Some movies impact the way future movies are made: they wind up inspiring people, change minds, and (most importantly) gross so many dollars that the entertainment industry can’t afford to ignore a certain genre of movie anymore. From epic fantasy tales, innovative comedies, or huge blockbusters, the dawn of the 21st Century had it all. What we see at our local multiplex today wouldn’t be the same without a few crucial game-changers that took a risk, found the right talent, and hooked audiences around the world at the right time.
Here are a few of those game-changers from the early part of the 21st Century.
1. Lord of the Rings Trilogy
It’s not every day that a studio decides to approve $300 million for three epic fantasy movies to be shot back-to-back. It’s not every day that audiences rush to the box office to watch three-hour movies. And it’s not every day that a movie production causes 1 in 160 citizens of a country to be involved in it. But Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy did all of that. What was considered to be “unfilmable” was adapted in an epic trilogy which combined made almost $3 billion. The trilogy proved that motion capture and well-done CGI can kick ass and that epic fantasy is not just something for board games and book stores. A true game changer!
2. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Did you know that producer David Heyman‘s secretary was almost single-handedly responsible for the Harry Potter movies? If it wouldn’t have been for her recommending the book to Heyman, most of the world might have never known much about Hogwarts. The third highest grossing film series of all time with over $7.5 billion in revenue opened up fantasy for children and young adults around the globe. The saga took over the world in a storm and led to other young adult fantasy adaptation, though none as successful as Harry Potter.
More Fantasy Movie News: ABC To Develop Fantasy Drama Series Best Wishes
3. The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Judd Apatow. Seth Rogen. Paul Rudd. Steve Carell. You probably know all of these names today and you might know none of them if it weren’t for The 40-Year-Old Virgin. As a hilarious, witty, and smart sex comedy for adults, the film received excellent reviews and grossed six times its production budget. Some of the best comedies in the past decade would likely never have been made if it weren’t for this one 2005 sex comedy.
4. X-Men / Spider-Man
Today, superhero films are as alive as ever, but that wasn’t the case even two decades ago. In fact, when M. Night Shyamalan asked Disney to market his superhero-inspired horror film Unbreakable as a comic book-ish movie, the studio refused and decided to market it as a spooky thriller instead. In 2000, Bryan Singer’s X-Men managed to inspire critics and audiences with its emotional characters and fantastic actors. The movie received excellent reviews and managed to gross almost four times it’s budget. A true modern-day superhero franchise began, one we hadn’t really seen since the original Batman and Superman films in the ’80s and ’90s. Four years later, when Sam Raimy’s Spider-Man swung through New York skyscrapers on the big screen, another comic book adaptation would win over people’s hearts and manage multiple sequels.
See Them All: The Best Superhero Movies By Genre
5. Scary Movie
Not all movies that profoundly change the movie industry have to be masterpieces. Indeed, it wouldn’t be fair not to acknowledge that it wasn’t common to make raunchy, low-budget, all-out parodies of recent films. Scary Movie made $278 million against a $19 million budget and led to four very successful sequels and lots of similar films by its writers.
Spy Hard, Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, Vampires Suck, The Starving Games, Best Night Ever, and Superfast! all parodied recent films and came out of the minds of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. They wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for 2000’s Scary Movie. And while their films weren’t critically well-received, it could be argued that other comedies braved up when it came to making fun of recent Hollywood productions. Films such as Tropic Thunder or Deadpool managed to do so as well, just with a real plot and acting.
6. Pirates of the Caribbean
Who would have thought that a $100+ million pirate blockbuster would lead to sequels almost a decade later? Jerry Bruckheimer’s Pirates movies proved that CG could be used to create entirely different world. The third Pirates movie was considered the most expensive movie of all time for many years, having projected to have cost over $300 million. Collectively, the five films have grossed over $4.5 billion dollars from 2003 to 2017. They also proved the international market to be vital. All five Pirates movie grossed a majority of their revenue from foreign box offices. The latest installment, Dead Men Tell No Tales, took in over 70% of it’s worldwide revenue from outside the United States. The films proved what big, expensive, international blockbuster films can be.
