The world of cinema has gone through quite some motions in its relatively short existance. We went from silent movies to black and white movies to the action-packed CGI fests we have now. But what were the movies that sprung to life some of the bigger changes in Hollywood? Which movies crossed certain thresholds as the first, leaving everyone else to follow or get left behind?
Prepare yourself for a deep dive in Hollywood’s history, and take a look at some of the films that had the biggest impact on the way we make movies today.
Avatar (2009)
James Cameron’s Avatar, while storywise being nothing more than
Pocahontas with blue people, revolutionized the way we watch movies
by being the first movie that did 3D effects right. Before Avatar, 3D
was considered to be a fluff feature that wouldn’t stick, but now
pretty much every big movie gets a 3D release alongside the “regular”
2D version.
Jaws (1975)
The thing Jaws did better than any movie before it, was create a
full-fledged blockbuster. Spielberg’s masterpiece had everything
we’ve come to expect from even our modern blockbuster movies
(suspense, strong characters, sentimental parts, great music scoring,
…) and arguably did it better than most of the modern ones.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
This movie didn’t change Hollywood because of how amazing it was
written, because it wasn’t, but it did do something exceptionally
well. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was the first movie to use
motion capture technology so extensively and so freakishly good. The
animations on the apes are second to none and this alone has raised
the bar for visual effects.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
While The Blair Witch Project wasn’t exactly the best horror movie
ever, it did single-handedly invent the found footage subgenre. This
was the first movie to be entirely filmed from the perspective of the
actors holding cameras, which gave a much more intimate and intense
feeling to the suspense.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Peter Jackson’s trilogy was one of the first fantasy movie series
to not only win Academy Awards, but win a lot of Academy
Awards. No longer did movies have to be original (because the books
had already been written, you know) or overly dramatic and serious.
Even a story of a dwarf, an elf, some hobbits and a bunch of humans
trying to throw a ring into a volcano could suddenly was considered
the best movie of the year.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)
Name me one big blockbuster movie before Harry Potter that was based
on a children’s book. Exactly. Harry Potter showed Hollywood
executives that making a movie out of a children’s book can be big
bucks and is worth investing big bucks into. Ofcourse this also
pretty much makes the Harry Potter series directly responsible for
the Twilight movies, but we’ll let that slide.
The Breakfast Club (1985)
This movie is the ultimate coming-of-age movie and pretty much every
coming-of-age movie since that’s been worth watching can be
summarized as “The Breakfast Club with different characters”.
There’s a reason this movie is so iconic and still holds up
perfectly fine today, and it’s one of those movies that changed a
genre completely.
Justice League: The Snyder Cut (2021?)
We know this movie hasn’t been released yet, but it’ll change filmmaking for sure. This will be the first movie that gets a second release, and this release will be the first movie to be released exactly as the director wanted the movie to be. So that’s no reshoots (well, some, but reshoots of reshoots), no film studio saying this or that, … Just the way Zack Snyder saw it. Rumor has it that many other movies will be jumping on this bandwagon, and we can’t wait to see where this leads the future of filmmaking!
