Sorry for the clunky title. I’m sure my explanation will be just as clear.
What prompted me to start this is a film I’m currently watching called Bring Out the Fear . It’s about a couple walking through a forest and getting lost and disoriented. At one point they end up where they started, high on a hill overlooking a seashore and village, except now everything has been replaced by mountainous forest. For whatever reason, I really enjoy this particular effect.
Probably the most famous example of a ruined landmark is the ending of Planet of the Apes and the Statue of Liberty. That is so creepy to me, no matter how many times I see it, it still freaks me a little.
This may not be exactly what the OP is looking for, but I remember watching the movie “Identity Thief” with Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy. There’s an aerial shot where they are driving across a bridge into downtown St Louis from the Illinois side. The bridge in the scene is just south of the Arch, and having grown up in St Louis I knew damn well there was no bridge there. It was a jarring WTF moment for me. (The bridge was actually somewhere in Tennessee and was composited into into the scene.)
The final scene of “Contact” shows Jodie Foster and the Very Large Array with a background of Canyon de Chelly AZ. But, actually the VLA is on the rather stark Plains of St. Augustine.
At the time the wife and I had a B&B in Socorro NM. Lots of folks came to Socorro equipped to explore the canyon country they saw in the movie. We usually heard about it when they returned from a frustrating day in the dessert. A couple even got stuck and had to be rescued.
If we’re talking plain old disaster movie style destruction of landmarks / landscapes, can’t beat John Cusack’s ‘gotta pay the mortgage’ movie 2012.
Possible fun fact I just realized: Cusack may be the only actor to ever star in 2 different movies whose titles are just 4-digit numbers (the other one being the Stephen King adaption 1408).
ETA: I just realized I was still linked to @Shoeless’ post-- I was going to directly reply to that post, changed my intent but didn’t think to delete and recreate my post.
I think the first movie to show destruction of national landmarks in Washington DC was Ray Harryhausen’s Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1957). Before this, you didn’t get to see destruction – it was implied, or you saw the aftermath. But Ray gave us the actual depiction of flying saucers cutting the Washington Monument in two, crashing int the capital dome, and running into the pillars at the Supreme Court. Great, great stuff
They stole the one of the Washington monument for the otherwise laughably bad The Giant Claw.
After this, and with increasingly better effects technology, we got Washington DC destruction in Mars Attacks! (obviously heavily influenced by the Harryhausen film) and Independence Day.
The Deadly Mantis showed us a giant praying mantis perched on the WAshingtin Monument, but not destroying it.
Was it Deep Impact (speaking of the Statue of Liberty) that had the head of the statue rolling along the streets of Manhattan, under water? That statue seems a magnet for disasters.
I don’t recall that, but Cloverfield had the head rolling through the streets, inspired by the poster for Escape from Manhattan (which didn’t have such a scene in it)..
Hitchcock’s Saboteur and the movie Remo Williams had people climbing around on the Statue of Liberty, but no destruction
And that she eventually found her way to Zuma Beach in California.
Liberty also puts in an appearance after New York City was redesigned to fend off the effects of global warming in The Expanse
In the MCU, the statue of liberty has been rebuilt to hold Captain America’s shield, instead of a torch, and has had the green oxidation removed to return it to its original copper.
