• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Most influential movie

I would say "Star Wars", but for very different reasons from others so far. It didn't have a huge impact on my life because of anything about the movie, but it has a huge impact on my (and your) life because of the vision it gave to Ronald Reagan. How much money, how much political power spent because the man thought "Star Wars" was a documentary?...
 
clarsct said:
Some of the tech that was developed for Star Wars changed the way people made movies.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, washing machine parts used for stormtroopers armour, using felt tip pens to make lightsabres glow, men in shagpile carpet bodysuits...

Note that 2001: A Space Odyssey was not only far superior on the special effects front, it also predated Star Flaws by a full 9 years.
 
brettDbass said:
Oh yeah, washing machine parts used for stormtroopers armour, using felt tip pens to make lightsabres glow, men in shagpile carpet bodysuits...

Note that 2001: A Space Odyssey was not only far superior on the special effects front, it also predated Star Flaws by a full 9 years.
Click to expand...

And is almost impossible to get through the first reel without falling asleep. But that doesn't change the fact that it IS an influnential movie.
 
brettDbass said:
Oh yeah, washing machine parts used for stormtroopers armour, using felt tip pens to make lightsabres glow, men in shagpile carpet bodysuits...

Note that 2001: A Space Odyssey was not only far superior on the special effects front, it also predated Star Flaws by a full 9 years.
Click to expand...

Superior special effects? Really? You can't be serious.
 
AUP mentioned Birth of A Nation, and I concur.

It was the first real "blockbuster", with hundreds, if not thousands of extras, big panoramic battle scenes, and based on events that some folks still living could remember.

That it was wildly inaccurate historically and horribly racist also made an impact-a negative one, mind you, but still a major impact.
 
I don't know what the most influential movie has been, even limiting the discussion to the world of moviemaking, but I'd have to make a rather controversial nomination: "Triumph des Willens" by Leni Riefenstahl.

This paen to Nazi military power is disturbing, and it's disturbing precisely because of the cinematic techniques of Ms. Riefenstahl. The style she created has influenced propaganda and political advertisements ever since. We have to give the Devil his due: this is a Great Film, although not a Good Film.
 
Hutch said:
AUP mentioned Birth of A Nation, and I concur.

It was the first real "blockbuster", with hundreds, if not thousands of extras, big panoramic battle scenes, and based on events that some folks still living could remember.

That it was wildly inaccurate historically and horribly racist also made an impact-a negative one, mind you, but still a major impact.
Click to expand...

Some historians contend that it was the primary cause of the rebirth of the KKK. I'd call that a pretty serious negative impact!
 
Melendwyr said:
I don't know what the most influential movie has been, even limiting the discussion to the world of moviemaking, but I'd have to make a rather controversial nomination: "Triumph des Willens" by Leni Riefenstahl.

This paen to Nazi military power is disturbing, and it's disturbing precisely because of the cinematic techniques of Ms. Riefenstahl. The style she created has influenced propaganda and political advertisements ever since. We have to give the Devil his due: this is a Great Film, although not a Good Film.
Click to expand...

I was about to mention the same film. For political impact, it and Birth of a Nation would be very hard to contend with. I'd give Birth of a Nation the slight edge, being that it was complete fiction. It changed history by creating a story out of whole cloth. Riefenstahl distorted reality, but didn't invent the revolution. She just steadied their rise to power by producing a piece of very effective propaganda.
 
a_unique_person said:
That's strange, since Kurosawa himself acknowledges he just lifted the plot from "Red Harvest", Dashiel Hammet crime story.
Click to expand...

I don't know details of "Red Harvest", but in case of Fistfull of Dollars Leone didn't "lift plot" from Yojimbo but also most of the scenes.

[You can get a nice drinking game out of the two movies. Actually, two different games, hard and easy. The hard is that you drink whenever Dollars has a scene that is identical with a scene from Yojimbo, and the easy is that you drink if the scene is not a copy.]
 
I had forgotten about Riefenstahl and have to grudgingly agree that her movies had a significant impact. I even found that many scenes in Star Wars involving the Empire, or the medal scene at the end, were very similar to her films of the Nazi rallies.

Anyone mentioned Blade Runner yet? I love that film.

Pink Floyd: the Wall is one of my all-time favourites and I watched it often when I was a teenager.

The Wizard of Oz is definately an influential film. I watched the first hour just the other week and realized for the first time that Auntie Em was actually a real [rule 8]. Seemed like all she did was yell at and critisize people.

Friday the 13th, like it or not it spawned an entire genre of bad slasher films.
 
TriangleMan said:
Friday the 13th, like it or not it spawned an entire genre of bad slasher films.
Click to expand...

Which is why I listed Halloween (1978). It, not Friday The 13th (1980), like it or not, is what spawned the bad slasher films. The difference? One was made by a film maker - John Carpenter. The other was made by a hack - Sean Cunningham.
 
I have to agree with The Central Scrutinizer, Halloween is the origin of all (bad) slasher films. I think TriangleMan got confused because the first Halloween is good, while Friday the 13th is undeniably bad.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom