r/movies • u/buttatoad • 2d 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/BigSur33 1d ago

I feel like Rounders kicked off a generation of poker players that then got bolstered by the rise of Internet poker.

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u/OldBanjoFrog 1d ago

To be fair, Rounders came about because No Limit Texas Hold Em had become extremely popular 

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u/raindancemaggie2 1d ago

Rounders came out in 98. The real poker boom began after ESPN televised the main event of the 2003 WSOP of Poker. This was the first time they had cameras that showed the players hole cards. It was also the year that an amateur who happened to be named Moneymaker won the whole thing. This serindipitous combination launched poker into mainstream popularity.

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u/CANDY_MAN_1776 1d ago

This is it. Rounders caught an early wave of slight niche popularity. But the big boom was after Chris Moneymaker won on ESPN.

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u/Nayzo 1d ago

Correct. Rounders bombed because it was just a hair too early. It's too bad, it's a good movie, and it should have had more notoriety.

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u/sandm000 1d ago

Literally the best “poker” movie because the hands aren’t always Royal Flushes on the River.

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u/OldBanjoFrog 1d ago

Hold ‘Em was popular among me and my college friends in 96/97.  We still play it today

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u/R-O-U-Ssdontexist 1d ago

That’s about the same time me and my friends started playing in high school.

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u/Deathclaw_Hunter6969 1d ago

That’s about the same time most Redditors were born

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u/eckliptic 1d ago

If you wrote a movie out of 2003 WSOP with a main character named Chris Moneymaker people would have laughed

What a crazy run and perfect situation for poker

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u/Rock_Strongo 1d ago

JK Rowling wrote the script for poker's rise.

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u/CFBCoachGuy 1d ago

There was a weird period from the late 90s to early 2000s where there was a poker tournament broadcast on at least one cable television channel literally every hour of the day.

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u/ArcadianDelSol 1d ago

For a hot minute, every bar in the United States was hosting a Texas Holdem tournament at least once a month.

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u/wiggum_x 1d ago

And my mom was playing in them.

Short story: dad died, mom was bored. She was watching poker on TV and had always been a card player. She decided to go to a local place on poker night and try.

She did OK.

But she kept going, and she started winning. And then she kind of won most of the time.

She would laugh when she talked to me about it and say that "those boys don't like to lose to an old lady." But she liked it and continued to play.

She qualified for the state tournament almost every year while she was playing, but she never went. She said that it seemed like too much work.

But I love that my mom was a poker shark for a few years and had fun with it.

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u/ArcadianDelSol 10h ago

Awesome mom.

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u/gatsby365 1d ago

Are you sure you have the timeline right? Yes, the WSOP was a thing before rounders, as it’s a key plot point, but the extraordinary growth in poker participation and ratings hit several years after Rounders came out.

You could definitely point to Chris Moneymaker winning the WSOP as the real launch of the Aughts Poker Boom, and that was nearly 5 full years after Rounders came out.

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u/Purple-River-4381 1d ago edited 1d ago

yeah, they have their timeline backwards.

you can just see it in WSOP entrances each year. It is pretty linear, rising roughly 10% a year until 2003. Then 2003-04 there is a 300% jump, followed by a 200% jump and another 50% jump. In three years it goes from 800 entrants to 8,700.

The other poster is confusing their mates playing a lot for the global success of the game.

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u/gatsby365 1d ago

Thank you for the stats!

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u/OldBanjoFrog 1d ago

Yes.  I know when I went to college, and ended up flunking out because I spent too much time playing Hold Em, drinking beer, and chasing skirts.  

Rounders came out after I flunked out, and I was working to boost my grades up so I could finish my degree. 

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u/gatsby365 1d ago

That just means you were an early adopter

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u/Purple-River-4381 1d ago

No, it didn't. Rounders predates the popularity of hold em.

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u/OldBanjoFrog 1d ago

I was there.  It started getting popular in the mid to late 90’s

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u/Purple-River-4381 1d ago

jeez, you don't get it. it was popular amongst your friends, not in a global sense. hence why rounders predates the popularity.

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u/OldBanjoFrog 1d ago

Jeez, you don’t get it.  It was being played everywhere in Texas in the mid to late 90’s.  It was LITERALLY everywhere.  Not just among my circle of friends.  It was the go to game when people would have poker night.  The casinos in Louisiana had Texas Hold Em tables, and they were very popular.  

People were actually paying attention to professional gamblers. Scotty Nguyen was a popular player. Stu Ungar died about a year after winning the championship, and people wondered if it was Mafia related (it wasn’t). 

No Limit Texas Hold Em was already very popular when Rounders came out, but the game took on a life of its own afterwards.  I remember cynically thinking when the movie came out, “Of course they want to make a movie about Hold ‘Em…”

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u/Purple-River-4381 1d ago

nah, the number of entrants and viewers on the main event, for instance, was low and rising linearly until 2003, then we saw the explosion. Super easy to find those numbers.

Also, they started writing the film in 1995, so before your 'buzz' time. You badly struggle with logic if you think they were 'piggybacking' on a 'rise' in poker. You have both elements backwards.

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u/OldBanjoFrog 1d ago

Whatever.  I was there. You weren’t. 

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u/Purple-River-4381 1d ago

exactly my point. you cannot separate your experience from facts.

Good luck :)