People involved in the pro-democracy insurgency in Myanmar use symbolism and language from "Hunger Games" to both make their point and recognize each other.
Being gone yes, no cultural impact I’d disagree on. There has both been an uptick in films with similar themes, including Netflix and books. You could argue it helped create the whole spicy booktok trend. And ascended fanfics authors are also a thing.
@zachweinersmith.bsky.social Avatar, perhaps? Huge success, and people thought it would lead to 3D TVs being commonplace, but the movie’s basically a joke now.
The Graduate. Lots of star power, but just an overblown, dysfunctional love triangle. Ok, the soundtrack was marvelous but everything else was “plastics.”
Id argue the Avatar franchise(Blue people) as something recent. They have s no real impact culturally. Way of Water? Haven't heard anyone mention that movie in like two years now. The original? Next to nothing besides memes calling it Space Pocahontas and those are dead
But couldn’t you count the Glenn Close / Hugh Laurie 101 Dalmatians as the start of the live action remakes? Especially since the story of the live action Alice was more like a continuation of the cartoon rather than a remake.
I always forget about 102 Dalmatian because 1) Cruella was an actual good "reimagining" and 2) it's the only movie I can remember falling asleep in the theater watching.
For the 40s-60s CP Snow’s A New Hope series. It includes The Masters, possibly the best book on interpersonal politics of the century. A Soviet ambassador to the UN told the author that it reminded him of Kremlin politics
The Satanic Verses by Rushdie, huge sales, I doubt half the buyers read it. It was an ok story that would have been disappeared more effectively by just letting it be.
Chicken/egg but I feel like this awful movie helped forward this boring "metaverse" concept. The IP itself maybe hasn't spawned a bunch of sequels but it sure did make a bunch of techbros want to see Mario fight Godzilla with Spiderman in full VR AI immersion.
Metaverse comes from 80s Cyberpunk, specifically Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. It is not even remotely a new concept, and hardly something that the diminutive brains of Ernie Cline or Mark Zukerberg could possibly come up with.
DaVinci Code. The book was immense, and they made like three movies that nobody even thinks about anymore. Biggest impact on society is every charity shop and secondhand book place has a Dan Brown stockpile.
I don't think Garp is the same category - if nothing else, the author wrote other best-sellers that are well remembered.
But ignoring that, Code is 2005, Bridges is 1992 and Garp is 76, so we'd need late 50's early 60's ... and that's before our time so we only know the ones that are still known.
If by "no effect on culture" we mean "derivative of other works which had a huge effect on culture, but were in themselves popular cashgrabs now forgotten":
Any Star Wars beyond the first trilogy and the prequels.
Most Marvel / DC movies
Any Disney live-action remake
For non-derivative movies, I'd say:
- Chicken Run
- Secondhand Lions
- Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium
- Babe
For books:
- "The Flowing Light of the Godhead" by Mechthild
- "Out of the Silent Planet" trilogy by CS Lewis
- "Holes" by Louis Sachar
- "Eragon" by Christopher Paolini
Game of Thrones? The awful ending of the tee vee series basically made people stop thinking about it, and Martin doesn't seem interested in publishing his own conclusion. Turns out it's easier to deconstruct a genre than to reconstruct it.
The common answer for this is "Avatar" but from a technical side that's a lot more wrong than people realize. There's a lot of sequels that qualify for this, though. Not exactly a stirring discourse on the long-term impact of Inside Out 2.
For books, I think "The Alchemist" is probably the obvious answer. Outside of religious texts it's the #3 selling book of all-time and just kind of... exists, I guess. It's fine.
whaddya talking about, dude is in the crowd with his mandolin, sitting right next to panos the wonderchild and fmr. President Gerald Ford! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WXgNo5Smino
It DID work as propaganda for the US Airforce at its time, there may be a lot of people still active in the forces today that would cite this movie as inspiring them to serve... And another smaller gay crowd that had an "awakening" thanks to that beach volley scene. And some overlap between them lol
Comments
Big success in its day
Who remembers it now?
Hunger Games people still talk about and recommend more often
https://thedissolve.com/features/forgotbusters/
The Name of the Rose (which sucks cuz it’s great)
Schindler's List
Also incredibly relevant today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookman_list_of_bestselling_novels_in_the_United_States_in_the_1900s
You must watch her other stuff!
She be breaking stuff down at the quantum level. And still be hilarious.
I am done with it. I only want original one-off stories created by weirdo freaks (affectionate)
How far back can we run this chain of lost bestsellers?
But ignoring that, Code is 2005, Bridges is 1992 and Garp is 76, so we'd need late 50's early 60's ... and that's before our time so we only know the ones that are still known.
E F Schumacher
Or 50 shades of grey?
Flowers in the attic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Aventures_de_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9maque
(Yes, it's what you think.)
(And yes, he's the same one that was France's Economy and Finance Minister.)
Any Star Wars beyond the first trilogy and the prequels.
Most Marvel / DC movies
Any Disney live-action remake
- Chicken Run
- Secondhand Lions
- Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium
- Babe
For books:
- "The Flowing Light of the Godhead" by Mechthild
- "Out of the Silent Planet" trilogy by CS Lewis
- "Holes" by Louis Sachar
- "Eragon" by Christopher Paolini
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/may/26/top-gun-for-hire-why-hollywood-is-the-us-militarys-best-wingman
https://archive.org/details/operationhollywo00robb/page/182/mode/1up