That existed before the film, but it probably did create a lot more believers.
I’m not sure which film really started the whole comic book movie boom, but I’d lay money on the first Tobey McGuire Spider-man movie. There were a few false starts before that (Superman, and Batman had some good starts, but then a few bad movies put a temporary halt to those franchises). The next year after Spider-man 3, gave us Hulk (a false start to the MCU), not too long after, we got Batman Begins, etc.
And then Goodfellas spoiled all that, and overrode the image that ‘The Godfather’ created. /edit Sorry, just reread the premise of the thread and realized you were talking about fiction, and not non-fiction.
Another movie I just thought of – The Lord of the Rings started the trend of film trilogies filmed back to back, and released one per year.
Actually that definitely fits the thread, I imagine Supersize Me at the least reinforced the healthy ideals in a great many people and introduced them to others. As a ‘foodie’ before I saw the film, I only visited McDonald’s when absolutely necessary; twice a year at most. I usually felt ill afterwords although the coffee became a lot better around 2006/7.
I will show Supersize Me once to most of the classes I teach, with subtitles as I teach in developing countries. I remember back in the 80’s when McDonald’s came to the UK and no-one openly questioned whether it was good food or not until the early 2000’s. My family never visited together, as cooking at home is cheaper and my parents’ business was catering. Back in 2006 I was in China and went in to a McDonald’s for a coffee (and to check out how it was there) and they had fucking high chairs with mothers feeding their toddlers fries. I couldn’t stay and left angrily, ranting at any of my Chinese colleagues who would listen.
The local Chinese restaurants, run by families, were full of fresh food, cooked very well, and tasted wonderful - much better than a Chinese restaurant outside of China. McDonald’s was a ‘treat’ among my Chinese colleagues, KFC was upmarket :smack: and Pizza Hut was eaten with a knife and fork, and the one time I went, I and my colleague were brought to the front of the queue by the *door staff *and sat in the window - me being the only laowai (foreigner) in the restaurant.
This was in Wuhan where the local food was very fresh (it’s in Hubei province which has more surface water, lakes, rivers etc. than anywhere else in China), cooked well as I only visited Chinese restaurants for Chinese people - often having to guess what to eat as there were no pictures and I can’t read Chinese - and it’s in roughly the centre of China so has influences from everywhere. Unfortunately other than food Wuhan had no redeeming qualities.
Are you quite certain of that? If so, I’d like to see a cite. I myself did not hear any significant conspiracy “movement” about Moon Landing Hoax until well after Capricorn One came out. I suspect myself that the movie significantly contributed to the belief.
(There are some people who seem to think the “Moon Landing Simulator” scenes in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds are Forever represent a depiction of such a Moon Landing Hoax. But there’s no suggestion of it in the film. I was around then, and saw the film when it first came out. There’s no implication that this is anything but a practice run or simulation. And I don’t recall people talking about such Faked Moon Landings at the time, either. )
Here’s a history of moon landing conspiracy theories:
The first book making the claim that it was a hoax was in 1974. In 1977 a Hare Krishna magazine made the claim that it was a hoax. In the 1970’s it was common for people in Latin America, Asia, and Africa to believe that it was a hoax. This may have been because Cuba was sending teachers abroad that told them it was so. It was probably more common in third world countries than in the U.S. at that point. Right up to today there are people who believe it. I think that the claim started shortly after the moon landing and grew slowly for decades. Capricorn One was only one part of the popularity of the theory.
Can anyone find a link to the results of polls over a long period asking people if they believe in the theory?
I don’t doubt that there were people claiming it in 1974 – there are people who will believe and make up just about any conspiracy theory. The question is whether it was widely believed before Capricorn One in 1978. I certainly don’t recall anything like the widespread attraction of the theory back before that film, or even for some time afterwards.
Note that the first book about it being in 1974 sort of undercuts the suggestion (made in The Big Book of Conspiracies ) that the scene in the 1971 movie Diamonds are Forever was intended to be a depiction of the Moon Landing Hoax in action.
I’ve checked the Google Ngram viewer, but it doesn’t seem to help in finding any references to the Moon Landing Hoax (or similar words). Google Books hasn’t picked up anything before the late 1990s.
X-MEN – with Oscar-caliber actors, yellow-spandex joke, and Stan Lee cameo – had already been a big enough hit as to get a franchise-tastic sequel greenlit well before Tobey Maguire’s first outing as Spidey hit theaters, doing wonders for Hugh Jackman’s career and not so much for James Marsden.
It’s the other way around. The film was financed by Breaker Confections, then a subsidiary of Quaker Oats and now owned by Nestle, which was renamed the Willy Wonka Candy Company just before the film’s release. This tie-in was the reason the title changed. IMHO, the film was a far better product than the Wonka Bar it promoted.
Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang invented Toot Sweets, the candy whistles. But you can get your own.
Tout de suite, get it? 
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” described a model that was already receding into the past in the 50’s, even before the introduction of first-generation anti-psychotics emptied out the institutions characterised by the movie.
I’m too young to remember what effect the movie had on public perceptions, but de-institutionalisation was certainly driven by cost-cutting, and was happening regardless of perception.
The Cadet I knew at West Point knew that people did it for the grave of David Marcus, “as a mark of respect”, but thought it had nothing to do with his faith/culture.
I don’t see Patton mentioned yet. Richard Nixon’s favorite movie.
Nixon watched Patton for the 6th time and the next day decided to invade Cambodia. Which lead to the war spreading deep into Cambodia, Pol Pot and the evil that came with that.