10 Movies with surprising real world consequences
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00:00 To a lot of people, films are just an excuse to pop the kettle on and check out of life for two hours.
00:05 Whilst that's an important cause in and of itself, many assume that a movie's impact starts and ends
00:10 with its audience. Not the case. Not the case at all. The following 10 motion pictures all had
00:16 consequences far more impactful than any director, actor, or critic could have possibly imagined.
00:21 Some inspired people to make huge decisions, some ended up appearing in lawsuits,
00:25 and some even nearly got people killed. So next time someone tells you that movies don't matter,
00:30 please feel free to direct them to this video. And with that in mind, I'm Ellie with What Culture,
00:35 here with 10 movies with surprising real-world consequences.
00:40 Number 10. Giving People Traumatic Flashbacks - Saving Private Ryan
00:44 Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, 1998's Saving Private Ryan started the
00:50 much-loved trend of people spending inordinate amounts of money attempting to rescue Matt Damon.
00:55 Along with its gripping story and likeable roster of characters,
00:58 the movie was praised for its ultra-realistic depiction of the horrors of World War II.
01:02 Right from the get-go, the film pulls no punches in depicting the conflict as hell on Earth,
01:07 with its remarkable recreation of the D-Day landings. Well, it was praised by some. For
01:12 others, it brought back a whole host of unwanted memories. Some real veterans of the battle on
01:17 Omaha Beach who saw the film reported that they were unable to finish it as the sequence brought
01:22 on traumatic flashbacks. In fact, the United States Department for Veteran Affairs created
01:27 an entire hotline dedicated to those affected by the movie. In the end, it's probably for the best
01:32 that these horrors were shown as accurately as possible. Fear is a powerful deterrent,
01:37 and it would have been a greater insult to those who fought in the war to try and dumb it down for
01:42 a more sensitive audience. Number 9. The Bambi Effect - Bambi
01:46 Walt Disney did plenty of dubious things in his life, but the most unforgivable of all
01:50 was traumatizing several generations of children with the death of Bambi's mother.
01:55 In the 1942 animated movie, young Bambi has his life changed forever when an evil hunter
02:01 guns down his beloved mum in cold blood. This sets the deer on a path of vengeance,
02:05 as he trains in martial arts with the sole ambition of enacting his violent revenge.
02:09 Okay, that didn't happen, but what a movie that would be.
02:12 Apart from scarring kids for life, the movie spawned a phenomenon known as the Bambi Effect.
02:17 Commentators posit that because of the scene with Bambi's mum, people are turned off the idea of
02:22 the hunting or killing of animals that are conventionally cute. However, when it comes
02:26 to ugly animals, well, they can all die. That was a joke, by the way. Whether this is a good
02:30 thing or a bad thing is up in the air, but it shows that even a kid's movie can have a long-lasting
02:35 effect on society at large. Number 8. Reopening an
02:39 Assassination Investigation - JFK Director Oliver Stone has never been one to shy away
02:45 from controversy, so it's not a surprise that he chose to make a movie about the killing of
02:49 John F. Kennedy. With 1991's JFK, Stone explored the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the only
02:55 party involved in a shooting, and stars Kevin Costner as a government agent tasked with finding
03:00 the truth. The movie was loved and hated in equal measure. Some praised its performances
03:05 and cinematography, whilst others lambasted its lack of historical accuracy. Its subtitle was
03:10 "The Story That Won't Go Away", which is ironic because the files on JFK's assassination were
03:15 actually reopened as a result of this film. JFK's popularity sparked a resurgence in interest in the
03:21 popular leader's untimely death. As a result, the US government passed the JFK Assassination
03:26 Records Collection Act, which allowed for the files on the President to be made public in 2017.
03:31 Without this film causing such a commotion, those files would still be under lock and key today.
03:36 Are we any closer to finding out what actually happened that fateful day in Dallas?
03:40 Well, no, but at least we've got something else to read.
03:43 7. A Massive Parade, Spectre
03:46 Enough time has passed now that we can officially call the 2015 James Bond film
03:50 Spectre a big pile of dog poo. The narrative was convoluted, the side characters were
03:54 completely forgettable, and Blofeld as Bond's brother? Get out of town.
03:58 One of the lone high points of the movie comes right at the start, when Daniel Craig's Bond
04:03 chases down a member of the titular organisation in Mexico City. The action is fast and furious,
04:08 thanks in part to the elaborate Day of the Dead parade going on around the two men.
04:12 The celebration looked so good that it actually inspired an uptake in people
04:16 visiting the city around Day of the Dead time. There was just one problem,
04:19 this parade didn't actually exist. It had been entirely fabricated as a set piece for Spectre,
04:24 leaving the Mexican government in quite a pickle. Rather than send all the tourists and their money
04:29 away, they decided the easiest thing to do would be to make the fictional festival a reality.
04:34 And so, in October 2016, Mexico City hosted its first ever Day of the Dead parade.
04:39 Mission accomplished, Mr Bond.
04:42 6. Anti-Nuclear Activism, The China Syndrome
04:45 On March 16th, 1979, a film called The China Syndrome came out. In it, Jane Fonda played
04:52 a journalist investigating a nuclear power plant when suddenly the facility goes into meltdown.
04:57 There's a line in the movie that says "This could render an area the size of Pennsylvania
05:02 permanently uninhabitable." Why is that important? Because on the 28th of March,
05:07 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant actually went into meltdown.
05:12 And where was Three Mile Island? Pennsylvania. You couldn't make it up. The film already had
05:16 an anti-nuclear agenda before the incident. Star Jane Fonda was firmly and famously opposed to the
05:22 idea. However, its proximity to a real-life disaster led many others to change their
05:27 stance on the subject. Co-star Michael Douglas described his revelation as a "religious awakening",
05:33 whilst The China Syndrome also made believers out of prominent campaigner Tom Hayden and media
05:38 mogul Ted Turner. Few could have expected the immediate impact The China Syndrome would have
05:43 on the world. It actually seems too good to be true. I mean, maybe it is, has anyone looked
05:47 into what Fonda was up to on the 28th? Was she in Pennsylvania by any chance?
05:52 5. Inspiring Freedom Fighters, Rambo
05:55 The 2008 film, just called Rambo, is honestly one of the better instalments in the blood-soaked
06:01 franchise. Although that isn't saying much, considering that Last Blood does exist.
06:05 Sylvester Stallone returned as the titular veteran to rescue a bunch of missionaries who have become
06:10 tangled up in the Saffron Revolution in Burma. Burma was what it was called at the time,
06:15 the country's name is now officially Myanmar. Whilst the movie was a fairly standard action
06:19 affair, with Stallone going "Aaah!" as often as humanly possible, it had some rather unintended
06:25 consequences in the actual country it was set in. The Saffron Revolution was a very real conflict in
06:30 Myanmar against the ruling military government. One of the groups involved in challenging their
06:34 authority was the Karen Nation Liberation Army. Karen as in an ethnic group of people,
06:39 not those women who want to speak to the manager. The KNLA saw the film as an endorsement of their
06:44 struggles and were given a huge morale boost off the back of it. They even adopted lines
06:48 from the movie into their rallying cries. Not bad for a cash cow, eh?
06:52 4. Being used as a legal defence, 2001 A Space Odyssey
06:57 2001 A Space Odyssey is one of the absolute granddaddies of sci-fi. Stanley Kubrick's
07:03 surrealist voyage is one of the most important and influential films of all time, as well as
07:08 home to one of the most chilling baddies ever captured on film. Sentient supercomputer HAL
07:13 9000 is the most famous piece of technology in the film, which is littered with futuristic looks at
07:18 how the world might turn out. Well, futuristic for 1968. Kubrick's interpretation of Arthur C.
07:24 Clarke's work was actually more accurate than you might think, as one major company attempted to
07:29 demonstrate. Samsung got themselves into legal hot water over the attempted release of their Galaxy
07:35 Tab 10.1 tablet computer. Apple, who felt the design infringed on their own iPad, attempted to
07:40 block the sale of the device. Samsung countered by claiming that they didn't invent the tablet.
07:45 This movie did. As part of their actual legal defence, Samsung attached a screenshot from the
07:51 film displaying astronauts using what appear to be tablets. They claimed that this was proof that
07:55 Apple couldn't own the rights to the design and that they should be free to sell theirs.
07:59 I mean, it didn't work, but you can't blame them for trying.
08:02 3. Catching a murderer, The Passion of the Christ
08:05 Mel Gibson. Nothing else to add. Just Mel Gibson. If you don't know about his various transgressions
08:10 over the years, then please kindly return to the rock you have been living under until you've
08:14 learned your lesson. One of his more famous crazy ideas was making the biblical epic The Passion of
08:19 the Christ in 2004, a film depicting the final 12 hours of Jesus' life. Yeah, that seems like a safe
08:25 bet for a man who has a history of religious controversies. Anyway, the film got made and it
08:30 was of course controversial. However, there was at least one good thing to come from it.
08:34 It helped solve a murder case. In early 2004, 19-year-old Ashley Nicole Wilson was found dead
08:40 in her apartment in Texas. She had apparently hanged herself after coming off antidepressant
08:44 medication, but in reality, her boyfriend Dan R. Leach had killed her and staged it to look like
08:50 a suicide. He was going to get away with the crime until a viewing of The Passion of the Christ
08:54 caused him to have an epiphany and turn himself in. Maybe Gibson isn't so bad after all.
08:59 2. Defecting from North Korea, Titanic
09:02 Titanic has got everything you could want from a movie. Romance, drama, tragedy,
09:07 Irish dancing, naughty times in an old timey car. It really is the full cinematic experience. But is
09:12 it powerful enough to inspire someone to escape one of the most isolated and repressive nations
09:17 on the planet? Well, as it turns out, yes it is. In 2007, Park Yeon-mi and her family fled
09:24 North Korea in an attempt to lead a better life. Although she was just a teenager, Park already
09:28 knew that her homeland was a dangerous place to live and that there was a whole other world outside
09:32 of its borders. A reason for this knowledge? James Cameron's Titanic. Banned foreign films
09:37 offered many North Koreans a previously unseen look at the outside world, and for Park, Titanic
09:42 was the best of the bunch. She said that watching the film made her realise something was wrong with
09:47 her country, and that was the catalyst for her life of activism. Stories like this are a reminder
09:52 of the power cinema has to inspire people around the world. It's also proof that Leonardo DiCaprio's
09:58 face is the most powerful force on earth. Number 1 - Almost getting a president killed,
10:02 Taxi Driver. An unhinged cabbie from New York City, Robert De Niro's portrayal of Travis Bickle in
10:08 Taxi Driver is just one of the reasons he is rightly recognised as a legend. But it's not his
10:13 role in the film we're talking about today. At just 12 years old, Jodie Foster was cast in the
10:17 movie as a child prostitute. Look, we said this film was good, we never said it wasn't without
10:22 its problems. Speaking of problematic, John Hinckley Jr. became obsessed with Foster after
10:26 first seeing her in this film. He moved house to be closer to where she was studying, and would
10:30 bombard her with love letters and poetry. Again, it's worth remembering that Foster was an actual
10:35 child when Hinckley first saw her. In his deteriorating mental state, Hinckley decided
10:40 that the best thing he could do to win Foster's favour was shoot the President of the United
10:44 States. And so he did. In 1981, he shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan, all to impress
10:50 the actress. It's one of the maddest stories of all time, and one that almost certainly did not
10:55 come up in the pitch meeting for Taxi Driver. And that concludes our list. If you think we
10:59 missed any, then do let us know in the comments below. And while you're there, don't forget to
11:02 like and subscribe, and tap that notification bell. Also, head over to Twitter and follow us
11:06 there. And I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've
11:10 been Ellie with WhatCulture. I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.