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Milestone Celebration / Film

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/e334a518_3685_43dc_8d08_0091c27d9462.png
Celebrating 100 years of wonder.Characters

Animation

  • Disney Animated Canon
    • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had a major celebration thrown by the Walt Disney Company for its 50th anniversary in 1987, which started early with the Disney on Ice show Snow White on Ice debuting in '86. Year-of events included a worldwide theatrical reissue on July 17 (at a time when movies rarely had day-and-date international rollouts), an NBC special hosted by Dick Van Dyke, a McDonald's promotion offering two different posters, and a musical stage show at the Disneyland theme park that was even videotaped and aired on the Disney Channel.
    • Tangled has a Logo Joke for the Disney Animation Vanity Plate proclaiming the film as being the 50th movie in the Disney Animated Canon. Additionally, Disney released a short video featuring clips from all of the canon's films.
    • Ralph Breaks the Internet includes a Massive Multiplayer Crossover of every Disney property, and was released two days after the 90th anniversary of Steamboat Willie (the short that helped to launch the company's success).
    • Similar to Tangled, Encanto was celebrated as Disney's 60th animated feature. Not only does it have a Logo Joke akin to Tangled (instead replacing the number 50 with 60), but Disney released a video showing the titles of all of their films in the Disney Animated Canon (set to The Firebird Suite, which incidentally appeared in their 38th animated film).
    • Wish is a celebration of Disney's 100th anniversary, with wishes—which were prominent throughout Disney's history—as its main theme. It also utilizes wishing on a shooting star, a prominent part of Disney's logo. In addition, a short film titled Once Upon a Studio was made featuring hundreds of characters from the Disney Animated Canon, various short films, and even theme park attractions.
  • The Lion King (2019): The remake was released during the 25th anniversary year of the original version.
  • Pixar
    • Cars came out during Pixar's 20th anniversary. To commemorate this, the Pixar logo fades into "Celebrating 20 Years" written against a black background, with Luxo Junior's light bulb forming the zero in the 20.
    • Cars 2 celebrated Pixar's 25th anniversary with a Creator Cameo of Pixar head John Lasseter. The theatrical version of the film similarly began with a Logo Joke featuring Luxo Jr. fading into a "Celebrating 25 Years" message, but the home video release begins with the standard logo.
    • The Good Dinosaur marks 20 years of Pixar's theatrical films, though it misses the milestone by a few daysnote . In Asia, South America, Norway and the Middle East, Inside Out celebrates this milestone, with trailers for Inside Out released in those countries mentioning this.
    • Finding Dory was released in the year of Pixar's 30th anniversary.
    • For individual films, on December 10, 2015 ABC commemorated the 20th anniversary of Toy Story with a retrospective special entitled Toy Story at 20: To Infinity And Beyond, featuring new interviews with the cast and crew. This was followed by a showing of the original Toy Story itself.
      • In fact, a College Student is planning to create a remake of Toy Story 2 to celebrate Toy Story 2's 20th anniversary.
  • Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie was released 20 years after the first book of the series it was based on was published.
  • Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery and Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy were both released in 2014 to honor the 45th anniversary of the franchise. The former also honors the 30th anniversary of Wrestlemania while the latter makes callbacks to the older cartoons.
  • My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) was released on October 6, 2017, just 4 days before the main show's 7th anniversary.
  • Both The Flintstones and The Jetsons had WWE crossover films released in 2015 and 2017 respectively to honor both shows' 55th anniversaries. They even have the same writers.
  • Batman vs. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was released on the 80th anniversary on the creation of Batman, and the 35th anniversary of the TMNT franchise.
  • DC Showcase – Batman: Death in the Family comes out ten years after Batman: Under the Red Hood and is an Interactive Fiction adaptation of the original A Death in the Family, which ultimately led into the original Under the Hood.
  • The Boonie Bears film Back to Earth commemorates the 10th anniversary of the franchise, which was the year the movie released (2022).
  • Various promotional posters for the third Happy Heroes movie, Happy Heroes: The Stones, indicate that it was made for the 12th anniversary of the show.
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Amazing Pleasant Goat was made to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf franchise.

Live-Action

  • For the 30th anniversary of the Back to the Future franchise in 2015note :
    • Pepsi released the Pepsi Perfect, designed exactly as it appears in Part II. Only 6500 units were made.
    • Back to the Future: The Complete Animated Series was released on DVD for the first time, in its entirety and uncut. In addition, a "30th Anniversary Trilogy" Compilation Re-release of the movies was released on DVD and Blu-Ray, along with The Complete Adventures, which includes the previously mentioned DVDs and a replica flux capacitor.
    • In October 21st, the movies came back to cinemas for one day only.
    • Microsoft celebrated the occasion by including an interesting Easter Egg in its website, where typing in the words "OUTATIME" would pop up the DeLorean flux capacitor, followed by a video of clouds, wherein a flashing of lights are shown, an indication that something is coming, just like how it was portrayed in the movies. The page that is displayed afterwards shows the phrase "Great Scott! The future is precisely on schedule", a reference to one of Doc Brown's lines; the page also displays many of Microsoft's current hardware—HoloLens (VR), Lumia (smartphone), Band (fitness tracker), Surface (tablet/two-in-one laptop) and Xbox One—showcased side-by side with corresponding technologies from The '80s (as an added bonus, the page can be viewed in 3D, if you have the appropriate glasses).
    • Telltale Games rereleased the video game for the Xbox 360, Xbox One and PlayStation 4, with improved textures, new dialogue and interviews with various staff involved with the game and the films, including the films' co-writer and producer. Steam also had a 75% discount on the game on October 21st, as part of one of its Daily Deals.
    • Rocket League added the franchise's iconic DeLorean as Downloadable Content—complete with 'burnt rubber' Rocket Trail.
    • Jetpack Joyride added a brand new mode, which has Barry looking like Marty McFly (Doc Brown and Biff Tanner's looks are unlockable), the set is the 2015 Hill Valley from Part II, the jetpack is the 1985 guitar, and the available vehicles are the Flying Skateboard (which gives you a double jump) and the franchise's iconic DeLorean (which gives you a huge boost when it goes over 88). In this mode, hitting hazards does not immediately kill you, instead, you are timed: powerups scattered on the playing field add 5 seconds to your time, and getting hit removes 10 seconds.
    • LittleBigPlanet 3 gained a Back to the Future inspired campaign for its first Downloadable Content pack, which has Sackboy following Marty McFly and Doc Brown in a recreation of the first movie. Two costume packs are also available.
    • Wild Gunman was released on the Virtual Console. This is important when you realize that Marty played this very game in Part II.
  • Bad Boys for Life came out in 2020, the 25th anniversary of the first movie.
  • James Bond
  • It's very common for superhero films to be released during special anniversaries of the characters they're adapting:
  • Star Trek:
    • Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was released the year of the 20th anniversary of Star Trek.
    • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: The Original Series as a Grand Finale that reunited the entire original cast one last time and ended the conflict with their old arch-enemies, the Klingons.
    • Star Trek: First Contact was released during the franchise's 30th anniversary, which was also being celebrated by the two TV series on air at the time (seen in the TV page). The film sees the Next Generation crew go back in time to stop the Borg from changing history and as a result shows humanity's first contact with the Vulcans, pretty much serving as the major starting point of Trek history.
    • Star Trek: Nemesis, the final Next Generation movie, was released the same year as TNG's 15th anniversary.
    • Star Trek Beyond was released in 2016, to celebrate the franchise's 50th anniversary, and there are many homages and meta-commentaries on the special occasion. On a minor side note, the producers allegedly said 2016 was the "logical" year for the release.
  • Godzilla has had several since the first movie, which have featured Retools, Continuity Reboots and/or Grand Finales for whichever series of films Toho was working on.
    • King Kong vs. Godzilla was created as Toho's 30th anniversary film, which fortunately coincided with being a few months shy of the 30th anniversary of the release of the original King Kong; it was also both monsters' third respective film appearances. Then, for the studio's 60th anniversary, they decided to try and remake it. However, due to copyright issues, they opted for Godzilla's most iconic foe, resulting in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, a few months before the 60th anniversary, with another rematch with an old foe, Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth, coming the year of the anniversary.
    • Mothra vs. Godzilla and Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster were the 10th anniversary films. The former was first movie to cross two Toho properties (King Kong vs. Godzilla was the first film to cross Godzilla over with another movie monster, but of course Kong isn't a Toho property), while the latter was the first time Godzilla teamed up with other Kaiju and the first time he was portrayed as defending humanity. As another note, this was also the first film to cross over more than two Toho kaiju; crossing over a total of three different kaiju movies; a record of which wouldn't be broken until 1968's Destroy All Monsters.
    • All Monsters Attack was released the year of the 15th anniversary and features much stock footage from the previous films.
    • The original Mechagodzilla duology (Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla and Terror of Mechagodzilla), for the 20th anniversary, removed many of the Lighter and Softer elements that made the immediately preceding films so disliked while also concluding the Showa series.
    • The Return of Godzilla, as its name implies, brought Godzilla back for the 30th anniversary along with better special effects and a Darker and Edgier tone.
    • Godzilla vs. Biollante was released the year of the 35th anniversary.
    • Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, the 40th anniversary film (though technically the prior film Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla was released the actual year of the 40th anniversary), ended the Heisei series by having Godzilla fight a monster with origins related to the Oxygen Destroyer that killed him in the original film and then killing Godzilla off again; the film even ended with a brief montage of clips from the first film. The unmade American 1994 Godzilla was originally intended to be the anniversary film.
    • One of Godzilla's most recurring co-stars, Mothra, finally got another solo movie in 1996 with Rebirth of Mothra, coming 35 years after her debut in Mothra.
    • Godzilla 2000, released the year of the 45th anniversary, started off the Millennium series.
    • Godzilla: Final Wars ended the Millennium series on the 50th anniversary by having Godzilla fight and kill almost every other monster he had ever faced.
    • Godzilla (2014) was released 60 years after the original film (though it's 6 months too early to be an exact anniversary). The months before the movie came out saw a promotional toy fair that featured models of the numerous designs of Godzilla and other monsters over the course of the franchise, along with a limited theatrical run of the original 1954 film. Ironically, it was also released just a month too late to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Mothra vs. Godzilla (which was released in April of 1964).
    • The 65th anniversary was marked with both a new movie, Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), and The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray box set Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954-1975. The latter not only came out in the anniversary month of October but doubled as this trope for Criterion, being Spine #1000!
    • Since 2021, Toho's annual Godzilla Fest livestreams have been centered around celebrating the 50th Anniversaries of various kaiju of the 1970s Godzilla films with animated and suitmation short films starring the Final Wars Godzilla suit.
      • Godzilla vs. Hedorah (2021), would celebrate Hedorah's 50th Anniversary by giving his Final Wars incarnation a proper battle with his respective Godzilla.
      • Gigan received two shorts for his 50th Anniversary in 2022, the animated short Godzilla vs. Gigan Rex and the suitmation short Fest Godzilla 3: Gigan Attacks, which starred a recreation of the original Showa Gigan.
      • The 50th Anniversary of Godzilla vs. Megalon in 2023 would see an animated Godzilla vs. Megalon short serving as a direct sequel to Gigan Rex and the suitmation short Fest Godzilla 4: Operation Jet Jaguar, whose cliffhanger ending teases a 2024 battle with King Ghidorah that will coincide with the three headed dragon's 60th Anniversary.
    • Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire was released the year of Godzilla's 70th anniversary. It also marks the 10th anniversary of the MonsterVerse. Godzilla Minus One also celebrates the 70th anniversary, but due to a contract preventing Toho from releasing their films the same year that Legendary Pictures releases their films, it instead came out earlier on November 3, 2023, the 69th anniversary of the release of the original film.
  • Warner Bros. did a limited theatrical reissue of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory to mark its 25th anniversary in 1996, and the soundtrack was finally given a CD release. When the film hit 30 in 2001, it received a special edition DVD release (as opposed to the previous Vanilla Edition) that brought back many cast and crew members for its special features, and a making-of book (Pure Imagination). For the 40th anniversary in 2011, they went the full Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition route with a Blu-Ray package that included the previous disc's bonus features, the book, and a few other physical extras.
  • The Disney Channel-produced 2016 reboot of Adventures in Babysitting was the 100th film produced for the channel. As such, in the days leading up to its premiere, every other Disney Channel Original Movie was rebroadcast, including older ones and/or films that were rarely rebroadcast.
  • Star Wars
    • Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones was released on May 16th, 2002, just over a week before the franchise's 25th anniversary.
    • The Last Jedi's 2017 release marks the 40th Anniversary of the Star Wars Saga - and given it's a ruby anniversary, the Star Wars logo being red for this film even fits. Its release date would have been nearly 40 years to the day of A New Hope's release in 1977, but due to rewrites it was pushed back to December of that year.
    • Solo was released on May 25, 2018, the 41st anniversary of A New Hope's 1977 release, in which Harrison Ford first appeared as Han Solo.
  • Halloween
  • For the 50th anniversary of the long running Japanese Tora-san movie series (known as Otoko Wa Tsurai Yo, 男はつらいよ, "It's tough being a man" in the original Japanese), a 50th movie "Tora-san, Welcome Back" is being released in 2019. It's directed by the writer and director of most of the films, Yoji Yamada, and stars a number of actors reprising their roles from the series— including Kiyoshi Atsumi as the main character Tora-san, despite the actor passing away in 1996.
  • Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) was made to commemorate the 10th anniversary of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).
  • Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) aired the year of the 40th anniversary of Ghostbusters (1984).
  • Alien vs. Predator (2004) was released the year of the 25th anniversary of Alien, while the sequel Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) was released the year of the 20th anniversary of Predator.

Mixed

  • Movie studios often get updated Vanity Plates on their anniversaries. Movies released during the first year of the updated logos also contain messages denoting the anniversary. (eg, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 2010 begins by panning up from the 20th Century Fox structure to some lights spelling out, "Celebrating 75 Years"note .)
    • Universal celebrated its 75th anniversarynote  by opening each movie released in 1990 with the logos that graced their works from 1927-1990, and a then-new logo (though they skipped the version that refers to them as Universal International). Fittingly, this montage first appeared at the beginning of Back to the Future Part III.
    • Universal released a similar video for their 100th anniversarynote , preceding another new logo with the ones used from 1927-2012 (they did not exclude the Universal International ident this time), but showed this montage online instead of during movies.
  • Anniversaries are generally a good excuse for Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition video releases of beloved films, dating back to the VHS era.
    • They are also good excuses to re-release movies in theatres, because nothing beats watching a classic movie on a big screen for its anniversary.
  • Disney is well known for pulling off grand celebrations for important company milestones:
    • The company celebrated its golden anniversary om 1973 with their "50 Happy Years" campaign. Highlights from the celebration included a special bumper at the beginning of all their theatrical releases, special episode of The Wonderful World of Disney, a float for the 1973 Tournament of Roses Parade the opening of The Walt Disney Story at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, a stage show at Radio City Music Hall (alongside a reissue of Mary Poppins), a film retrospective at Lincoln Center, a two-disc album of Disney songs, a ceremony and three-day celebration at Disneyland, a special edition of the park's Christmas Fantasy on Parade, the release of the studio's newest animated feature Robin Hood (1973), and a Disney-produced halftime show for the 1974 Orange Bowl.
    • In 1978, Mickey Mouse's 50th birthday was celebrated with a special bumper at the beginning of the studio's theatrical releases, a 90-minute NBC-TV special, the debut of a revival of The Mickey Mouse Club, a reprint of the 1931 children's book The Adventures of Mickey Mouse, a new parade at the theme parks, and a special weekend matinee of Mickey cartoons playing with a reissue of Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.
      • For the 60th birthday in 1988, markers included the NBC special Mickey's 60th Birthday, the opening of the Mickey's Birthdayland pavillion at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom (successful enough to be retooled into Starland and then Toontown Fair before being reclaimed for the Fantasyland expansion 20+ years later), and the VHS Clip Show Mickey's Magical World.
      • His 90th birthday in 2018 was commemorated with yet another TV special (this time on Disney-owned ABC) and various events in the theme parks, among other things.

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