15 Movies That Changed Film Industry Forever

Each season Hollywood releases countless new projects with the visual effects budgets bigger than those of some small countries, constantly finding new ways of destroying cars, buildings and aircrafts, competing among themselves who will have more explosions and whose explosions will look more realistic.

Ultimately, all they get is their invested money back (ok, in some cases triple the amount, we’ll give them that), and an occasional “wow” from the audience in the first rows, only to fall into oblivion soon after their premiers are over.

Some of the aforementioned movies, however, do not end up forgotten. Every now and then, some new innovative, bold and incredibly enterprising project gets released, casting its vast and fearless shadow over other movies and becomes a trailblazer in its field.

Every now and then, some movie tells us a story that has never been told before, or makes us say ‘how the hack did they do that’ by using groundbreaking special effects.

1. The Great Train Robbery (1903)

This silent movie was written, produced, and directed by Edwin S. Porter Even, and even though it was only 10 minutes long, it is considered a milestone when it comes to western movies and film making in general.

For the first time, audiences had the chance to witness realistic violence.

Besides the expected and inevitable gunplay, the usage of rudimentary special effects was seen for the first time, in the form of a dummy standing in for a man being thrown from the train.

The film also used a number of innovative filming techniques including composite editing, camera movement and on location shooting.

Porter was also one of the earliest to use the technique called ‘cross cutting’, in which two scenes appear to occur simultaneously but in different locations. Some prints were even hand colored in certain scenes.

The popularity of the film was enormous and it directly contributed to the explosion of movie theaters across America.