What movie has entered and impacted our culture in the past 20 years? Name something new? Not a remake, or reboot, or deconstruction. Can you name something that is not Jurassic Park 11, or the third reboot/remake of a movie based on a 60-year-old comic? What new thing has been created? I can actually think of one thing off the top of my head, and could probably come up with more if I think about it. And I could come up with more if we branch out beyond movies and TV.
But few things have made any impact on the culture, like the things from our past. When the book The Lord of the Rings caught fire in America in the 1960s, (I'm told) you would see "Frodo Lives" graffiti in subways and elsewhere. When J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books were made into movies, you could buy Berty Bots Every Flavor Beans at Blockbuster Video, and the books themselves had an impact, though I never understood why. Though I guess the books are better than the movies.
Other things have not had quite the impact, even when they have achieved popularity. The book Angels and Demons by Dan Brown had some impact even before Tom Hanks was in the adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, which is the second book in the series. And yes, that is just more than 20 years ago, but still... Ready Player One by Cline apparently had some impact, but no one, as far as I know, quotes the book or the movie.
This is Critical Drinker's video Why Modern Movies Suck - They're Completely Forgettable
First the Drinker gives a list of movie quotes, such as "I'll be back," or "Make my day," and so on. Then he gives us a list of movie characters, including Captain Kirk, Hannibal Lector, and Rocky Balboa. Quotes and characters most or all of us will know. Not only know, but be able to identify the character or the quote with particular actor, and probably name the movie the quote came from, or at least where we first encountered that character.
Not one of them was created or written in the past 20 years.
And before you start accusing me of cherry-picking my examples just to prove a point, I can tell you that I looked up six different lists of the hundred best movie quotes of all time for this video, read every single one from start to finish, and not a single one belong to a movie made after 2005.
The video is 8 minutes long.
I looked at the list of "Best Books of the Last 20 Years" at Goodreads, and I knew exactly one, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, and I was sure it was older than 20 years.
This is Sparta! 2006 from "300"
ReplyDeleteThat is fair. And even though it is based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley from the late 1990s, I give it to you
DeleteIdiocracy
ReplyDeleteI don't think that has quite the cultural footprint you think it does
DeleteThe New York Times published a "100 Best Movies Since 2025" list which I thought was actually pretty good, encompassing a broad range of international and domestic movies and movies that were both populist/commercial and more artsy, I don't know that I would put Parasite and Mulholland Drive as numbers one and two respectively, but if you can find the list I think it's a useful reminder that there are good things still being made.
ReplyDeleteI finally found the list, and while there are some good movies, none of them have the footprint of Dirty Harry (Go ahead, make my day) or The Terminator (I'll be back) or The Godfather (I'll make him an offer...)
DeleteAnd some of them are a stretch. I'm sure they are good movies, made by artists, but very few people saw them. Or some of the movies on the list anyway.
That's true enough, but I do think some of that is also just natural generational bias. That being said, I think especially in the 2000s proper a lot of the most memorable stuff is going to be television (The Sopranos especially has had the same impact as the Godfather, and has probably produced as many memes and references as the entire slew of mob movies produced by Scorsese and Coppala, even among the generation which was too young to watch it initially).
DeleteThis is true. That was the era of prestige television. (That's what I think they're calling it.) But The Sopranos starting 1999.
DeleteThere was another discussion on this topic that said it all came to a halt with the smart phone. I think it was probably a combination of the smart phone and F*c*book (and other social media)
Oh also, in terms of memorable quotes and characters, at least one post 2000s movie stands out: No Country for Old Men. Anton Chigurh is definitely a very recognized villain, especially for people under about 40, and has a ton of memorable quotes. "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"
ReplyDelete(I haven't watched a ton of Airplane!-style parody movies that have come out since then, but the coin toss scene feels iconic enough that one of those kinds of movies would do a take on it).
None of the parody movies have stuck. The first Airplane was a "classic" I guess. (I hated it, but as they say today, "it wasn't made for me.") But the rest are just mindless that have no lasting impact.
DeleteAnd there are movies post 2000 that have had an impact. The last 2 comedies - Hangover and Bridesmaids - have an impact even if only because people ask what happened after...
Definitely agree viz. parodies, as a genre that seems to have gone completely to the puerile and forgettable, but as for movies my generation saw when they came out (born in the mid 90s), I would say Tropic Thunder, Blades of Glory, Anchorman, and Snatch all come to mind as ones that will probably stick. (Tropic Thunder is going to be my generation's kids' "comedy your dad watches with you when you're way too young" sort of like Blazing Saddles was .
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