I’ve been kicking around this idea in my head for a few months now. It would take forever to do obviously but everything starts with one step. I was thinking of someday creating a master list of movie watch order. I mean you already have movie watch order lists of movies in a collection like the marvel cinematic universe watch order list. Things like that.
But what about a list that would encompass all movies? Or at least movies that either…
A. Reference another movie…
Or
B. Spoil another movie…
Let’s take the first example, I recently rewatched Shrek 2 and there are so many references to other movies. They do parodies of scenes, they do similar lines, … There are scenes that make fun of scenes from other movies like Lord of the Rings and Mission Impossible…
So in order to fully get all of the references if you wanted to enjoy Shrek 2 to the max amount, it would help if you saw all the movies that it referenced first. That way you would get as many references as possible, understand?
But a lot of movies do this obviously, tons of movies reference other movies so this list would be thousands and hundreds of thousands and maybe even millions of movies along.
And some movies only exist to parody other movies like The scary movie franchise. You would have to first watch at least 15 or 20 scary movies before you get all the references in the first Scary Movie. But that would be the point of the list. To list exactly what all movies you should watch before you see the first Scary Movie.
And not all of the movies would be movies that you would expect either, I recently rewatched Scary Movie 4 which stars Leslie Nielsen, and there’s this point where he comes through a door… And I’m just going to spoil this because it’s an old movie now and it’s probably not that popular enough for anybody to be rushing out to go see it… But he comes to the door and knocks the bad guy out down a hole and as he’s stepping through the door he says the same line that he said in Airplane. Something like “good luck, I just want you to know that we are all counting on you…”
And that is so fucking hilarious. How many people would get that reference? I mean you would have to have seen Airplane and know of that line in order to fully appreciate it when it happens in Scary Movie 4. I don’t feel like somebody who would know about it would appreciate it as fully.
…
So, there’s that. Movie references. That is one reason to make a list like this over time…
… But there’s another reason.
Movies that spoil other movies. I have seen three movies in the last week that have spoiled other movies so it’s always better to watch those movies first before they are spoiled forever. And these movies do not do anything nice like warn you that a spoiler is coming up…
… For example, in Deadpool 2… They spoiled two movies. One of them was Cool Runnings. So it’s obviously smart to watch Cool Runnings first before Deadpool 2…if you mean to watch it at all that is… That way it’s not spoiled.
And then I watched Ant-Man just earlier today, the marvel movie Ant-Man. And it spoils Titanic, the one with Leonardo DiCaprio. I mean it out right gives all the spoilers away. I mean I know it’s hard to spoil Titanic because everybody knows the ship is going to sink but there are specifics to the 1996 Titanic that are only found in that movie at the end and two of the biggest ones are spoiled.
And then I watched Hot Fuzz the other day for the fifth time or so… Great movie, but it spoils Point Break… And I’m talking major spoilers, I mean it even shows the spoiler of Point Break on the screen, the characters are watching the ending and it shows the spoiler on the screen.
So obviously you want to watch Point Break before you watch Hot Fuzz..
These three movies cannot be the only movies that spoil other movies. I’m sure there are tons of examples that I would love you to list some if you remember some. I’m sure there are movies out there that spoil movies like Star Wars (I think there’s a line in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure that might do this) or that spoils The Wizard of Oz…
… Not that The wizard of Oz is ever going to be spoiled for anyone because I don’t know of a single person who has not seen it yet (I’m fairly sure somebody in this topic is going to now say they have not seen it)… But you get the point.
So I’ve often thought that a fun idea would be starting a Master movies watching order list so you can fully appreciate all references in a movie or at least not get spoiled by ones that spoil others.
Feel free to add anything that you want, any examples, any references, any suggestions, any thoughts, anything.