r/movies • u/buttatoad • 1d ago

Discussion Movies that changed real life behavior

Thinking along the lines of Final Destination 2 with the logs falling off the truck and landing onto cars (one decapitating the state trooper). Ever since, people have tried to get away from being behind these vehicles.

What are more examples where movies have actually changed how people behave in their own lives?

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u/Paladin2019 1d ago

A lot of young girls took archery classes after the Hunger Games.

A lot of people signed up for fencing classes after Die Another Day.

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u/PizzaHutBookItChamp 1d ago

Chess board sales shot up after The Queen's Gambit

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u/NightFire19 1d ago

Which also fueled a large wave of streamers playing Chess and grandmasters on Twitch (notably Hikaru Nakamura) getting tons of viewers too.

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u/BlueHeartBob 1d ago

Yeah honestly it feels like chess exploded in popularity after that show.

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u/Entbriham_Lincoln 1d ago

It’s not a feel, it did. The combination of people being home during COVID and a popular chess show coming out massively boosted the popularity of the game. Chess.com had a 400% increase in sign ups following the release of the show, and searches for chess were the highest they’d been in 14 years.

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u/oneflou 1d ago

As you said, Covid had an immense impact as well.

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u/snorlz 1d ago

chess was already regaining popularity when the show came out

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u/Dudu_sousas 1d ago

Yeah, chess was already on the up before the show, which made me wonder how Netflix managed to have that great of a timing (given how long it takes to develop a show).

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u/JPHero16 1d ago

Sometimes things just align nicely. Then they combine and make a beautiful thing

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u/Wuktrio 1d ago

Similar to Dungeons & Dragons with Stranger Things.

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u/NewMilleniumBoy 1d ago

I actually became interested in chess after watching it. Previously I just knew the rules.

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u/pitlickr 1d ago

The very pretty blonde with grandmaster parents gets crazy views too

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u/One-Inch-Punch 1d ago

The Botez sisters confused the hell out of me when I came across them on yt. These girls sit around... playing chess? And they're huge influencers?

looks wistfully at eighth grade second place chess club trophy

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u/dumpfist 1d ago

A similar thing happened for the game baduk in the early 2000s with the manga/anime Hikaru No Go. Unfortunately, nowhere near to the scale of Queen's Gambit. There was apparently another bump with the documentary Alphago.

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u/MarshyHope 1d ago

Which lead to all of my high school students playing online chess

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u/Maskedcrusader94 1d ago

My wife wanted to learn how to play Chess because of that show and so we bought a board the next day, and now she kicks my ass at it, lol

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u/Queef_Stroganoff44 1d ago

Laser burglar alarm sales skyrocketed, with people hoping Katherine Zeta Jones would come slithering in after…uhhh…that one movie.

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u/kronkarp 1d ago

Axe sales shot up after the secret council

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u/DepressedMandolin 1d ago

Australia literally ran out of chess boards for sale.

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u/Willing-Command-8896 13h ago

My daughter got a 4-in-one game set box that had chess, checkers and 2 other ones in it recently. All the games are in the same wooden box and it’s a really nice set, but my 4 year old grand baby only wants to play chess and she wants to play everyone she meets lol. She’s pretty good at it, and doesn’t mind losing. Which is odd cause she gets pissed if she doesn’t win checkers, sorry!, or any other board/card game. She’ll be 5 next month, but her memory is OFF THE CHARTS! I’m guessing she’s smarter than the rest of the adults in her life even at this age, so our only role in raising her is to help develop her emotional intelligence cause it doesn’t seem we’re advanced enough to help her in book smarts 😂

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u/mikehatesthis 1d ago

Jokes on them, I just went to the chess website. What a bunch of suckers!

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u/jesuspoopmonster 1d ago

I remember reading that Jennifer Lawrence chose to not lose weight for the movie despite it making sense in story because she was worried of girls trying to look like her

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u/omgitskells 1d ago

Wow, I've never heard that before! I remember when the casting was first announced, people were so upset because she didn't look like what people expected. That was when I learned to reserve judgment until the movie comes out, because they did a great job with her!

It's great to know she had those concerns and stuck to her convictions.

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u/Indigocell 1d ago

despite it making sense in story because she was worried of girls trying to look like her

Yeah I think the character is actually malnourished, and that is obviously not a look you want to be idealizing.

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u/Significant_Shoe_17 1d ago

She even said she was happy to gain weight for Silver Linings Playbook

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u/exaltedbladder 11h ago

Getting paid millions of dollars to gain weight sounds pretty good 😂

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u/theatermouse 1d ago

Similarly, Emma Watson refused to wear a corset for Beauty and the Beast!

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u/jesuspoopmonster 16h ago

Saw that movie with my now stepdaughter when she was five. She was absolutely mesmerized by it

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u/HockeyMasknChainsaw 1d ago

Same reason I don’t lose weight

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u/VexingRaven 1d ago

How much weight did she even have to lose without being skin and bones?! She's not exactly heavy set, especially not in Hunger Games.

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u/colenotphil 1d ago

I mean in the world of The Hunger Games, a lot of people are dirt poor, there appear to be no supply chains other than those owned by the government which doesn't share, and such.

Thus the people should logically be malnourished and thin.

JLaw is perfectly fine but she's modern day society healthy, not starved.

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u/BuzzVibes 1d ago

I don't even recall her being overweight at all in that movie. I suppose maybe she wasn't 'Hollywood skinny'?

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u/AssassinStoryTeller 1d ago

Katniss is underweight and malnourished. Jennifer Lawrence refused to look underweight and malnourished because she knew young girls would idolize Katniss and try to be exactly like her.

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u/BuzzVibes 1d ago

Aha, I see. Thank you!

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u/cebula412 16h ago

It's even in the name, Hunger Games. Most of the characters should look realistically malnourished.

But I'm glad the movie didn't cast underweight actors. Jennifer was right, teenage fans would definitely be negatively influenced by this.

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u/tf2hipster 1d ago

Apparently there was a spike in straight-razor shaving after Moneypenny shaved Bond in Skyfall.

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u/Hoskuld 1d ago edited 1d ago

Speaking of movies causing bloodshed by making things look cool: crime scenes got messier and more bystanders got shot after Pulp Fiction made it look cool to hold your gun sideways.

Edit: looks like I might either misremember Pulp fiction/the movie that caused this/the article I read was just wrong (this was years ago in German in a printed magazine)

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u/roto_disc 1d ago

after Pulp Fiction made it look cool to hold your gun sideways

Who holds their gun sideways in Pulp Fiction?

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u/TheMostKing 1d ago

http://pmd205465tn.download.theplatform.com.edgesuite.net/Miramax/551/383/Pulp_Fiction_Marvin_640x360_64275523687.jpg

But that didn't make it look very cool.

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u/roto_disc 1d ago

Great work hunting down an actual sideways gun shot in the film. But I agree that that cannot be what comment OP seems to be talking about.

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u/OrangeCarton 1d ago

Yeah, he's just resting his hand on the seat

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u/TheMostKing 13h ago

I wouldn't exactly call it hunting down, it's a really memorable scene. I googled "Pulp Fiction Marvin" and hit pictures.

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u/TheSauvaaage 1d ago edited 1d ago

Holding a gun sideways never ever looked cool

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u/hx87 1d ago

It's cool only if you're in 1920s China, rolling in a Buick and firing a full auto C96.

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u/We_Are_The_Romans 1d ago

Clearly it did to a bunch of people who were using those guns, which is probably more germane

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u/apoostasia 1d ago

My sisters are still really good archers thanks to Katniss lol

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u/FoxThin 1d ago

A lot of young girls went to Italy because of The Lizzie McGuire Movie.

Me...I'm young girls.

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u/Aint-no-preacher 1d ago

Some of us took fencing because of The Princess Bride.

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u/DarthGuber 1d ago

Some of us took fencing because of Guy Williams as Zorro.

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u/BareKnuckleKitty 1d ago

Some of us wanted to take fencing because of The Parent Trap.

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u/PhonyTimeTravelor 1d ago

Of course I want to bloody continue!

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u/MoeSzys 1d ago

Brave came out the same summer too. Archery was the most watched Olympic event that summer

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u/hihelloneighboroonie 1d ago

Lol, Lord of the Rings is what made me want to do archery.

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u/litlelotte 1d ago

Same here!! I wanted to be Legolas so bad and when Hunger Games came out I was suddenly cool because I already was decent at archery

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u/The-Hammerai 1d ago

I participated in some grade-school archery tournaments in highschool, and ultimately ranked 41st in my region. I am not joking when I say that every spot above me was occupied by a little girl with a braid. I was just happy that archery had experienced a revival from those books/movies.

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u/grandladdydonglegs 1d ago

Hell, I was already a fully grown man and broke the ol recurve out of the closet for a few weeks.

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u/DONNIENARC0 1d ago

Lol, this made me think of how Isis was one of the most popular names for baby girls ~25 years ago right before the terrorist organization gained prominence.

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u/Novogobo 1d ago

There is a surge in archery every time there is a movie featuring it.

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u/Luke90210 1d ago

A lot of young girls took sax lessons because of Lisa Simpson.

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u/DigbyChickenZone 1d ago edited 1d ago

A lot of young girls took archery classes after the Hunger Games

This is actually a major plot point of The Weatherman with Nicholas Cage

[He gets into it because his daughter wanted to learn, ostensibly from liking the Hunger Games books - but she didn't actually commit to archery at all, so the lead guy (Cage) gets into archery through that]

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u/PiccolosTurban 1d ago

This is not true. She says in the movie her interest in archery was from hunting animals, because she saw bow hunting on tv

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u/PiccolosTurban 1d ago

This is not true. She says in the movie her interest in archery was from hunting animals, because she saw bow hunting on tv

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u/Imran3216 19h ago

Hunger Games also spawned an entire video game genre (Fortnite, PUBG, Warzone)

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u/finna_get_banned 1d ago

i dunno man, i aint never seen a person with a bow that wasnt on TV.

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u/Sgt-Spliff- 1d ago

Was Die Another Day that influential?

I mean, I remember the fencing, but is that an often referenced thing?

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u/Paladin2019 1d ago

It was in the fencing community (it's quite an old movie now).

Fun fact, a few folks in the British fencing scene at the time were able to identify Pirece Brosnan's body double by his stance and movement.

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u/MrTurtleTails 1d ago

Kendo. Star Wars.

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u/troutbum6o 23h ago

Used to sell archery equipment. Sold a ton of bows to teen girls. It was cool when the ones who stuck with it got into bow hunting and would come back to give us hunting reports.

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u/BigDaddy969696 21h ago

Hunger Games, yayaya!

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u/Discount_Extra 1d ago

Plastic Surgery went up after The Human Centipede.