History GenreTurningPoint / LiveActionFilms

* ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' (1979): While there had been past films spun off from various television series, this was the first high level, big budget feature film adapted from a television series. Thus, this film is generally credited with establishing the trend of reviving or remaking television series as theatrical feature films, e.g. ''Film/TheAddamsFamily'' and ''Film/TheFugitive''.

* ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'': While there had been past films spun off from various television series, this was the first high level, big budget feature film adapted from a television series. Thus, this film is generally credited with establishing the trend of reviving or remaking television series as theatrical feature films.

* The most immediate impact of ''Film/ParanormalActivity'' in 2009 was to spawn a second boom in FoundFootageFilms, but in the longer term, its greatest legacy came in its rejuvenation of supernatural horror in TheNewTens, fueled in part by a backlash against the worn-out tropes of TorturePorn. 2011's ''Film/{{Insidious}}'' and 2013's ''Film/TheConjuring'' (both directed by Creator/JamesWan) went on to codify what a "modern" supernatural horror film was supposed to look like, ironically by [[GenreThrowback drawing on distinctly old-fashioned horror tropes]] from TheSeventies.

** A less discussed but arguably even greater legacy, though, is in how it [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/why-nobodys-replicated-blair-witch-projects-success/ pioneered]] ViralMarketing. The filmmakers created a website purporting that the film was authentic "lost footage" and the last trace of three missing hikers/documentarians, creating a mountain of hype as people argued over whether or not it was actually real. As the internet grew more popular in the '00s, the success of ''The Blair Witch Project'' became a blueprint for viral marketing that was frequently replicated. The influence of such also stretches beyond film; Emily [=VanDerWerff=], [[https://www.vox.com/2014/8/6/5974127/sixth-sense-blair-witch-horror-movies-20-year-anniversary writing]] for ''Vox'', suggested that the film's marketing strategy, which built up a mythology surrounding the Blair Witch, was an important progenitor to {{creepypasta}}, the internet-born horror stories and UrbanLegends that would take off in the late 2000s.

* Early [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever giant monster movies]] like the 1927 version of ''Film/TheLostWorld'' or ''Film/KingKong1933'' had their monsters as prehistoric forces unleashed on the modern world. 1953's ''Film/TheBeastFromTwentyThousandFathoms'', on the other hand, was the first to have its monster as a blend of primordial chaos and the contemporary, future-fear of [[NukeEm the atom bomb]]. For most of the remainder of the 20th Century, giant monsters were nuclear-powered (''Film/Godzilla1954'' and ''Film/{{Them}}'' being the best of those that followed), and in a post-Cold War world, giant monsters still tend to represent some real-world, human-derived panic -- ''Film/JurassicPark'' and [[GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke genetic engineering]], ''Film/{{Cloverfield}}'' and [[PostNineElevenTerrorismMovie terrorism]], etc. While ''Godzilla'' is often held to have invented the modern {{kaiju}} movie, in truth producer Tomoyuki Tanaka was partly inspired by ''The Beast''.

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** Its use of motion capture technology also left a mark on special effects comparable to how ''Terminator 2'' (another Creator/JamesCameron film, incidentally) popularized computer-generated special effects, demonstrating how digitally animated characters in live-action films could be made to look realistic and blend in seamlessly with their environments without falling into the UncannyValley, as prior experiments with "realistic" motion capture looked.

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* 2009's ''Film/{{Avatar}}'', despite being subjected to many jokes in the ensuing years about its presumed lack of cultural impact, in truth helped drive many of the trends in big-budget Hollywood filmmaking in the 2010s, especially those behind the scenes and not connected to the explosion of superhero films during that decade. [[https://www.thebulwark.com/avatars-impact-on-the-culture-is-undeniable/ This article]] by Sonny Bunch for ''The Bulwark'' goes into more detail.
** In the short term, it drove the UsefulNotes/ThreeDMovie boom of the early 2010s, demonstrating how advances in digital technology since the last time 3-D was popular could be put to use creating visuals that couldn't be matched by a conventionally-shot 2-D film. Studios started upconverting films shot in 2-D, movie theaters swapped out their old celluloid film projectors for new digital ones to keep up with this and other advances in film exhibition technology, and electronics companies even made televisions capable of showing 3-D content. More broadly, ''Avatar'' left behind an ethos that, in the age of "prestige TV", movie theaters were where you went to have an entertainment experience that simply could not be replicated on a television screen. Much was made of how ''Avatar'' was [[EpicMovie a movie so grand that it needed to be seen in theaters]], and in the years to come, blockbusters designed to take full advantage of the massive screens and sound systems of movie theaters would increasingly dominate the box office while smaller and mid-budget films migrated to streaming services.

* 2009's ''Film/{{Avatar}}'' not only paved the way for the [[UsefulNotes/ThreeDMovie 3-D boom]] of the early 2010s, it also made social allegories (in this case, regarding [[GreenAesop the environment]]) acceptable in commercial blockbuster filmmaking. Its [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff phenomenal success in China]] also led Hollywood to aim at the restrictive market's limited slots for foreign films.

* Though 1939's ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'' was a family-friendly musical comedy, it was also the first big-budget Hollywood feature film ever to put its budget towards bringing a fleshed-out [[TheVerse fantastical universe]] to life on the big screen -- something that had previously only been seen in disposable low-budget shorts like the ''Film/{{Flash Gordon|Serial}}'' serials released in the same decade. It definitely wasn't an epic HighFantasy, but it paved the way for more ambitious fantasy films (both originals and adaptations) such as ''Franchise/StarWars'' and ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' films. Tellingly, the studio insisted that the movie end with Dorothy waking up in her bed and assuming that [[AllJustADream her adventures in Oz were just a dream]], since they didn't think that adult moviegoers in the 1930s would take a ''real'' fantasyland seriously. [[note]]In Creator/LFrankBaum's [[Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz original book]], there's no such ending: Dorothy lands in her front yard after being swept away from Oz, she openly tells Auntie Em where she went, and Baum wrote several sequels that fleshed Oz out and left no room for doubting that it was a real place.[[/note]] And while color film had been around for quite some time, it was ''Oz'' which led Hollywood to use color more frequently instead of reserving it for the occasional vanity project.

* Together, the World Wars are a big part of the reason why the US attained such a commanding position over the global film industry. Before UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, France and Italy had been major centers of film production, only for all of that to be put on hold by the war and never really recover in the aftermath, and while Germany saw the boom of its own film industry during the [[UsefulNotes/WeimarGermany Weimar era]] with the rise of the [[GermanExpressionism Expressionist movement]], [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany the Nazis]] and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII put the kibosh on that. The British film industry was also prolific during the interwar years, but was handicapped by the Cinematograph Films Act 1927, a law that was ironically supposed to protect it from American competition,[[labelnote:Short version...]]It mandated a quota for British cinemas to show a certain number of British films. American film studios [[LoopholeAbuse responded]] by opening British and Canadian subsidiaries, technically following the letter of the law even as all the profits went back to Hollywood. During the '30s, the British film industry fell into a deep DorkAge, plagued by the scourge of the "quota quickies", turgid, NoBudget [[BMovie B-movies]] made for the British/Commonwealth market (many were simply recordings of music hall and variety acts) by studios that didn't give a damn. An {{urban legend|s}} claims that British theaters used the quota quickies as time to clean and vacuum the theater floors, since there were no patrons watching the films who would complain about the noise. Some critics, however, have reevaluated the quota quickies, arguing that their low budgets and studio apathy brought a measure of creative freedom not seen in bigger-budgeted productions while noting that many great British filmmakers cut their teeth making these films.[[/labelnote]] with World War II doing it no favors either. The US, however, was far away from the fighting, and its economy and studios were left largely untouched. This left Hollywood room to thrive in an environment where, outside of [[UsefulNotes/{{Bollywood}} India]], Latin America (with Mexico and to a lesser extent Argentina having important industries), and the closed-off Eastern Bloc, serious foreign competition had been all but wiped out twice over and wouldn't seriously challenge them in the mass market until the British and Italian film industries boomed in TheSixties.

* The 1920 film ''Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari'' was this for GermanExpressionism, showing the power of set design, art direction, lighting, and cinematography to communicate visual atmosphere and mood, rather than simply relying on intertitles. It also showed, in a very primitive fashion, that movies could have stories that were psychologically insightful and thought-provoking just by being visual, rather than merely aping the novel or theatre.

* Though 1939's ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'' was a family-friendly musical comedy, it was also the first big-budget Hollywood feature film ever to put its budget towards bringing a fleshed-out [[TheVerse fantastical universe]] to life on the big screen -- something that had previously only been seen in disposable low-budget shorts like the ''Film/{{Flash Gordon|Serial}}'' serials released in the same decade. It definitely wasn't an epic HighFantasy, but it paved the way for more ambitious fantasy films (both originals and adaptations) such as ''Franchise/StarWars'' and ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' films. Tellingly, the studio insisted that the movie end with Dorothy waking up in her bed and assuming that [[AllJustADream her adventures in Oz were just a dream]], since they didn't think that adult moviegoers in the 1930s would take a ''real'' fantasyland seriously. [[note]]In Creator/LFrankBaum's [[Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz original book]], there's no such ending: Dorothy lands in her front yard after being swept away from Oz, she openly tells Auntie Em where she went, and Baum wrote several sequels that fleshed Oz out and left no room for doubting that it was a real place.[[/note]]

* 1941's ''Film/CitizenKane'' was the TropeCodifier if not the TropeMaker for a new kind of filmmaking. Where filmmakers had used montages, art direction, set design, performances, and sound to tell stories before, Creator/OrsonWelles was the first to combine them in such a way as to create a new, heightened kind of storytelling. Its GenreBusting approach, using a {{Mockumentary}} style, multiple flashbacks, and multiple narrators to tell a psychologically consistent story of three-dimensional characters, was considered as a sign that movies could be movies ''and still be'' as complex and modern as the best theatre and novels. By borrowing ideas and concepts from genre and epic movies (special effects, miniatures, multiple camera tricks) to a serious film, Welles committed major GenreAdultery. Likewise, Welles' unique contract became the TropeMaker for AuteurLicense, and the fact that he made it at the age of 25 proved that cinema wasn't merely the work of established professionals but also open to upstarts and tyros as well.

* The 1965 film adaptation of ''Theatre/TheSoundOfMusic'' was [[http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-world-matthew-kennedys-roadshow-the-fall-of-film-musicals-in-the-1960s/2014/02/13/82c56f8e-8e69-11e3-b227-12a45d109e03_story.html described]] by Matthew Kennedy, in his book ''Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the '60s'', as "The Musical That Ate Hollywood". The staggering box-office success of this big-budget family musical (dethroning ''Film/GoneWithTheWind'' for the title of the highest-grossing film of all time) led to a slew of [[FollowTheLeader copycats]] determined to make lightning strike twice, many of which went down in history as notorious {{Box Office Bomb}}s that helped to [[GenreKiller discredit movie musicals for decades]]. Likewise, its use of [[RoadshowTheatricalRelease roadshow booking]], screening films at a select number of upscale theaters that charged premium ticket prices in exchange for a far more lavish moviegoing experience, led many more studios to use it for their musicals, cheapening a format that had once been reserved for [[EpicMovie the biggest spectacles]]. The trends that ''The Sound of Music'' started did severe damage to Hollywood in both the near and long terms, acting as TheLastStraw in the UsefulNotes/FallOfTheStudioSystem as audiences rejected paying inflated ticket prices for increasingly subpar movies. Creator/LindsayEllis goes into more detail in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8o7LzGqc3E this video.]]

* 1971's ''Film/SweetSweetbacksBaadasssssSong'' pioneered the {{blaxploitation}} genre, demonstrating to Hollywood that black audiences were clamoring for films starring black actors as the heroes rather than in supporting roles. Even after blaxploitation went out of fashion, [[BMovie B-movies]] aimed at black audiences would remain a fixture of Hollywood's lower-budget and independent filmmaking. Its production especially inspired a generation of black filmmakers, with Creator/SpikeLee saying that it served as a blueprint for his own early career.

* Creator/WoodyAllen's films in the '70s and '80s popularized a more intellectual style of film comedy, and helped popularize the GiveGeeksAChance trope by frequently having nerdy guys (often [[AuthorAvatar played by himself]]) as RomanticComedy leads as opposed to the more traditional leading men of postwar Hollywood.

** Both ''The Godfather'' and 1975's ''Film/{{Jaws}}'' also pioneered the modern releasing method, as until the 1970s, most movies premiered in big cities before appearing in smaller towns ("roadshow" releases in particular took this to the extreme), while studio heads had doubts about the chances of launching high-proifilms on over 100 theaters all at once. After both became hits, wide releases became the norm.

** It also showed that filmmakers could stay true to the spirit of a long-running comic book while incorporating just enough original ideas to make it work on film. Many ideas conceived for the movie (the crystal cities of Krypton, Zod's two Kryptonian henchmen, Jor-El surviving Krypton's destruction as a VirtualGhost, Superman's portrayal as a [[MessianicArchetype messianic figure]], the "S" emblem being the House of El's coat of arms, et cetera) were original ideas with no basis in the comics, but they helped successfully sell the ''Superman'' mythos to a new audience who only knew the character through PopculturalOsmosis, and many of them were received well enough that they were incorporated into the comics as official canon.

** When it cast the schlubby [[Series/{{Moonlighting}} TV comedy]] star Creator/BruceWillis as the protagonist, it marked the start of a pushback against the prevailing HollywoodActionHero archetype of TheEighties, that of the {{invincible|Hero}}, [[HeroicBuild muscle-bound]] OneManArmy (''a la'' Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger and Creator/SylvesterStallone) who overpowers enemies with brute force, MoreDakka, and solutions that they {{Ass Pull}}ed out of thin air. In doing so, it paved the way for a new generation of more diverse action stars like Creator/KeanuReeves, Creator/LiamNeeson, and Creator/JenniferLawrence, who typically won their battles through {{Combat Pragmatis|t}}m and outsmarting their enemies while showing [[ManlyTears more emotional vulnerability]] than the stoic badasses of before, their [[BondOneLiner one-liners]] presented as GallowsHumor in the face of death more than anything.

* ''Film/RogerAndMe'' (1989) forever changed documentaries. Beforehand, documentaries (of a non-musical nature at least) had been mostly confined to film festivals. ''Roger and Me'' demonstrated you could make a documentary that the masses would want to see, allowing other documentaries, including Creator/MichaelMoore's later ones, to achieve widespread box office and critical success.

* 1988's ''Film/DieHard'' did this for the action movie. Sure, there were smart thrillers with smart villains beforehand -- ''Film/DieHard'' itself could be seen as something of a remake of ''Film/NorthSeaHijack'' -- but after it came out, there were far fewer action films that featured invincible, unstoppable heroes (Schwarzenegger, Stallone) whose plots depended on {{Ass Pull}}ing solutions out of thin air than there were before. Plus, not many films rewrite the rules for the genre so heavily that a [[DieHardOnAnX subgenre]] forms around them.

* While 1982's ''Film/FortyEightHrs'' arguably invented the [[BuddyCopShow buddy-cop movie]], 1987's ''Film/LethalWeapon'' was the TropeCodifier and the film that most later examples of the genre followed in the footsteps of. Writer Creator/ShaneBlack's use of WittyBanter set a template for a particular kind of action-comedy, one in which a pair of individuals with [[RedOniBlueOni diametrically opposed personalities]] are forced to come together to defeat a common enemy.

* While 1982's ''Film/FortyEightHours'' arguably invented the [[BuddyCopShow buddy-cop movie]], 1987's ''Film/LethalWeapon'' was the TropeCodifier and the film that most later examples of the genre followed in the footsteps of. Writer Creator/ShaneBlack's use of WittyBanter set a template for a particular kind of action-comedy, one in which a pair of individuals with [[RedOniBlueOni diametrically opposed personalities]] are forced to come together to defeat a common enemy.

* Early [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever giant monster movies]] like the 1927 version of ''Film/TheLostWorld'' or ''Film/KingKong1933'' had their monsters as prehistoric forces unleashed on the modern world. 1953's ''Film/TheBeastFromTwentyThousandFathoms'', on the other hand, was the first to have its monster as a blend of primordial chaos and the contemporary, future-fear of [[ILoveNuclearPower the atom bomb]]. For most of the remainder of the 20th Century, giant monsters were nuclear-powered (''Film/Godzilla1954'' and ''Film/{{Them}}'' being the best of those that followed), and in a post-Cold War world, giant monsters still tend to represent some real-world, human-derived panic -- ''Film/JurassicPark'' and [[GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke genetic engineering]], ''Film/{{Cloverfield}}'' and [[PostNineElevenTerrorismMovie terrorism]], etc. While ''Godzilla'' is often held to have invented the modern {{kaiju}} movie, in truth producer Tomoyuki Tanaka was partly inspired by ''The Beast''.

* What ''Animal House'' didn't do, Creator/JohnHughes' teen movies probably did. ''Film/SixteenCandles'', ''Film/TheBreakfastClub'', ''Film/PrettyInPink'', and ''Film/FerrisBuellersDayOff'', all released in the span of just three years in the mid-'80s, took the problems of their teenage protagonists seriously in a way that few other teen movies had before, leaving a mark on a generation of filmmakers such that, if a teen comedy is not a SexComedy influenced by ''Animal House'', it's likely taking after Hughes' films. (Some draw influence from both, as seen with ''Film/AmericanPie''.) To this day, Hughes' takes on, and {{deconstruct|edCharacterArchetype}}ions of, various high school archetypes (the AlphaBitch, the JerkJock, the {{nerd}}, the {{delinquent|s}}, the [[LonersAreFreaks outcast loner]][[note]]As if to demonstrate the power that his films still have over the genre, you're probably thinking of the exact characters, all from the same film, that we're talking about here[[/note]]) still form the defining images of such seen in countless teen movies. Its influence stretches beyond film, too; Darren Star, co-creator of ''Series/BeverlyHills90210'' (itself listed in the Live-Action TV section), said that his intention with that show was to create [[SpiritualAdaptation a TV version of a John Hughes teen movie]].

** In terms of its impact on cinema, it invented the modern "faith-based" film. While Hollywood had been making films based on stories from Literature/TheBible, from {{epic|Movie}}s to comedies to dramas, since UsefulNotes/{{the Golden Age|OfHollywood}}, they aimed for a mass market with these films, rarely getting into specifics on religion beyond the basics so as to avoid theological criticism from any one side or another. Movies that were more explicitly religious in nature usually had NoBudget and amateurish production values to match. ''The Passion'', however, was made by the devout traditionalist Catholic Creator/MelGibson and aimed squarely at theologically conservative Catholics and evangelicals, and it was made independently without any input from major studios, with Gibson spending $45 million of his own money to make and promote the film and hiring top Hollywood talent. Its mammoth success, becoming the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time at the US box-office[[note]]As of 2022, it stands at #47[[/note]] largely on the back of promotion through churches even as [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity controversy swirled around it]], created a cottage industry of studios, both independent ones (most notably Creator/PureFlixEntertainment) and production arms of the majors, making religious films targeted explicitly at conservative Christians. Alissa Wilkinson, writing for ''Vox'', goes into more detail [[https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/31/16955448/passion-of-christ-sequel-mel-gibson-jim-caviezel-hell here.]]

* Film journalist Stephen Metcalf [[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_dilettante/2012/08/tony_scott_s_days_of_thunder_did_it_rescue_hollywood_from_the_grips_of_producers_like_don_simpson_.single.html argues]] that the [[TroubledProduction wretched production excesses]] of ''Film/DaysOfThunder'', and their attendant impact on the film's profits, made auteur-driven filmmaking acceptable again a decade after the notion had been discredited by the box-office failure of ''Film/HeavensGate''. Creator/UnitedArtists' willingness to indulge Creator/MichaelCimino on that film had led to a backlash where studios favored producers like Don Simpson and Creator/JerryBruckheimer who were effectively the sole creative forces behind their films, with directors merely taking orders from them. After similar excesses on the part of the producers, studios would let directors assert themselves creatively again, and it's no coincidence that ''Days'' director Creator/TonyScott's critical reputation improved over the course of the '90s.

* Creator/GeorgeARomero's ''Film/NightOfTheLivingDead1968'' not only single-handedly invented [[ZombieApocalypse modern zombie fiction]], it finished the job that ''Psycho'' started in revolutionizing the expectations people had for horror films, such that, when it was first screened in what was then still a popular place to screen horror movies (i.e. ''[[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids kiddie theaters]]''), it caused moral panic. Romero's ''Film/LivingDeadSeries'' as a whole has also been [[https://film.avclub.com/the-rust-belt-horror-of-george-romero-1798288362 credited]], along with the books of Creator/StephenKing in the literary world (see below), with giving the horror genre a more blue-collar focus, bringing it into weathered farmhouses and [[TheMall soulless shopping malls]] in [[FlyoverCountry Pennsylvania]] rather than [[OldDarkHouse gothic mansions]] and {{haunted castle}}s in [[{{Uberwald}} Transylvania]]. He was also famous for using the genre as a vehicle for social commentary, his stories satirizing topics like race relations, consumerism, income inequality, and life in small-town and suburban America.
* The 1968 Creator/BorisKarloff film ''Film/{{Targets}}'' was another turning point for horror, unofficially marking the end of the MadScientist movies of the past with a turn towards more realistic villains like [[SerialKiller serial killers]]. The fact that it was one of Karloff's last films makes the change-over even more stark.
* 1969's ''Film/TheWildBunch'' revolutionized how action films were edited, using quick cuts and [[AdrenalineTime slow motion]] to crank up the intensity of its action scenes. It also brought the revisionism of {{spaghetti Western}}s into Hollywood movies, with its story concerning the TwilightOfTheOldWest and aging gunfighters looking back on their lives.

** Likewise, compared to Creator/RichardDonner's original ''Film/SupermanTheMovie'' and Creator/TimBurton's ''Film/Batman1989'' and their respective sequels, which were essentially set in a ConstructedWorld and quasi-AlternateUniverse (with [[RetroUniverse prominent retro elements]] in the latter case), and the science-fiction/fantasy focus of the ''X-Men'' movies, Creator/SamRaimi's ''Film/SpiderManTrilogy'' had a greater sense of realism. It visibly looked like 21st century New York, addressed the 9/11 attacks, and had characters who looked like contemporary adults grappling problems related to rent, work, and careers. This set the trend for greater realism and contemporary focus in the superhero films that came after, even in the [[Film/TheDarkKnightTrilogy revived Batman trilogy]] by Creator/ChristopherNolan. The rival films that avoided the contemporary focus (''Film/SupermanReturns'', ''Film/GreenLantern2011'') were failures, so the trend set by Spider-Man remains a major influence on the house style for both DC and Marvel properties.

** First of all, the MCU was a SharedUniverse much like its source material. Before ''Film/IronMan1'' in 2008 and ''Film/TheAvengers2012'', the idea of a superhero team-up movie was considered a pipe dream among comics fans. Earlier superhero films, despite the odd MythologyGag and in-joke, had their heroes existing in the world as the only beings of their kind, be it ''Film/Batman1989'', ''Film/SupermanTheMovie'', or even Creator/SamRaimi's ''Film/SpiderManTrilogy'' and the ''Film/XMenFilmSeries''. The MCU changed the game when ''The Avengers'' proved that a big-budget live-action superhero ensemble film, with characters and subplots already seen in standalone films merged into a single one, could and would work and be phenomenally successful, and it wouldn't be overcrowded with too many heroes or characters. It led to a renewal and modification of the blockbuster franchise mode, one that directly spurred the creation of the Franchise/DCExtendedUniverse and myriad other attempts at shared continuities and {{Modular Franchise}}s.
** 2011's ''Film/{{Thor}}'' and ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'', and especially 2014's ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'', changed the dominant aesthetic of superhero films away from MovieSuperheroesWearBlack, RealIsBrown, and DoingInTheWizard, opening the doors for bringing in most of the fantastic and science-fiction pulp elements which were there in the comics but were always reimagined and updated in earlier movies (such as ''Film/BatmanBegins'' making ComicBook/RasAlGhul into a title passed down in a MasterApprenticeChain rather than an immortal being who dips into Lazarus Pits). These films not only allowed for CrystalSpiresAndTogas, StupidJetpackHitler Nazis, and talking animals and plants, but made them dramatically and emotionally compelling, while also blending superhero genres with HistoricalFiction, AlternateHistory, HighFantasy, and SpaceOpera, and opening the floodgates for almost any kind of comic book character and story (and so ''any'' kind of movie) to be conceivable in live-action, no matter how outlandish in concept.

* In 2003, a little DirectToVideo Creator/StevenSeagal vehicle called ''Out for a Kill'', while nothing special in story tor techniques, turned out to have a far-reaching impact on the low-budget side of the action genre, as [[https://www.vulture.com/article/randall-emmett-movies.html this article]] by Joshua Hunt for ''Vulture'' lays out. The actual quality of the film itself was less important than the circumstances of its production, which saw the rise of Eastern Europe as a popular shooting location for action filmmakers seeking to take advantage of exchange rates and cheap labor, while also providing a route for aging '80s/'90s {{action hero}}es to [[CareerResurrection revive their careers]] by taking easy, well-paying supporting roles that appealed to [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff their middle-aged fans overseas]] (many of whom spent their teenage years renting the films from these actors' GloryDays) even as their star power in the US had long since fizzled out. Along with Seagal, Creator/BruceWillis and Creator/MelGibson are among the most notable Hollywood stars to take this route, with OFAK's producer Randall Emmett leading the pack through his company Emmett/Furla Oasis Films. Unfortunately, it also created a pipeline for [[TheMafiya dirty organized crime money]] to enter the movie business.

* The smashing critical and financial success of 2005's ''Film/BrokebackMountain'', a film marketed explicitly as a [[QueerRomance gay love story]] that grossed more than ten times its budget, along with its infamous AwardSnub in the 2006 Oscars opened the floodgate for queer entertainment to enter the mainstream without having to rely on stereotypes.

** On a franchise note, Nolan's films codified the idea that superhero film series tell an ongoing MythArc that builds on the previous films rather than simply repeating beats. Before Nolan, superhero franchises (Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and the X-Men series to some extent) generally had {{Static Character}}s that didn't change much and could tell the same stories again and again. Nolan had Batman/Bruce Wayne visibly grow and change from film to film, with the resolutions and events from the previous film carried forwards organically, which in ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises'' allowed Nolan to give his screen version of Batman something no big-screen superhero had ever had before: [[TheEnd an ending]]. This inspired ''Film/{{Logan}}'' a few years later, and the MCU took inspiration from this in their ongoing serial nature, and while they have not gone all the way as Nolan did, their movies have {{Dynamic Character}}s with changes and actions carrying on from film-to-film, especially in Phase 2 and Phase 3. In general, Nolan's movies are credited for raising the standard of storytelling in the superhero movie genre, as well as cementing the idea among audiences that each actor's take on a character is unique and separate from another's and deserves a conclusion to that version independent from the serial nature of the overall IP.

** It was the first wide commercial and critical success since the disaster of ''Film/BatmanAndRobin''. While ''Film/XMen1'', and ''Film/{{Blade}}'' had preceded it in Marvel properties, neither was the international success that ''Spider-Man'' was. The film's marketing also had a huge influence on poster design, especially the amber-coloured background of the first two posters, which was copied for ''Film/BatmanBegins''.

** In terms of its impact on cinema, it invented the modern "faith-based" film. While Hollywood had been making films based on stories from Literature/TheBible, from {{epic|Movie}}s to comedies to dramas, since UsefulNotes/{{the Golden Age|OfHollywood}}, they aimed for a mass market with these films, rarely getting into specifics on religion beyond the basics so as to avoid theological criticism from any one side or another. Movies that were more explicitly religious in nature usually had NoBudget and amateurish production values to match. ''The Passion'', however, was made by the devout traditionalist Catholic Creator/MelGibson and aimed squarely at theologically conservative Catholics and evangelicals, and it was made independently without any input from major studios, with Gibson spending $45 million of his own money to make and promote the film and hiring top Hollywood talent. Its mammoth success, becoming the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time at the US box-office[[note]]As of 2021, it stands at #47[[/note]] largely on the back of promotion through churches even as [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity controversy swirled around it]], created a cottage industry of studios, both independent ones (most notably Creator/PureFlixEntertainment) and production arms of the majors, making religious films targeted explicitly at conservative Christians. Alissa Wilkinson, writing for ''Vox'', goes into more detail [[https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/31/16955448/passion-of-christ-sequel-mel-gibson-jim-caviezel-hell here.]]

* Film journalist Stephen Metcalf [[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_dilettante/2012/08/tony_scott_s_days_of_thunder_did_it_rescue_hollywood_from_the_grips_of_producers_like_don_simpson_.single.html argues]] that wretched production excesses of ''Film/DaysOfThunder'', and their attendant impact on the film's profits, made auteur-driven filmmaking acceptable again a decade after the notion had been discredited by the box-office failure of ''Film/HeavensGate''. Creator/UnitedArtists' willingness to indulge Creator/MichaelCimino on that film had led to a backlash where studios favored producers like Don Simpson and Creator/JerryBruckheimer who were effectively the sole creative forces behind their films, with directors merely taking orders from them. After similar excesses on the part of the producers, studios would let directors assert themselves creatively again, and it's no coincidence that ''Days'' director Creator/TonyScott's critical reputation improved over the course of the '90s.

* In 2003, producer Randal Emmett financed a little DirectToVideo Creator/StevenSeagal vehicle called ''Out for a Kill'' that while nothing special for it, turned out to have a far-reaching impact on the low-budget side of the action genre, as [[https://www.vulture.com/article/randall-emmett-movies.html this article]] by Joshua Hunt for ''Vulture'' lays out. The actual quality of the film itself was less important than the circumstances of its production, which saw the rise of Eastern Europe as a popular shooting location for action filmmakers seeking to take advantage of exchange rates and cheap labor, while also providing a route for aging '80s/'90s {{action hero}}es to [[CareerResurrection revive their careers]] by taking easy, well-paying supporting roles that appealed to [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff their middle-aged fans overseas]] (many of whom spent their teenage years renting the films from these actors' GloryDays) even as their star power in the US had long since fizzled out. Along with Seagal, Creator/BruceWillis and Creator/MelGibson are among the most notable Hollywood stars to take this route, with Emmett leading the pack through his company Emmett/Furla Oasis Films. Unfortunately, it also created a pipeline for [[TheMafiya dirty organized crime money]] to enter the movie business.

* ''Film/KingKong1933'' codified a lot of the genetic makeup of blockbuster and genre movies, in particular the [[{{Kaiju}} Giant Monster Movie]] on both sides of the Pacific. The stop-motion effects courtesy of Willis O'Brien kicked off the techniques for the next century, as even computer graphic animation would borrow much from them, like armatures that support each model. Max Steiner's music was one of the first for a major hollywood movie and brought the {{Leitmotif}} into the cinematic world to help induce emotions in audiences.