Seinfeld Is Unfunny/Film: Difference between revisions

*** This is the case with so many actors from that film: Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, etc.

** The film ''[[Wrongfully Accused]]'' can also suffer from this. At the time, it was actually part of the joke that the film cast such a wide net in the material that it parodied. Nowadays, every parody movie is like that, and the worse for it.

** However, the fact that ''Alien'' still looks excellent today (great sets, lighting and practical effects), has great pacing and has seven good actors wearing non-dated clothing reduces its potential to underwhelm younger audiences. ''[[Aliens]]'' actually feels slightly more dated, despite having been made seven years later.

** An interesting move on the part of the producers of ''Alien'', that served to heighten the tension at the end, but which cannot work now, was {{spoiler|to kill the characters off in reverse order of the fame of the actors playing them}}. It is difficult now to realize that John Hurt was probably the biggest box office name in ''Alien'', having just done ''I, Claudius'' for the BBC, and the film ''Midnight Express'', and that both Veronica Cartwright, who had been acting since childhood (she was Violet Rutherford on ''Leave It to Beaver'', and the sister of Angela Cartwright of ''Lost in Space''), and Harry Dean Stanton, a well-established character, were both much more bankable than [[Sigourney Weaver]], who, at the time, was unknown. She had a single film credit, other than a brief role in ''Annie Hall'', and a few TV appearances. ''Alien'' made her career. So, at the end, when {{spoiler|no one is left alive other than the actress the audience had never heard of, it seems very unlikely that she will survive at all, let alone heroically.}} However, now, in the 21st century, she is ''[[Sigourney Weaver]]'', Sigourney Weaver ''kicks ass'', and the film could not end any other way. [[Foregone Conclusion|Knowing that she appears in all of the movies as the main hero also helps kill any sense of fear for her safety.]] <ref>Though that didn't stop her in Alien 3.</ref>

* [[Alfred Hitchcock]]. This trope could just as easily be called ''Hitchcock Is Not Suspenseful.'' Anything of his was '''the''' defining work in suspense when originally produced, but looks sad and overdone now that it's been copied to death.

** [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s suspense films have had much of the suspense removed due to the rampant parody. On the other hand, the ''[[Rear Window]]'' trope has been parodied so many times that some viewers are taken by surprise when the old film plays it straight instead of turning into a case of [[Stab the Salad]].

* ''[[American Beauty]]'' inspired so many other "dark heart of suburbia" dramas that the film has lost a lot of its initial impact. In particular, the "dancing paper bag" scene has been parodied/taken out of context so many times that the original sequence can come off as [[Narm]].

** Interestingly enough, American Beauty is quite similar to ''[[The Ice Storm]]'', another "dark heart of suburbia" movie, which came out two years before American Beauty. (The similarities between the two might be coincidental, though, as Alan Ball wrote the original version of ''The American Beauty'''s script before ''The Ice Storm'' – or the novel of the same name it was based on – had been released.) This would make ''The Ice Storm'' the original [[Seinfeld Is Unfunny]] example, except that ''The American Beauty'' is much better known, and therefore the likelier inspiration for the various films that followed.

* ''[[Animal House]]'' was the [[Trope Maker]] or [[Trope Codifier]] of many of the Frat House comedies that followed it. Nowadays, it seems horribly cliched, but it was doing a lot of these jokes for the first time. The falling-ladder scene has little effect for the children of Generations X and Y, who saw it copied in countless cartoons and teen movies.

* ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'' invented or popularized many features that are standard in modern cinema, such as cutting between different locations to increase suspense during action scenes. Someone watching the film nowadays won't think twice about these innovations, while the [[Values Dissonance|blatant racism and hero-worship of the Klan]] are unfortunately a lot more noticeable.

* ''[[Blazing Saddles]]'' is rumored to be one of the first, perhaps the first film ever, to include a fart joke. Take a wild guess.

* ''[[Broadway Melody]]'', the second film to win the [[Academy Award]] for Best Picture and the first all-sound musical, was a '''huge''' deal when it was released. However, its look at the goings-on on a Broadway musical became clichéd by the mid-'40s, thanks to nearly every movie about Broadway copying its basic set-up. Add the fact that as it was the first movie musical, Hollywood still had a lot to learn about blocking musical numbers to avoid looking 'stagey'.

* ''[[Bullitt]]'' was considered the definitive car chase movie in its time, but was soon supplanted by ''[[The French Connection]]'' and others.

** This was the prevailing opinion of ''[[Casablanca]]'' at the time of its release. All involved with the production viewed it as just another picture, albeit one with a slightly better-than-average cast. In a documentary about the making of the film, one of the technicians said something to the effect of "We were responsible to the studio for making fifty movies a year. ''[[Casablanca]]'' was just [[But for Me It Was Tuesday|number thirty-eight]]." The talk of it being a great American film didn't really begin until a couple of years [[Dead Artists Are Better|after Bogart's death.]]

* [[Charlie Chaplin]] and [[Buster Keaton]]. Silent comedians like them were hilarious for a very long time. Chaplin's tramp was subversive and constantly undermined any authority figure he came into contact with, including the police, who arrested him pretty frequently. Nowadays many people don't find Chaplin that funny, but he pioneered many jokes, situations, gags in comedy films and in comparison with many other slapstick comedians of his time his work was groundbreaking.

* [[A Clockwork Orange]] and the fight scene in question. Back then it was violent, nowadays it comes off as a comedic fight scene. If it was done in today's definition, the violence will be a lot more bloody.

* [[Cracked]]'s list of the [http://www.cracked.com/article_18664_5-annoying-trends-that-make-every-movie-look-same.html "5 annoying trends that make every movie look the same"] shows us how once clever and innovative cinematography techniques have been copied to death in the past 10 years to the point that they're almost in every movie.

* ''[[Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon]]'', the first truly successful (in western markets) Chinese [[Wuxia]] (periodic Kung-Fu) movie, suffers from this. It's much harder to screen such a movie nowadays because people can't look past the "tacky" kung-fu with its flying about and running on walls - which has been imitated repeatedly in many "Hollywoodian" action films for the past 10 years. Of course, it wasn't original per-se, as Wuxia films were already seen as tacky in their homeland (China), but in the west this was regarded as a new phenomenon and therefore taken with more respect. It won an Academy Award and still lingers around the middle of the IMDB's Top 250 list - and for many good reasons other than the dazzling fights.

* ''[[Debbie Does Dallas]]''. To modern eyes it watches like a porno [[Cliché Storm]]. That's because it was more or less the comedic template for the porn industry. Likewise, ''The Devil In Miss Jones'' for more <s>artsy-fartsy</s> dramatic fare.

* ''[[Les Diaboliques]]'' was widely considered to have one of the most shocking original [[Twist Ending|twist endings]] of all time when it was first released. But after fifty years of films copying this ending, modern audiences are often able to predict what will happen.

* ''[[Dirty Harry]]'' and ''[[The French Connection]]'' are notably responsible for many tropes relating to the [[Cowboy Cop]] and the genre in general.

* ''[[La Dolce Vita]]'' is a film where the "hero" is an amoral [[Casanova Wannabe]] journalist type who hangs around lots of decadent celebrity parties and [[The Rolling Stones|can't get no satisfaction]]. Precisely what made it seem so racy and different in 1960 and so long and ordinary now. Indeed, film buffs were complaining about how tame it had become as early as the '70s.

** By the way, the countdown didn't just influence movies. NASA stole it too! (Either from Fritz Lang, or more likely from Irving Pichel's ''[[Destination Moon]]'', which was mainstream at the time NASA was being founded.)

* ''[[Godzilla]]'', the original 1954 film. At the time of its release, it was groundbreaking for the Japanese film industry. Many people today ridicule older Godzilla films for the reason of them being "[[People in Rubber Suits|Man-in-suit!!!]]" made films. What they fail to realize is that had it not been for suitmation, most special effects as we know them today (such as motion capture CG, which utilizes similar techniques to suitmation) would not exist. This is despite the fact that Godzilla actually contained very few suitmation shots. Like other films at the time, it mostly made use of stop-motion and clever editing. (Although later films in the series were almost entirely suitmation.) That said, the original may still shock modern audiences who expect something akin to the [[Lighter and Softer]] versions of the creature that were often aimed at children.

* Even though the film's quantity of violent scenes was actually fairly low even in 1999, ''[[Fight Club]]'' was very controversial at the time for its brutally realistic depiction of hand-to-hand fighting. More significantly, it was controversial for its morally ambiguous ending, which was virtually unheard of at the time, since most movies ended with the main character saving the world or learning a morally satisfying lesson of some sort. Since then, far more violent and morally-questionable movies and television shows have been released, so ''Fight Club'''s general theme actually seems pretty run of the mill today.

* ''[[Great Expectations]]''. Modern viewers watching David Lean's adaptation of the Dickens classic might roll their eyes upon seeing [[Jump Scare|Magwitch pop out of the frame at Pip in the graveyard like a cheap horror movie jack-in-the-box]], genuinely startling though it is -- because they won't know that this was the first time that ever happened in a movie. The same thing might occur with {{spoiler|a seemingly dead Alan Arkin [[Only Mostly Dead|suddenly lunging out]] at Audrey Hepburn}} in ''[[Wait Until Dark]]''. It shocked everyone at the time because they weren't used to {{spoiler|the villain doing that after he'd been apparently killed off}}, but today most people will likely see it coming.

* When ''[[House Of Games]]'' came out in 1987, the idea that {{spoiler|everything that happens in the movie is [[Massive Multiplayer Scam|a huge con]]}} was still relatively fresh. (Though similar plots had been used in earlier movies, such as {{spoiler|''[[Sleuth]]''}}.) Since then it has become such an established cliche of con artist movies that the viewers pretty much expect it, which is why {{spoiler|the [[Plot Twist]]}} is much easier to guess now than it was in 1987.

* ''[[The Italian Job]]''. If you were to see it today, you'd think it was a fairly standard heist movie with a very literal [[Cliff Hanger]]. In 1969, however, it was positively groundbreaking. The chase scene with the Mini Coopers in Turin was the first of its kind on film. The focus on the crime, while not original, ''was'' highly unusual. The cliffhanger at the end was due to the film codes of the era, where criminals couldn't be shown succeeding.

* [[Jackie Chan]]. Through the 1970s, Chinese martial arts films were a deadly serious business, with grim plots and frequent [[Downer Ending|Downer Endings]] probably best known today from the films of [[Bruce Lee]]. Then Chan came along with the idea that you could make a martial arts film that was supposed to be fun, or even a straight-out ''comedy''. Chan's autobiography gives a fascinating view of just how powerful a mindset he was up against when making his early comedy films like ''[[Half A Loaf Of Kung Fu]]'', with the public at large pretty much calling him a heretic. Today, these films can be pretty disappointing to people used to his later works where he felt much more comfortable throwing in jokes and wild stunts.

** The manner in which the suspense is handled also seems rather dated these days - rather than the explosive shocks that the modern genre favours (compare the manner in which the shark appears in ''Jaws'' to how it does in ''[[Deep Blue Sea]]'' or ''[[Shark Night]]''), the shark rises out of the water more sedately and realistically. Coupled with a model that has not aged well, it can be jarring to modern in audiences.

* ''[[Jurassic Park]]''. First, this is often considered ''the'' movie that introduced CGI creature effects to it's audiences on such a large scale. Before this time, CGI in movies tended to be one or two scenes out of a whole two-hour movie due to it's expensive nature, with the rest being taken up by puppetry, stop motion animation and miniature work. JP was one of the first movies to use CGI in the majority of it's creature special effects. Now-days, with films like ''[[Avatar]]'' and ''[[Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow]]'' being more CGI than real, the effects look dated and jarring (though it still holds up better than in even earlier films, such as ''[[The Abyss]]''). Second, this was one of the very first feature films with a wide audience to do away with a lot of old dinosaur tropes, having bipedal dinosaurs stand horizontally and having them act more like birds and less like lizards. However, the film gets hit by a bad case of [[Science Marches On]]. A dinosaur fan might go back to watching that movie and laugh (or [[Somewhere a Paleontologist Is Crying|cry]]) at the errors.

* ''[[King Kong]]'' (the 1933 original). At the time of its release, people thought it had the greatest effects in film. Now, with almost 80 years of technology advancement, two remakes of which used it, the power is somewhat lost on most people.

* ''[[Koyaanisqatsi]]''. [[Slow Motion]]/[[Time Lapse]] footage of things like factories and traffic and clouds, put to music, was a new thing in the early '80s.

* ''[[The Longest Yard]]'' (1974) or ''Slap Shot'' (1977). Anyone who sat down and watched these today would immediately groan. "Oh no, not another [[Underdogs Never Lose|scrappy]] [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits|underdog team]] struggling to overcome their personal issues as emphasized by their chosen sport and antagonized by [[Opposing Sports Team|a wealthier, better-equipped team]] of entitled (but excessively-pressured) jerks. I can't wait for the second act, when the team falls apart due to the captain's arrogance/the coach's inadequacy/[[Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup|the stars' rivalry]] and, in order to [[Team Spirit|fix]] [[Save Our Team|everything]] and win the [[Big Game]], the team needs to call in a ringer/go on a vacation/listen to a [[Rousing Speech]]/use the [[Power of Friendship]]."

** In addition, Schumacher helped to birth another oft-imitated vampire trope: [[Teens Are Monsters|the "teen" vampire]].

* ''[[Mad Max|Mad Max 2]]'' aka ''The Road Warrior''. Pretty much every post-nuke movie since has featured crazed marauders on motorcycles and dune buggies fighting it out in the desert.

* ''[[Film/The Magician|The Magician]]'', a silent film from 1926 featuring a [[Mad Scientist]] Hypnotist. At the end of the movie, when the [[Big Bad]]'s castle blew up, you may think to yourself, "Hey, they stole that scene from ''Bride of Frankenstein''", but then you realize that ''Bride'' wouldn't be made for another nine years. While ''The Magician'' may seem like a hopeless [[Cliché Storm]] now, (borrowing liberally as it does from [[Mary Shelley]], Svengali, and Victorian Melodrama,) it ''did'' go on to influence many horror films that were to follow in the coming years.

* ''[[The Matrix]]'', heavily influenced by anime, religion and the western, caused such a major shift in culture -- and [[Special Effects]], with the proliferation of [[Wire Fu]] and [[Bullet Time]] in action sequences -- that it was imitated constantly. The "bullet dodge" scene in which Neo bends over backwards to avoid being hit by the Agent's shots has been parodied to death, such that we don't realise (or remember) that it actually was ''cool'' for the time. Interestingly enough, it also suffered from [[Older Than You Think]] when it premiered to a young audience who were not aware of the multitude of Eastern and literary influences in the movie.

* ''[[The Poseidon Adventure]]''. Just try to watch a [[Disaster Movie]] and ''not'' spot any scene, plot, or subplot that hasn't either been spoofed, homaged, recreated, or otherwise by even ''any'' action movie. It can be quite hard to believe that this movie was so novel back in the 70s (even today, it's an unlikely premise), or that several scenes in ''[[The Towering Inferno]]'' had people on the edge of their seats. Heck, nowadays, people can probably point out how the elevator scene in ''The Towering Inferno'' is actually quite silly.

* [[Pulp Fiction]]: It's heavy use of [[Lampshade Hanging]] and non-sequential storytelling were considered revolutionary at the time it was released in [[The Nineties]].

* ''[[Sin City]]'', at least in regards to its coloring techniques, quite possibly might be the fastest film to ever gain this status. At the time it was released, it was hailed for the unique way it isolated certain colors while the rest remained in black and white. With how fast technology has moved, with every new film trying to color itself in an eye-catching way to draw the audience in, it seems almost bland not even a decade after first being shown in theaters.

** It was also one of the first movies to ever be shot with fully-rendered CGI backdrops alongside ''[[Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow]]'' and ''The Immortal''. These days, the effect is no longer as exciting as it once was.

* [[John Ford]]'s ''[[Stagecoach]]'', to paraphrase the ''Halloween'' review above, "seems today a clichéd, formulaic Western film. But it created the clichés and established the formulas."

* ''[[Star Wars]]'' both exhibits and inverts this:

** After having seen [[Luke, I Am Your Father]] parodied a million times, experienced the [[Expanded Universe]], and gotten to see villains like Exar Kun or [[Knights of the Old Republic|Darth Revan]], and particularly after the two-plus decades of pulp sci-fi blockbusters that the film (directly or indirectly) inspired, coupled with the largely underwhelming response to the prequel trilogy, how many younger people are still able to watch the original movies completely seriously and see Darth Vader as an awesome villain?

* [[Documentary]] ''[[The Thin Blue Line]]'' was one of the first documentaries to actually dare to produce reenactments in order to provide greater information about events, not to include narration, and not to identify people speaking on camera. While revolutionary in its time (and, more importantly, its effect of having the case reviewed and eventually overturned) even the most basic of television non-fiction programs have since adopted many of its techniques making it seem trifling to some modern audiences. An acknowledged groundbreaking classic of the genre is now made to seem almost amateurish.

* The twist in Orson Welles' ''[[The Third Man]]'' has been done so many times that it's impossible for a remotely film-savvy person to watch it today and not see it coming from very early on, which is a shame because it's nonetheless a well conceived and sharply written film. In these days when writers feel the need to constantly pull the rug out from under the viewers, such a twist is usually just one part of a [[Gambit Pileup|Gambit Pile-Up]].

* ''[[Tron]]'' introduced the concept of cyberspace (a virtual world) to most audience members for the first time, something that subsequently became entirely routine, such that by the time of ''[[The Matrix]]'' (1999), it only needed to be explained THAT Neo was inside a virtual world, not what a virtual world was. Tron's use of computer-generated graphics was revolutionary, and served as midwife to the modern visual effects industry. The film even helped popularize the word "user" for a computer operator. (There was no consensus of terminology at the time; the word "computerist" was another popular term.)

** One would be hard-pressed to find a scene from ''any'' [[Stanley Kubrick]] film that hasn't been parodied/homaged to death.

** The famous "Star Gate" sequence, in which brilliant colors flash past the screen as the main character travels deep into space, required some extremely tricky cinematography and caused jaws to drop when the film was released in 1968. Thanks to the incredible advances in special effects since then, modern audiences often find the scene rather ''boring'' (not helped by the fact that sequence goes on for something like ten minutes).

* ''[[War Games]]''. More than half the world's hacker films are sons of this one. Yet, some of those who see it now thinks "another hacker-boy-saving-the-world movie". No, he was '''the''' hacker boy who saved the world. ([[Unbuilt Trope|After nearly precipitating its destruction]]. Way to save on major characters.) It doesn't help that much of what gave ''[[War Games]]'' its punch [[The Great Politics Mess-Up|is fading from collective memory]]. Having a plucky young hacker almost precipitate [[World War III]] was an allegory on how nonsensical the [[Cold War]] was to the average person.

** The second film did copy an arealdy common cliche. Gene Hackman had made Uncommon Valor, which saw release in 1983, two years before ''[[Rambo First Blood Part II]]''. (This film in turn resembles J.C. Pollock's novel Mission: MIA and a point in The Shadow Unmasks). Tom Laughlin introduced Vietnam Veteran Billy Jack in the late 1960's. Don Pendleton introduced Mack Bolan in 1969.

* [[Disney]] and [[Dreamworks Animation]] have an... odd history.

 

{{reflist}}