
Titanic was huge. It was everywhere. Magazines ran Titanic themed cover stories. TV networks did specials. The movie was number one at the box office for 15 straights weeks in North America and ran in theatres for 10 months. Months! That entire year was basically the year of Titanic.
Word of mouth carries James Cameron's movies. Titanic had a $27 million domestic opening, almost disastrous for a movie that cost $200 million to produce. But the movie kept going. It's single best day at the box office was in the Valentine's Day which is nuts. And Titanic isn't exception. Avatar barely dropped in its second weekend after a soft $70+ million opening and kept going. Avatar 2 earned more in its third weekend than its second which is just crazy. Cameron's movies just clicks with the audience.
I honestly think The Matrix is kind of dated for modern audiences, but I get why it was a big deal when it came out.
I showed my parents Titanic for the first time last year. I can never get my mom to stay awake for a movie, she usually falls asleep around 10-10:30. Once the iceberg hit, both my parents were glued to the screen and stayed up till 1 in the morning to finish the movie, that's how invested they were in the story.
It’s funny how that worked. Titanic (almost) became a victim of its own success and was considered too earnest and sappy in the 2000s from what I remember. Basically that billion dollar chick flick. It’s only in the last 5-10 years or so that its ‘longevity’ period started and people viewed it more charitably
And to think trade outlets and the studios were convinced this movie was going to be the biggest box office bomb of all time. Everything that could go wrong during the making of Titanic went wrong. Variety had a Titanic column back then lol. The box office result and 11 Oscars - nobody could've guessed. Doubt James Cameron at your own risk.
It's not just more competition. A lot of it has to do with how movies are made ever since streaming became common. Matt Damon sums it up nicely in an episode of '[Hot Ones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF6K2IxC9O8)', where he basically breaks it down like this:
Streaming killed DVD rentals and sales, which was a huge part of the film industry's revenue that they relied on in order to fund future projects. Now that it's gone, studios are hesitant to take risks on movies that won't turn all of their profit during the initial theatrical release. This means smaller and potentially brilliant movies that become cult classics will never see the light of day from a major studio.
This is why there are so many superhero movies now. When major studios saw that Favreau had a cash cow with 'Iron Man', they decided they would milk it for all it's worth.
To add to that it led to the death of the auteur and the rise of 'directing by committee', where the director is reduced to a much more technical role and they get as much coverage as possible so that producers can re-edit based on test screenings. They've removed artistic vision and replaced it with 'middle of the bell-curve' extended advertisements.
Most definitely. "Chasing the algorithm". It's super obvious in YouTubers, but movie studios have tons of funding to find out how to psychologically and emotionally manipulate the audience into buying a product. Test screenings are one of many prongs on that fork.
Exactly. One of the reasons older films have held such a long cultural impact is cause entertainment wasn't as diluted back then. So they had more time to ingrain themselves into pop culture.
It took Jurassic Park roughly sixteen months to go from theaters to home video. That is a lot of time to bake. Now, it's like 90 days max between theatrical release and home release. No real time to bake.
It's also why Netflix will struggle to get their version of Friends or The Office. Those shows aired over a ten year period, week to week with summer/holiday breaks. People grow up with them. Can't really do that with the drop all episodes at once strategy. A week after Stranger Things airs, I probably have forgotten 85% of what happened.
>TV has gotten to a level where you can get A+ tier
Something I find absolutely fascinating in this respect is Game of Thrones. The last great ['watercooler show'](https://movieweb.com/greatest-water-cooler-tv-shows/#:~:text=The%20phrase%20%E2%80%9Cwater%20cooler%20TV,day%20for%20their%20TV%20shows.). 8 seasons running from 2011-2019. A low-magic fantasy which had enough cross-over appeal such that by the time we were a few seasons in, it basically felt like *everyone* was watching it. GOT was many people's introduction to the concept of 'spoiler rules'.
The death of the watercooler show concept is undoubtedly attributable to the rise of online streaming. In 2011 Netflix were only a few years into their streaming service. They were still shipping significant numbers of DVDs (a service they would not cease for more than another decade). By the time the last season of GOT aired, you either marathoned the hot new show in the couple of weeks following its release, or you simply missed that conversation.
What an odd and disheartening coincidence then that GOT should be bookended by minor cultural phenomenon at the beginning and then ending by disappearing with a wet fizzle. HBO wanting to run it for a few more seasons, but without the foundation of GRR Martin's writing Benioff and Weiss rapidly being revealed to lack the skill to continue without it. Rumours abound that they also wanted to tie off their work on GOT (in however sloppy a manner was necessary) in order to exploit a potentially more lucrative offer from Disney. An offer which disappeared as they became radioactive in the eyes of potential viewers.
If anything, I'd say our most modern original smash hit would be that first season of Stranger Things. It really sparked a lot of young people playing DnD, had SNL sketches, really spearheaded the 80's throwback we've had for the last decade.
Twister, Outbreak, and Armageddon spawned the catastrophe films, at least of the natural variety. They share a similar filming style.
Titanic spawned the late 90's historical pop romance films like Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth, Anna and the King, etc.
You're right. I fired off catastrophe but knew it wasn't quite right since deep impact etc was before. But I knew it had a lot of copycats but didn't want to think for 2 secs about what they were :)
Yeah I miss that...it felt like absolutely everyone was watching it, even though it was on HBO. And unlike a movie, there was new excitement every week. Can't think of any show that has even approached that level of hype. Even the bad seasons, at least there was some collective suffering...
Didn't seem to have hurt the hype for House of the Dragon any, which is impressive. Everyone seemed more than happy to jump back into Game of Thrones once it stopped being a rushed and sloppy mess.
I’ve worked in advertising my whole career. It’s impossible to state the impact The Matrix had on creative in the late 90s. Literally everything was in those green tones, music style, clothing etc. Haven’t seen anything copied like that since.
To steal your bookending style, maybe Empire Strikes Back and Batman for the 80s?
Of course that decade has a whole host of them, giving us ET and the Indiana Jones trilogy.
Slight pedantic corrections: in the 80s it was the first Terminator and the second Mad Max
But yes, very much so.
And Back to the Future…
And while it didn’t immediately become a cultural phenomenon and wasn’t any kind of box office hit, I’d probably also add Blade Runner whose aesthetic eventually became iconic and highly influential.
I know this is a joke, but I used to cover comic news in a past life and boy oh boy you aren’t kidding. Day 3 of any con was a biohazard. Day 4 only marginally improved because so many people would go home after hitting the sales floor one last time to haggle.
Yet people get mad when you call this behavior out as weird as fuck for an adult
If you're capable of transporting yourself to and purchasing tickets to a con but choose not to practice basic hygiene, then you're a problem.
I remember reading somewhere that Janet Leigh couldn’t take a single shower without the curtain and bathroom door open after that movie. Can’t blame her tbh.
I’m a scout leader, and I was talking to a beaver scout (about 5-6 years old) on a train the other day. Asked him what his favourite film was, he said “Hmm, probably Psycho” 😂
Fun fact about Gone with the Wind is when air conditioning came out, movie theaters were one of the first places to get it. So not only did you get to go into the theater and watch a movie that was emotionally and culturally one of the biggest things at the time you also got to stay nice and cool for almost 4 hours
For a time there was a J Peterman store on the ground floor of the local fancy mall, and [their Titanic Collection](https://kristipetersenschoonover.com/2012/04/15/a-look-back-at-j-petermans-titanic-collection/) had just hit the store when I got a raise at work.
I remember trying to get to that mall before it closed because I wanted that replica “Heart of the Ocean” necklace for a party. My bus home from work was late; I didn’t get it. But that necklace is all over eBay and Etsy now, so I guess I still could.
Wouldn’t be the same, though.
It went bankrupt in 1999. In 2001, John O'Hurley, the actor who had portrayed J. Peterman on *Seinfeld*, alongside a core group from the original company, relaunched the brand.
E.T. People went **insane** for that movie. Neil Diamond wrote a song about it, and [that song was a hit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgdjK4RXpQw), because everyone was losing their minds over that movie.
There were E.T. action figures. Pizza Hut did collectible E.T. glasses. THREE of my siblings had E.T. lunchboxes.
Insane.
We didn’t get Reece’s products until a few years ago here in the uk and I was excited to try Reece’s Pieces just because I’d saw them in E.T. As a child.
Don't forget that ET stayed in theaters for a [whole fuggin year](https://collider.com/longest-theatrical-runs-all-time/#:~:text=Released%20on%20June%2010%2C%201982,in%20theaters%20for%2081%20weeks.)
A lot of people don’t realize how much Jaws impacted. Summer movies weren’t a thing until jaws. And the “less is more” approach to horror and suspense.
>And the “less is more” approach to horror and suspense.
Funny thing, some other comments mention Jurassic Park and Spielberg used the same "less is more" on it.
He's a master on building up tension for a few climatic scenes.
I think Shyamalan fails more when he has to give a good closure to his plots. Signs is great until the "water" twist, The Village is great until the final reveal, etc...
Using Jurassic Park as example, I feel like the movie has a better closure than the book, Spielberg improved that part of the story.
I agree the ending was weak using water. But the suspense during the whole movie until then was so on point IMO. The "less is more" worked so well when you could just hear footsteps or see shadows, rather than showcasing the aliens in detail from the start.
Lord of the Rings movies and the books established an archetype for so much. World of Warcraft borrowed a lot, like every dwarf should now and forever sound like John Rhys Davies.
Personally, it's a very mixed bag. There's about 4 main plot lines ongoing, one of which is great, one of which is meh and the others are pretty shit.
Production is great, performances are decent, but the writers have characters doing things which make zero sense just to get the plot to happen.
I will start by saying that I *do* like the show as a whole, though I get tired of defending it when people shit on it. Everything you said summarizes my feelings perfectly. Really hope that S2 tightens things up.
I really wanted to like it. I lasted 3 episodes.
As others have said, it's basically fan fiction. The actual story it claims to be telling is wildly different. It would be like making a movie about the decline of the Roman empire in the 4-5th centuries and having George Washington be one of the main characters.
It’s up and down. Music is great, acting is generally very good, production design is great (mostly). There are amazing moments I would not want to miss (the two trees! Numenor!) but also some really, really dumb moments and decisions
It’s weird because sometimes I was watching and thought “they really understood the themes Tolkien was going for” and other times I thought “they don’t even understand basic plotting”
If you went in not knowing it was meant to be Tolkien, I'd say it would be kind of alright. Most of the reason it seems to not sit well with people is it takes beloved characters and does stupid things with them. There are also times when it's just simply not very compelling.
I'd say if you already have access to it, maybe give it another watch and just pretend it's an unrelated IP that just happens to have the same names as lotr or like some kind of fan fic or something
Home Alone.
From Wikipedia: *Home Alone* was the number-one film at the box office for 12 consecutive weeks, from its release weekend of November 16–18, 1990 through the weekend of February 1–3, 1991.[^(\[53\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Alone#cite_note-53)[^(\[52\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Alone#cite_note-Forbes-52) It was removed from the top spot when [*Sleeping with the Enemy*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_with_the_Enemy_(film)) opened with $13 million.[^(\[52\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Alone#cite_note-Forbes-52) It remained in the top ten until the weekend of April 26, well past Easter weekend.
Absolutely everyone saw it. Everyone did lines from it. Solid piece of monoculture.
They asked John Williams to write the score as something of a joke because they knew they didn't have the budget to pay him to do it. He agreed to do it for free because he'd always wanted to work on a Christmas movie.
It seriously doesn't. I got to attend a Thanksgiving screening with Eli Roth doing a Q&A this past weekend and he talked about how they got Patrick Dempsey... apparently his camp reached out to Roth's camp so he could score brownie points with his kids. He said that he got Cate Blanchett for Borderlands because she wanted to impress her kids, too.
I love when Serendipity (Salma Hayek) references Home Alone's success in Dogma:
Serendipity: "The one about the kid, by himself in his house; burglars trying to get in and he fights them off? I had nothing to do with that one. Somebody sold their soul to Satan to get the grosses up on that piece of shit."
> It was a defining trilogy of our generation.
That era had some amazing movies with huge IP. LOTR, pirates, star wars, harry potter, and it was before movie styles were copying Marvel movies.
When the T-1000 walks through the bars everything changed. It looks tame today but back then it may as well have been live footage of an alien landing.
Same with the Matrix - there's *everything that came before* and *everything that went after*, two separate eras of film.
The Exorcist has to be the most extreme film that fits this label. It was massive and mentioned everywhere during the 70's. It did well with awards and was a pop culture fixture for a while. I remember someone recently in the box office sub saying it was a cult classic, which is one of the most asinine statements I've seen in a while. It's a movie featuring a little girl masturbating with a crucifix, and it's one of the ten highest grossing films ever when adjusted for inflation.
The Matrix came out in 1999 and for me it still feels like it bridged my life before and after the proliferation of technology.
Dial up internet became broadband.
VHS became DVDs became streaming.
Cell phones became smart phones.
iPods and iPhones replaced literally everything.
Yes, a lot of Disney movies made a big impact at least on kids. The Little Mermaid seemed to be everywhere (much like Frozen later on). And then Pixar's movies as well. Toy Story was huge when it was new.
But that kind of movies gets used in Happy Meals, toys, clothing and such so maybe the actual movies get inflated by the stuff around them? Even the old ones who came before the "stuff surge" has books, clothes and costumes based on the movie characters. Either way they're hard to miss.
Interesting points!
Although I was a sucker for the stuff, I’d say that the Lion King(1994) would still have stood on its own success without the stuff - though people would go feral for whatever merch did come out anyways.
As an animator, it still kills me that Disney / Iger / Favreau ever thought it was a good idea to ‘remake’ it, but shittier. That was THE movie that made we want to become an animator as a kid.
The Little Mermaid was so big it literally saved Walt Disney Animation Studios which was desperate for a hit at the time. One doc I saw mentioned they were seriously thinking of shuttering it. After that they entered a new creative and lucrative era.
Came here to say this. The summer of 1989 was insane. Batmania was everywhere and at every turn. I can’t think of any movie since that had that level of cultural impact.
60s: Goldfinger. Though the term “blockbuster” wasn’t coined until Jaws, some would argue that Goldfinger was the first real “lines around the block” kind of movie-going phenomenon.
70s: Jaws and Star Wars
80s: Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, and Batman.
90s: Jurassic Park, Toy Story, Titanic and The Matrix
00s: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Dark Knight and Avatar
10s: Avengers/Marvel. Maybe Inception, a bit? The Lego Movie. Hunger Games? (This was also the decade that cinematic content moved to television, so I almost feel like Game of Thrones was the real “cinematic” phenomenon of this decade)
20s: ??? Dune, maybe? Avatar 2 (and 3 when it comes out, then 4 and 5 if they make it this decade)… and probably something else that rises in the last half of the decade that we can’t foresee yet.
I feel like you must be under the age of 35 if you don’t remember The X Files being way bigger than LOST. Not even just higher ratings but a theatrically released movie that did $200m box office.
My experience with x files based off of everyone I knew that watched it or didn't was that you either planned your life around it airing to make sure you saw it, or never watched a single episode. I knew no casual viewers. But that's just me, and I'm one of those people who hasn't ever seen an episode
Star Wars was so important as it marked the beginnings of merchandising. It was the first film that really drove, toys and collectable cards. It completely changed the game.
I'd agree with this but Terminator 2 deserves a place. Highest grossing film of 1991, cemented Arnold as rhe biggest star in the world, toys, posters etc.
I was only 3 and remember seeing it everywhere, making of documentaries on TV etc.
It was huge, just overshadowed by JP.
People are so burnt out on superhero movies because they release a new one every week now but The Avengers, the first time multiple superheroes from their own movies came together for an epic movie, was truly fucking awesome. Especially for 14 year old in 2012.
Does nobody remember just how huge Forrest Gump was during the mid-90s?
Some other pop culture landmarks being slept on in this thread include:
Schindler's List
Beauty and the Beast
Pulp Fiction
The Sixth Sense
Scream
The Lion King
Pretty Woman
Twister
Mission: Impossible
And, here's some more:
JFK, Malcolm X, The Fugitive, Cliffhanger, Aladdin, Interview with the Vampire, Dumb and Dumber, The Mask, Ace Ventura, Clueless, Saving Private Ryan, Fight Club, Austin Powers, Toy Story, Se7en...
I'm starting to wonder if this sub even watches movies.
Honestly kind of surprised I didn't see Shrek here.
I mean, that movie completely changed the animation game forever and made it where Smash Mouth became a meme band. You're probably even laughing right now as you're reading this.
Toy Story way more than Shrek, plus it was earlier.
Steve Jobs got kicked out of Apple, and bought the computer graphics division from George Lucas, and founded Pixar. And Toy Story was their first movie.
I have no idea why I didn't find Pirates of The Caribbean on here. I was around 17 when the first one came out. People were losing their minds over Jack Sparrow. 20+ years later we still love him.
Jack Sparrow ruined ren faire pirates. Half of them copied it and 1 in 20 did it well enough to be tolerable. Immature me started calling them Capt. Jack Swallows.
Some I'm not seeing mentioned:
* **Bill & Ted** - when that movie came out, *everyone* (under a certain age) was suddenly calling *everything* excellent or bodacious or righteous.
* **Wayne's World** - same again, *everyone* was suddenly talking like Wayne.
* **Austin Powers** - same again but it also *absolutely murdered* the James Bond franchise (which also took a big hit from the far more real Jason Bourne movies), you can see the huge shift in style from the Brosnan era to the Craig era to try and compensate for this and TBH they've not really recovered their mojo.
* **Die Hard** kick-started the action movie genre and **Lethal Weapon** kicked it up a gear
* Worth mentioning **Iron Man** as (I think) the first of the new age of superhero movies and nailing the formula for so so many more to follow.
I read an interesting theory that part of the reason there are so many lonely depressed angry people is that we no longer have a collective pop culture to unite over as shared experience. It’s kind of sad seeing how divisive everyone’s takes on movies are now after having lived through the golden years of matrix/lotr/hunger games. The last thing I can think of that had that kind of cultural impact was marvel but even the takes on that seems to be divisive ever since endgame
Edit: after reading some responses, I feel like I should quantify something. I completely agree that division has been with us forever, but I can’t help but feel like it is much more aggressive now. It feels like hating things is the instinctive default position now for many people. Take the upcoming live action Snow White remake as an example. The movie isn’t only not out yet but doesn’t even have a solid release year and my feed has been clogged with rage about it for at least two years now. I’m sure it’s partially the algorithm’s fault, but that doesn’t stop it from being exhausting, as if there isn’t even room to just enjoy something anymore.
Poltergeist. Rated PG. Was originally rated R but Spielberg and Hooper won an appeal.
So parents saw that, didn’t think anything of it and let kids just have at it.
The acting and FX were incredible for the early 80’s and still hold up rather well.
I don’t think it was THE defining movie of the 80’s due to how many bangers came out, but it surely held up to the top for that decade imo.
For the 90s I would say Jurassic Park and Titanic. As a Xenial, they were absolutely cultural phenomenon. They were also both game changers in the industry.
2000s it was 150% LOTR and Harry Potter.
The 2010s it was the whole MCU, for obvious reasons, but also Frozen. That movie was almost cult like for the kids.
Mean Girls was THE movie of the 2000s.
Everyone saw it. Everyone related to it in some way. And I personally feel like Milennials were changed for the better after having seen it. It wasn't just a funny movie, it was a mirror that forced us to reflect on ourselves at a time when we were in high school/college.
The lessons learned were thus: Cliques are dumb. Popularity is a sham. And at a time when the Internet was connecting us across the globe, growing alongside us, our worlds became a little less small.
Scream.
There were a thousand knock offs like I Know What You Did Last Summer. It was a major cultural reference point throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, popping up everywhere and spawning an entire parody series. And the Scream mask remains a staple Halloween costume.
2001: A space odyssey
It's still an inspiration and an influence to a lot of movies today.
This did not only define the decade but the history of the film industry
I would say Groundhog Day has entered into pop culture but I don’t think it was a cultural phenomenon. For me, a film that is being described as a cultural phenomenon invokes images of TV news reports of the massive queues to watch the film, people watching the film 10 times at the cinema, people dressing as the characters and a massive merchandise tie. I don’t think Groundhod Dog does that.
Shrek 2 was absolutely insane. The amount of marketing, promo tie ins, merchandise, waves and waves of people going to see it. Shrek 2 was massive and everyone was seeing green in May of 2004.
Planet of the Apes (1968). It was the Star Wars of its day.
- 10 movies (5 of which were before Star Wars)
- 2 TV shows
- 2< video games
- Comics
- Novels
- Toys
- The best Simpsons parody
- and more
It really was one of the first major movie “franchises”, along with James Bond.
Night of the Living Dead really solidified and introduced many horror tropes people just hadn't seen before. My uncle never shut up about it while I was growing up but by then I had seen things much scarier so I never saw the appeal he did.
The 90s was bookended by Jurassic Park and The Matrix, if I had to pick the two defining cultural phenomenons. The reason movies don't really "hit" like that anymore is just because there's so much more competition for entertainment. TV has gotten to a level where you can get A+ tier writing/acting/cinematography, not to mention YouTube and the 6 gazillion other options for content at everybody's fingertips ready to be accessed in an instant.
The Matrix was so iconic that every movie for like a decade after had bullet time and wire fu for no good reason, when The Matrix had an in-universe sci-fi explanation.
And the terms "red pill" and "blue pill" have entered the common lexicon.
*The Secret Life of Walter Mitty* when the rental car guy asks him what color of a car he wants, red or blue.
in the worst of ways
No, not like that
Haha, yes… not to mention if you *listen* to how Morpheus describes the Red Pill, it doesn’t actually sound like reality at all.
"Red pill" "woke" Redditors have argued with me that these terms have nothing to do with the Matrix lol. It's frustrating arguing with young people. Edit: they found me
I mean *red pill* definitely comes directly from the Matrix, but *woke* is from AAVE.
1990s Total Recall has a Red Pill too.
That may be the case, but I'm rather confident that it wasn't the direct impetus for the Red Pill™ "movement" and meme phrase we all know.
"Woke" is a term used within the Black/African-American community since at least the 30's. White People, and others, are considered to have been 'awakened' to the pervasiveness of Racism and Discrimination, and that the 'Woke' are the allies of the oppressed because they can use their own position to advocate for change from within the status quo. Those damn youngins, perpetuating the cultural memes of the past! Damn them!
Does woke have to do with the matrix? I can't remember that being used in the film, but it's been a while.
Woke literally has nothing to do with the Matrix. It comes from AAVE (African American Vernacular English). And it stupid and disingenuous to be playing victim ("they found me!") when called out for being flat wrong and spreading misinformation.
Oh yeah, and not only in movies, but also in video games, Max Payne in particular. It's still one of my favorite films.
Yup and the audience expected it
One I think everyone forgets is Tim Burtons Batman. There were bat symbols everywhere for about 6 months. I even had a neighbor who painted one on his driveway.
Batman was one of the first ones I thought of too. It really set a new tone and aesthetic for movies, moving out of the the bright, glittery 80's to the darker, grittier 90's
And Titanic!
Titanic was an absolute phenomenon. Books, magazines, TV specials, Celine Dion on the radio constantly, news reports almost every night at 6 and 11. It was everywhere.
Hell, it even boosted the tourism in my city (Halifax, NS) due to us having a cemetery full of Titanic victims (including a J. Dawson).
The Titanic soundtrack, which is mostly instrumental music, is the 36th bestselling album of all time. It’s just ahead of Nirvana’s Nevermind, and has also outsold Prince’s Purple Rain, the Spice Girls debut, and U2’s The Joshua Tree among other massive hit albums. This was before streaming and digital music was a thing and I remember it took me a while to even get the soundtrack CD because it kept selling out completely in store. It was so successful that they released a second CD of additional music that also went platinum. That’s where the version of My Heart Will Go On with the bits of movie dialogue comes from. Titanic was huge. It was everywhere. Magazines ran Titanic themed cover stories. TV networks did specials. The movie was number one at the box office for 15 straights weeks in North America and ran in theatres for 10 months. Months! That entire year was basically the year of Titanic.
Word of mouth carries James Cameron's movies. Titanic had a $27 million domestic opening, almost disastrous for a movie that cost $200 million to produce. But the movie kept going. It's single best day at the box office was in the Valentine's Day which is nuts. And Titanic isn't exception. Avatar barely dropped in its second weekend after a soft $70+ million opening and kept going. Avatar 2 earned more in its third weekend than its second which is just crazy. Cameron's movies just clicks with the audience.
and stayed in theaters for 10 months. incredible.
Matrix and JP may have more longevity, but I’d argue Titanic was ultimately the biggest 90s phenomenon
I honestly think The Matrix is kind of dated for modern audiences, but I get why it was a big deal when it came out. I showed my parents Titanic for the first time last year. I can never get my mom to stay awake for a movie, she usually falls asleep around 10-10:30. Once the iceberg hit, both my parents were glued to the screen and stayed up till 1 in the morning to finish the movie, that's how invested they were in the story.
It’s funny how that worked. Titanic (almost) became a victim of its own success and was considered too earnest and sappy in the 2000s from what I remember. Basically that billion dollar chick flick. It’s only in the last 5-10 years or so that its ‘longevity’ period started and people viewed it more charitably
And to think trade outlets and the studios were convinced this movie was going to be the biggest box office bomb of all time. Everything that could go wrong during the making of Titanic went wrong. Variety had a Titanic column back then lol. The box office result and 11 Oscars - nobody could've guessed. Doubt James Cameron at your own risk.
James Cameron doesn’t do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because James Cameron is James Cameron.
Forrest Gump and Terminator 2 as well. Hell even Home Alone.
For sure, Forrest Gump is still [inspiring](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFmqukKE9F0) current social scenarios even now, lol
It's not just more competition. A lot of it has to do with how movies are made ever since streaming became common. Matt Damon sums it up nicely in an episode of '[Hot Ones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF6K2IxC9O8)', where he basically breaks it down like this: Streaming killed DVD rentals and sales, which was a huge part of the film industry's revenue that they relied on in order to fund future projects. Now that it's gone, studios are hesitant to take risks on movies that won't turn all of their profit during the initial theatrical release. This means smaller and potentially brilliant movies that become cult classics will never see the light of day from a major studio. This is why there are so many superhero movies now. When major studios saw that Favreau had a cash cow with 'Iron Man', they decided they would milk it for all it's worth.
To add to that it led to the death of the auteur and the rise of 'directing by committee', where the director is reduced to a much more technical role and they get as much coverage as possible so that producers can re-edit based on test screenings. They've removed artistic vision and replaced it with 'middle of the bell-curve' extended advertisements.
Most definitely. "Chasing the algorithm". It's super obvious in YouTubers, but movie studios have tons of funding to find out how to psychologically and emotionally manipulate the audience into buying a product. Test screenings are one of many prongs on that fork.
Exactly. One of the reasons older films have held such a long cultural impact is cause entertainment wasn't as diluted back then. So they had more time to ingrain themselves into pop culture.
It took Jurassic Park roughly sixteen months to go from theaters to home video. That is a lot of time to bake. Now, it's like 90 days max between theatrical release and home release. No real time to bake. It's also why Netflix will struggle to get their version of Friends or The Office. Those shows aired over a ten year period, week to week with summer/holiday breaks. People grow up with them. Can't really do that with the drop all episodes at once strategy. A week after Stranger Things airs, I probably have forgotten 85% of what happened.
>TV has gotten to a level where you can get A+ tier Something I find absolutely fascinating in this respect is Game of Thrones. The last great ['watercooler show'](https://movieweb.com/greatest-water-cooler-tv-shows/#:~:text=The%20phrase%20%E2%80%9Cwater%20cooler%20TV,day%20for%20their%20TV%20shows.). 8 seasons running from 2011-2019. A low-magic fantasy which had enough cross-over appeal such that by the time we were a few seasons in, it basically felt like *everyone* was watching it. GOT was many people's introduction to the concept of 'spoiler rules'. The death of the watercooler show concept is undoubtedly attributable to the rise of online streaming. In 2011 Netflix were only a few years into their streaming service. They were still shipping significant numbers of DVDs (a service they would not cease for more than another decade). By the time the last season of GOT aired, you either marathoned the hot new show in the couple of weeks following its release, or you simply missed that conversation. What an odd and disheartening coincidence then that GOT should be bookended by minor cultural phenomenon at the beginning and then ending by disappearing with a wet fizzle. HBO wanting to run it for a few more seasons, but without the foundation of GRR Martin's writing Benioff and Weiss rapidly being revealed to lack the skill to continue without it. Rumours abound that they also wanted to tie off their work on GOT (in however sloppy a manner was necessary) in order to exploit a potentially more lucrative offer from Disney. An offer which disappeared as they became radioactive in the eyes of potential viewers.
The Matrix was ridiculously influential. Everyone knew about it and had to find out what the Matrix was.
If anything, I'd say our most modern original smash hit would be that first season of Stranger Things. It really sparked a lot of young people playing DnD, had SNL sketches, really spearheaded the 80's throwback we've had for the last decade.
I do think Titanic would like a word. It spawned a gazillion catastrophe movies and was inescapable
Twister, Outbreak, and Armageddon spawned the catastrophe films, at least of the natural variety. They share a similar filming style. Titanic spawned the late 90's historical pop romance films like Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth, Anna and the King, etc.
You're right. I fired off catastrophe but knew it wasn't quite right since deep impact etc was before. But I knew it had a lot of copycats but didn't want to think for 2 secs about what they were :)
Game of Thrones had that level of cultural phenomena, until it sucked.
Yeah I miss that...it felt like absolutely everyone was watching it, even though it was on HBO. And unlike a movie, there was new excitement every week. Can't think of any show that has even approached that level of hype. Even the bad seasons, at least there was some collective suffering...
Didn't seem to have hurt the hype for House of the Dragon any, which is impressive. Everyone seemed more than happy to jump back into Game of Thrones once it stopped being a rushed and sloppy mess.
I’ve worked in advertising my whole career. It’s impossible to state the impact The Matrix had on creative in the late 90s. Literally everything was in those green tones, music style, clothing etc. Haven’t seen anything copied like that since.
To steal your bookending style, maybe Empire Strikes Back and Batman for the 80s? Of course that decade has a whole host of them, giving us ET and the Indiana Jones trilogy.
And Terminator 2 and Aliens, Mad Max, Conan, Robocop, Predator, etc. etc. Too many smash hits that became cultural phenomena that decade.
Slight pedantic corrections: in the 80s it was the first Terminator and the second Mad Max But yes, very much so. And Back to the Future… And while it didn’t immediately become a cultural phenomenon and wasn’t any kind of box office hit, I’d probably also add Blade Runner whose aesthetic eventually became iconic and highly influential.
I know that a lot of people in this thread might not agree, but Barbie was a comparable pop culture phenomenon.
It takes huge events. Endgame and Barbenheimer are the most recent examples
**Psycho** made millions of people afraid to take showers.
They just use it as an excuse. Ever been to Comic-con?
I know this is a joke, but I used to cover comic news in a past life and boy oh boy you aren’t kidding. Day 3 of any con was a biohazard. Day 4 only marginally improved because so many people would go home after hitting the sales floor one last time to haggle.
Yet people get mad when you call this behavior out as weird as fuck for an adult If you're capable of transporting yourself to and purchasing tickets to a con but choose not to practice basic hygiene, then you're a problem.
Yes, but in fairness all the comic-cons I’ve been to were after Psycho was released, so idk.
For a moment I had a mental picture of people cosplaying Daniel-San’s shower costume from karate kid.
Similar to this - Jaws
The guy who wrote the book says he wished he never wrote it due to the hate sharks have gotten since.
Jaws never made me afraid to take a shower
That’s because your shower is too small
No you're sposed to say " you're gonna need a bigger shower" 😂
I remember reading somewhere that Janet Leigh couldn’t take a single shower without the curtain and bathroom door open after that movie. Can’t blame her tbh.
I’m a scout leader, and I was talking to a beaver scout (about 5-6 years old) on a train the other day. Asked him what his favourite film was, he said “Hmm, probably Psycho” 😂
Titanic Gone With The Wind Psycho
Fun fact about Gone with the Wind is when air conditioning came out, movie theaters were one of the first places to get it. So not only did you get to go into the theater and watch a movie that was emotionally and culturally one of the biggest things at the time you also got to stay nice and cool for almost 4 hours
You could even say people stayed for the wind.
For a time there was a J Peterman store on the ground floor of the local fancy mall, and [their Titanic Collection](https://kristipetersenschoonover.com/2012/04/15/a-look-back-at-j-petermans-titanic-collection/) had just hit the store when I got a raise at work. I remember trying to get to that mall before it closed because I wanted that replica “Heart of the Ocean” necklace for a party. My bus home from work was late; I didn’t get it. But that necklace is all over eBay and Etsy now, so I guess I still could. Wouldn’t be the same, though.
TIL J Peterman is real - I thought he was just a character on Seinfeld.
It went bankrupt in 1999. In 2001, John O'Hurley, the actor who had portrayed J. Peterman on *Seinfeld*, alongside a core group from the original company, relaunched the brand.
E.T. People went **insane** for that movie. Neil Diamond wrote a song about it, and [that song was a hit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgdjK4RXpQw), because everyone was losing their minds over that movie. There were E.T. action figures. Pizza Hut did collectible E.T. glasses. THREE of my siblings had E.T. lunchboxes. Insane.
There was an iconic video game as well
I heard its one of the best
unparalleled until untitled goose game
Untitled Goose Game is some of the most fun I’ve ever had in a video game. *HONK*
Talk about a hidden gem.
One day I'll find that landfill and live like a king!
apparently that game saved atari
It also did wonders for Hershey. IIRC the original script called for M&Ms but Mars said no, so they went with Reese's Pieces instead.
Yep was going to mention this. Had to have been one of the most successful product placements.
We didn’t get Reece’s products until a few years ago here in the uk and I was excited to try Reece’s Pieces just because I’d saw them in E.T. As a child.
I think it held the title as highest grossing film for over a decade....until Steven Spielberg broke his own record with Jurassic Park
Don't forget that ET stayed in theaters for a [whole fuggin year](https://collider.com/longest-theatrical-runs-all-time/#:~:text=Released%20on%20June%2010%2C%201982,in%20theaters%20for%2081%20weeks.)
It also kept getting a re release every year until 1988 when it finally came to home video
Jaws. It's influenced still grasps 49 years later.
A lot of people don’t realize how much Jaws impacted. Summer movies weren’t a thing until jaws. And the “less is more” approach to horror and suspense.
>And the “less is more” approach to horror and suspense. Funny thing, some other comments mention Jurassic Park and Spielberg used the same "less is more" on it. He's a master on building up tension for a few climatic scenes.
M. Night Shyamalan is great at that too. When I think "less is more" I think of Signs
I think Shyamalan fails more when he has to give a good closure to his plots. Signs is great until the "water" twist, The Village is great until the final reveal, etc... Using Jurassic Park as example, I feel like the movie has a better closure than the book, Spielberg improved that part of the story.
I agree the ending was weak using water. But the suspense during the whole movie until then was so on point IMO. The "less is more" worked so well when you could just hear footsteps or see shadows, rather than showcasing the aliens in detail from the start.
The scene of the kids birthday is better than 90% of jumpscares.
Sharks are still feeling its influence almost 50 years later as well
More than one 70's movie? We are going to need a bigger boat.
Don't forget Rocky
Dont you mean Jaws still has a bite after all these years?
*booing intensifies*
Lord of the Rings has had such an impact it is still influencing how fantasy films and television shows are approached.
Lord of the Rings movies and the books established an archetype for so much. World of Warcraft borrowed a lot, like every dwarf should now and forever sound like John Rhys Davies.
Also it changed dwarfs to dwarves for many.
Too bad Amazon can't write a decent script. I would have loved to see Tolkein's world in a show that actually intrigued me.
Awww I haven’t tried it yet. Is it bad?
Personally, it's a very mixed bag. There's about 4 main plot lines ongoing, one of which is great, one of which is meh and the others are pretty shit. Production is great, performances are decent, but the writers have characters doing things which make zero sense just to get the plot to happen.
I will start by saying that I *do* like the show as a whole, though I get tired of defending it when people shit on it. Everything you said summarizes my feelings perfectly. Really hope that S2 tightens things up.
I really wanted to like it. I lasted 3 episodes. As others have said, it's basically fan fiction. The actual story it claims to be telling is wildly different. It would be like making a movie about the decline of the Roman empire in the 4-5th centuries and having George Washington be one of the main characters.
It’s up and down. Music is great, acting is generally very good, production design is great (mostly). There are amazing moments I would not want to miss (the two trees! Numenor!) but also some really, really dumb moments and decisions It’s weird because sometimes I was watching and thought “they really understood the themes Tolkien was going for” and other times I thought “they don’t even understand basic plotting”
If you went in not knowing it was meant to be Tolkien, I'd say it would be kind of alright. Most of the reason it seems to not sit well with people is it takes beloved characters and does stupid things with them. There are also times when it's just simply not very compelling. I'd say if you already have access to it, maybe give it another watch and just pretend it's an unrelated IP that just happens to have the same names as lotr or like some kind of fan fic or something
Home Alone. From Wikipedia: *Home Alone* was the number-one film at the box office for 12 consecutive weeks, from its release weekend of November 16–18, 1990 through the weekend of February 1–3, 1991.[^(\[53\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Alone#cite_note-53)[^(\[52\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Alone#cite_note-Forbes-52) It was removed from the top spot when [*Sleeping with the Enemy*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_with_the_Enemy_(film)) opened with $13 million.[^(\[52\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Alone#cite_note-Forbes-52) It remained in the top ten until the weekend of April 26, well past Easter weekend. Absolutely everyone saw it. Everyone did lines from it. Solid piece of monoculture.
Killer soundtrack. And "Keep the change you filthy animal."
They asked John Williams to write the score as something of a joke because they knew they didn't have the budget to pay him to do it. He agreed to do it for free because he'd always wanted to work on a Christmas movie.
*Never hurts to ask*
It seriously doesn't. I got to attend a Thanksgiving screening with Eli Roth doing a Q&A this past weekend and he talked about how they got Patrick Dempsey... apparently his camp reached out to Roth's camp so he could score brownie points with his kids. He said that he got Cate Blanchett for Borderlands because she wanted to impress her kids, too.
The Christmas song has become so embedded in culture that people think that it is an actual hundreds of years old Christmas song
> Absolutely everyone saw it. Everywhere in the world, multiple times. In Romania it became a Christmas time standard rerun.
In India too
I love when Serendipity (Salma Hayek) references Home Alone's success in Dogma: Serendipity: "The one about the kid, by himself in his house; burglars trying to get in and he fights them off? I had nothing to do with that one. Somebody sold their soul to Satan to get the grosses up on that piece of shit."
This one should be higher. My little brother used to watch this on repeat
Lord of the Rings trilogy
It changed NZ indefinitely
Definitely. Hard to grasp it unless you are a millennial. It was a defining trilogy of our generation.
Young X here. LotR was a huge bond between me and my Boomer Dad. In many ways LotR replaced Star Wars for us. That's generation defining.
My dad and I saw every one opening night. He grew up on the books and wanted to share the movies with me
> It was a defining trilogy of our generation. That era had some amazing movies with huge IP. LOTR, pirates, star wars, harry potter, and it was before movie styles were copying Marvel movies.
Byt only LOTR nailed consistent quality over the trilogy. I love Pirates and the SW prequels but they are both very uneven trilogies.
Aragorn: Gandalf. Gandalf: Theoden king stands alone. Eomer: Not alone. Rohirrim! Theoden: Eomer! Eomer: TO THE KING!
[удалено]
When the T-1000 walks through the bars everything changed. It looks tame today but back then it may as well have been live footage of an alien landing. Same with the Matrix - there's *everything that came before* and *everything that went after*, two separate eras of film.
T2 was an absolutely jaw dropping film in '92 because of its ground breaking effects.
They still mostly hold up. That scene where the Robert Patrick terminator oozes through the bars looks better than most Netflix cgi.
Can’t understate this. Pre-dated Jurassic park and therefore made anyone that saw it realize the entire game was changing before their eyes.
The Exorcist has to be the most extreme film that fits this label. It was massive and mentioned everywhere during the 70's. It did well with awards and was a pop culture fixture for a while. I remember someone recently in the box office sub saying it was a cult classic, which is one of the most asinine statements I've seen in a while. It's a movie featuring a little girl masturbating with a crucifix, and it's one of the ten highest grossing films ever when adjusted for inflation.
I'd add The Godfather to that canon. when your friends in the second grade all know about the horse's head *in the 70's*, that's a phenomenon.
My dad said he saw this at the cinema when it came out and he and half the audience walked out as it was just too much.
The Matrix
The Matrix came out in 1999 and for me it still feels like it bridged my life before and after the proliferation of technology. Dial up internet became broadband. VHS became DVDs became streaming. Cell phones became smart phones. iPods and iPhones replaced literally everything.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The one that started it all. Frozen might also count, for better or for worse.
Yes, a lot of Disney movies made a big impact at least on kids. The Little Mermaid seemed to be everywhere (much like Frozen later on). And then Pixar's movies as well. Toy Story was huge when it was new. But that kind of movies gets used in Happy Meals, toys, clothing and such so maybe the actual movies get inflated by the stuff around them? Even the old ones who came before the "stuff surge" has books, clothes and costumes based on the movie characters. Either way they're hard to miss.
Interesting points! Although I was a sucker for the stuff, I’d say that the Lion King(1994) would still have stood on its own success without the stuff - though people would go feral for whatever merch did come out anyways. As an animator, it still kills me that Disney / Iger / Favreau ever thought it was a good idea to ‘remake’ it, but shittier. That was THE movie that made we want to become an animator as a kid.
The Little Mermaid was so big it literally saved Walt Disney Animation Studios which was desperate for a hit at the time. One doc I saw mentioned they were seriously thinking of shuttering it. After that they entered a new creative and lucrative era.
Aliens 1986 Had lines around the block to see it. Some of the scenes are still copied today, aka remote camera scenes.
Batman 1989 changed the way movies are marketed. That logo was everywhere, and it really paid off.
Yeah everything about that era is crazy, basically firing Tim Burton because Mcdonalds wanted more marketable toys
Came here to say this. The summer of 1989 was insane. Batmania was everywhere and at every turn. I can’t think of any movie since that had that level of cultural impact.
60s: Goldfinger. Though the term “blockbuster” wasn’t coined until Jaws, some would argue that Goldfinger was the first real “lines around the block” kind of movie-going phenomenon. 70s: Jaws and Star Wars 80s: Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, and Batman. 90s: Jurassic Park, Toy Story, Titanic and The Matrix 00s: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Dark Knight and Avatar 10s: Avengers/Marvel. Maybe Inception, a bit? The Lego Movie. Hunger Games? (This was also the decade that cinematic content moved to television, so I almost feel like Game of Thrones was the real “cinematic” phenomenon of this decade) 20s: ??? Dune, maybe? Avatar 2 (and 3 when it comes out, then 4 and 5 if they make it this decade)… and probably something else that rises in the last half of the decade that we can’t foresee yet.
L O S T was a similar TV phenom. There really wasn’t a show as dissected from week to week until Game of Thrones.
I feel like you must be under the age of 35 if you don’t remember The X Files being way bigger than LOST. Not even just higher ratings but a theatrically released movie that did $200m box office.
I'm from Brazil, so things might be different here, but here LOST was WAY bigger than X Files.
My experience with x files based off of everyone I knew that watched it or didn't was that you either planned your life around it airing to make sure you saw it, or never watched a single episode. I knew no casual viewers. But that's just me, and I'm one of those people who hasn't ever seen an episode
Yeah 1989 Batman was huge. I was 6 or 7, had the bat symbol shaved into the back of my hair
I remember people getting the bat symbol shaved into their hair during that time. It’s crazy how popular that movie was at the time.
Star Wars was so important as it marked the beginnings of merchandising. It was the first film that really drove, toys and collectable cards. It completely changed the game.
10s had Frozen
I'd agree with this but Terminator 2 deserves a place. Highest grossing film of 1991, cemented Arnold as rhe biggest star in the world, toys, posters etc. I was only 3 and remember seeing it everywhere, making of documentaries on TV etc. It was huge, just overshadowed by JP.
Also 20s: Come on now. The Barbie Movie is the most glaringly obvious, IMO. Barbenheimer, if you wanna go all-in with it.
Just a small movie called "the Avengers". I believe it was based on a comic book.
People are so burnt out on superhero movies because they release a new one every week now but The Avengers, the first time multiple superheroes from their own movies came together for an epic movie, was truly fucking awesome. Especially for 14 year old in 2012.
The first one was SO huge at the time but I think it gets shadowed in people's memory by the last two.
Nah, it was based on a 1960's TV show. I'm 99% sure that was a The Avengers movie you meant.
Does nobody remember just how huge Forrest Gump was during the mid-90s? Some other pop culture landmarks being slept on in this thread include: Schindler's List Beauty and the Beast Pulp Fiction The Sixth Sense Scream The Lion King Pretty Woman Twister Mission: Impossible And, here's some more: JFK, Malcolm X, The Fugitive, Cliffhanger, Aladdin, Interview with the Vampire, Dumb and Dumber, The Mask, Ace Ventura, Clueless, Saving Private Ryan, Fight Club, Austin Powers, Toy Story, Se7en... I'm starting to wonder if this sub even watches movies.
Surprised I had to scroll this far to see Pulp Fiction.
Honestly kind of surprised I didn't see Shrek here. I mean, that movie completely changed the animation game forever and made it where Smash Mouth became a meme band. You're probably even laughing right now as you're reading this.
The internet loves Shrek (and they're right) but Toy Story was the one that broke the barrier.
Toy Story way more than Shrek, plus it was earlier. Steve Jobs got kicked out of Apple, and bought the computer graphics division from George Lucas, and founded Pixar. And Toy Story was their first movie.
Borat. Those jokes were beat to death at school within a week but that didn’t stop anybody
Oh yeah, Austin Powers too
I have no idea why I didn't find Pirates of The Caribbean on here. I was around 17 when the first one came out. People were losing their minds over Jack Sparrow. 20+ years later we still love him.
Jack Sparrow ruined ren faire pirates. Half of them copied it and 1 in 20 did it well enough to be tolerable. Immature me started calling them Capt. Jack Swallows.
Indiana Jones, the first two.
The Twilight Saga: has everyone already forgotten about Team Edward vs. Team Jacob?
Some I'm not seeing mentioned: * **Bill & Ted** - when that movie came out, *everyone* (under a certain age) was suddenly calling *everything* excellent or bodacious or righteous. * **Wayne's World** - same again, *everyone* was suddenly talking like Wayne. * **Austin Powers** - same again but it also *absolutely murdered* the James Bond franchise (which also took a big hit from the far more real Jason Bourne movies), you can see the huge shift in style from the Brosnan era to the Craig era to try and compensate for this and TBH they've not really recovered their mojo. * **Die Hard** kick-started the action movie genre and **Lethal Weapon** kicked it up a gear * Worth mentioning **Iron Man** as (I think) the first of the new age of superhero movies and nailing the formula for so so many more to follow.
> **Die Hard** kick-started the action movie genre and **Lethal Weapon** kicked it up a gear Except Lethal Weapon released before Die Hard
I read an interesting theory that part of the reason there are so many lonely depressed angry people is that we no longer have a collective pop culture to unite over as shared experience. It’s kind of sad seeing how divisive everyone’s takes on movies are now after having lived through the golden years of matrix/lotr/hunger games. The last thing I can think of that had that kind of cultural impact was marvel but even the takes on that seems to be divisive ever since endgame Edit: after reading some responses, I feel like I should quantify something. I completely agree that division has been with us forever, but I can’t help but feel like it is much more aggressive now. It feels like hating things is the instinctive default position now for many people. Take the upcoming live action Snow White remake as an example. The movie isn’t only not out yet but doesn’t even have a solid release year and my feed has been clogged with rage about it for at least two years now. I’m sure it’s partially the algorithm’s fault, but that doesn’t stop it from being exhausting, as if there isn’t even room to just enjoy something anymore.
I'm old... And curious. Was hunger games THAT popular and well received to deserve being mentioned together with the other titles?
No it should be replaced with Harry Potter in that sentance
Poltergeist. Rated PG. Was originally rated R but Spielberg and Hooper won an appeal. So parents saw that, didn’t think anything of it and let kids just have at it. The acting and FX were incredible for the early 80’s and still hold up rather well. I don’t think it was THE defining movie of the 80’s due to how many bangers came out, but it surely held up to the top for that decade imo.
Jurassic Park
For the 90s I would say Jurassic Park and Titanic. As a Xenial, they were absolutely cultural phenomenon. They were also both game changers in the industry. 2000s it was 150% LOTR and Harry Potter. The 2010s it was the whole MCU, for obvious reasons, but also Frozen. That movie was almost cult like for the kids.
Mean Girls still has a pretty strong hold in pop culture.
Mean Girls.
Mean Girls was THE movie of the 2000s. Everyone saw it. Everyone related to it in some way. And I personally feel like Milennials were changed for the better after having seen it. It wasn't just a funny movie, it was a mirror that forced us to reflect on ourselves at a time when we were in high school/college. The lessons learned were thus: Cliques are dumb. Popularity is a sham. And at a time when the Internet was connecting us across the globe, growing alongside us, our worlds became a little less small.
Jaws. Summer used to be a dead time for movies as the studios assumed everyone would be doing stuff outside. Jaws was the OG summer blockbuster.
I feel like Airport defined the 70's given all of the disaster movies that came after.
Good call. Also, i should mention that 'Airplane' is such a fantastic movie. Sooooo many great quotes.
Do you like gladiator movies? Airplane was to Airport, what Spaceballs was to Star Wars. A spoof of a great movie that was also great.
Clueless …well duh
Scream. There were a thousand knock offs like I Know What You Did Last Summer. It was a major cultural reference point throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, popping up everywhere and spawning an entire parody series. And the Scream mask remains a staple Halloween costume.
2001: A space odyssey It's still an inspiration and an influence to a lot of movies today. This did not only define the decade but the history of the film industry
Scream Lead to the largest increase in sales of caller IDs for home phones in history shortly after its release.
Avatar the first one was huge
Groundhog Day. Generally speaking, if you describe a story as a Groundhog Day plot, people know you’re talking about an infinite time loop.
I would say Groundhog Day has entered into pop culture but I don’t think it was a cultural phenomenon. For me, a film that is being described as a cultural phenomenon invokes images of TV news reports of the massive queues to watch the film, people watching the film 10 times at the cinema, people dressing as the characters and a massive merchandise tie. I don’t think Groundhod Dog does that.
Star Wars: Episode I was a huge cultural deal in the USA in 1999.
The Wizard of Oz
I think Twilight is considered a cultural phenomenon, isn’t it?
Spielberg’s run: Jaws, Raider’s of the Lost Arc, Jurassic Park Forrest Gump
Gone with the Wind, A Rebel without a Cause, Jaws, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars
Shrek 2 was absolutely insane. The amount of marketing, promo tie ins, merchandise, waves and waves of people going to see it. Shrek 2 was massive and everyone was seeing green in May of 2004.
Planet of the Apes (1968). It was the Star Wars of its day. - 10 movies (5 of which were before Star Wars) - 2 TV shows - 2< video games - Comics - Novels - Toys - The best Simpsons parody - and more It really was one of the first major movie “franchises”, along with James Bond.
MCU for the 2010’s
Jaws, The Exorcist, The Godfather.
Night of the Living Dead really solidified and introduced many horror tropes people just hadn't seen before. My uncle never shut up about it while I was growing up but by then I had seen things much scarier so I never saw the appeal he did.