Top 10 Movies that Most Transformed Film Into What It is Today

Star Wars wasn't exactly close to being the first movie, but on this list, it is literally above the first movie ever. That should tell you just how vital it was for newer movies to be what they are.

Star Wars was quite a risk. When it was released, it cost a lot of money to create all the special effects. However, it was successful and inspired many others after it. It gave birth to one of the most successful franchises in movie history.

Star Wars started a new genre, popularizing space action with aliens and more. It was revolutionary. Films today owe much to Star Wars for its special effects and sci-fi elements. The movie showed how visually appealing and impersonal (in a good way) sci-fi could be.

Another appealing aspect of movies like Star Wars is that the makers don't have to be accurate with history or the real world. It's set in a different universe! You can make anything possible there.

There couldn't be another film in first place. Nothing really comes close. The Wizard of Oz started and popularized the fantasy genre, which movies wouldn't be the same without. It also popularized color film.

Without The Wizard of Oz, released in 1939 (at the start of the Second World War), color films might not have become as popular. It wasn't the first movie with color, but it was the first one that became famous. The regular world part of the movie is in black and white, but when they enter the magical land of Oz, everything turns to color!

People started associating color film with something magical, and the demand for color movies increased. Eventually, color became the norm. Movies like Star Wars or other famous fantasy films might have been dismissed without The Wizard of Oz, proving its importance.

After this movie was released, filmmakers started making films darker, like Superman, Hulk, Spider-Man, and the Justice League.

Well, it was definitely more with Batman Begins and Casino Royale that this trend started, but okay.

Ever wonder why almost every major action blockbuster today features huge destruction, usually due to unrealistic monsters? You can thank the first King Kong movie from 1933 for that.

The movie wasn't exactly good like many others on this list, but it was certainly popular. The monster and its sheer power, along with the terror it induced, made similar themes popular in the future. Think of the Death Star, Thanos and his gauntlet, or Godzilla. There's always some immeasurably powerful creature nowadays!

This may not be a great development in movies, but it was a significant one.

What movie do we thank for popularizing horror as a genre and giving us classics like Halloween, The Shining, and Friday the 13th? Psycho, "the first ever slasher film."

Psycho was so insightful and successful that it branched off into one of the top genres. The infamous scene from this risky movie paid off. Putting an audience's nerves on edge and making them jump, along with the dreaded anticipation music, was exactly what people wanted. Movies wouldn't be the same without this film.

Alfred Hitchcock, one of the best and smartest directors of all time, took a huge risk making this, but it paid off. It wasn't the first "scary" film, but it certainly started the "slasher" genre.

I think this film proves that you don't need your top-selling comic book heroes to make a great superhero movie.

This film showed that people are open to seeing more than Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, or the X-Men in the case of Marvel, and more than Batman and Superman in the case of DC. It demonstrated that audiences want to see more of the lesser-known Marvel heroes.

Every studio and its dog is gunning for their own shared universe movie franchise pretty much because of the success of this movie.

You may be wondering, what in the world is this and why is it so high on the list? If you are, I don't blame you. So I'll tell you why Roundhay Garden Scene is so important.

Simple: It was the first film/video/movie ever made and released in theaters, done by someone you may have heard of called Thomas Edison! It was extremely short, only like a minute long or something, and if you want to know more, go and search it up!

The full movie is in a really short YouTube video, and it's pretty bad in quality. But imagine those first few people seeing it and how amazed they must have been! It's quite impressive to see moving people on a screen!

So of course, this is extremely inspirational, as every single movie ever made after that - millions, probably - is a branch of that one short piece of film. Still, I didn't put it in first because, while it really did a good job of giving film a starting point, it wasn't really one that people look back to and say, Hm, people walking in circles in a garden! We must make a movie out of this!

This film is held in high regard. I personally find it boring, but I guess it must have had a major impact on the movie industry.

This should be a hell of a lot higher up. Top 5, surely.

People tend to forget that this was the seed that started the shared movie universe.

Nobody back in 2008 knew that of all the superhero origin movies made up to that point, this would be the one to make that fanboy dream a reality. Now, for better or worse, shared universes are standard franchise fare.

This is probably the most revolutionary film for CGI aside from Westworld.

Killed 2D animation pretty much. Now a lot of kids' movies are 3D computer animated.

Ever wondered what the first-ever science fiction movie was? Metropolis is definitely the movie we have to thank for that. This groundbreaking film came out way back in 1927. It didn't have huge box office success or go down in history as a famous movie, but it certainly started off what is possibly the most popular genre in history.

Inception, Star Wars, The Matrix, Back to the Future, Interstellar, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and so many more are branches of this original sci-fi film. The plot wasn't super strong, and the sci-fi elements weren't either, but it sure got future filmmakers thinking.

The shady, grittier James Bond. The screenplays in this whole series are very good. Daniel Craig was perfectly cast, and whoever takes on this role next will have big shoes to fill. I think it changed my whole concept of James Bond.

It's so good because they decided to make a darker version of the once corny Bond. Now everything's darker since critics love it. Think of The Dark Knight.

And hence came the reboot of franchises. Batman Begins kicked it off, but Casino Royale codified the reboot trend.

This 1999 movie completely revolutionized the science fiction genre for good reason. The idea that our future could end up like the events in the movie, with AI taking over the world, was a powerful and thought-provoking concept.

The enormous amount of violence inspired later movies such as John Wick to go to the extreme. This movie branched the old Star Wars sci-fi level into two, leading one of those new branches.

This movie really changed the way movies are made when it made so much money.

Hilarious. I've never seen a comedy where a comedian trolls people yet never gets caught or breaks character.

It will definitely change the direction of future movies.

Iconic superhero movie. The superhero movie that started the huge Hollywood trend of superhero films. It has heart, action, and soul.