influenced

17 Sep

He-Man: How Skeletor’s Meme Status Influenced Netflix Series

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He-Man and the Masters of the Universe’s most popular character should be He-Man, right? His name is in the title! Anyone who’s watched almost any incarnation of the franchise though knows who the real star of the show is. Skeletor, the big bad of the series. Even if you’ve never watched an episode you’ve now doubt seen a gif rendition of Skeletor’s iconic laugh or heard his “Nyeh!” Compilations of his insults have racked up millions of views on YouTube and his face graces endless memes. The character is etched in pop culture history. Jeff Matsuda, Co-Executive Producer of the…

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16 Apr

How Saving Private Ryan Influenced Medal of Honor and Changed Gaming

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The legacies of Medal of Honor and Saving Private Ryan have gone in wildly different directions since the late ’90s. The latter is still thought of as one of the most influential and memorable movies ever made. The former is sometimes referred to as a “Did You Know?” piece of Call of Duty‘s history or maybe just proof the PS1 had a couple of good first-person shooters. It wasn’t always that way, though. There was a time when the fates of Medal of Honor and Saving Private Ryan seemed destined to be forever intertwined. After all, Medal of Honor was…

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04 Feb

How BioShock Infinite Influenced Brittany Cavallaro’s Muse

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This is a guest post from Brittany Cavallaro, author of the Charlotte Holmes series and the just-released Muse, the first book in a YA duology set in an alternate history American monarchy. The first time I played BioShock Infinite was the June when we were so broke that my then-husband started selling his plasma for money. When he wasn’t doing that, he was working as a roofer around Milwaukee while I twiddled my thumbs. I had a job lined up teaching writing that wouldn’t start for another three weeks. No temp agencies would have me. What had begun as a summer of…

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01 Feb

The Little Things: True Stories That Might Have Influenced The Movie

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This article contains The Little Things spoilers. You can read our spoiler-free review here. Despite what those looking for clear answers after that ending might hope, The Little Things is not based on any specific true story or serial killer investigation. It was a 1993 screenplay penned by writer-director John Lee Hancock. However, there are similarities to several well known cases. The film even mentions the Night Stalker, aka Richard Ramirez, all while stopping short of naming names or committing to a specific lethal predator in its own yarn. This is by design. In a recent interview with The Wrap,…

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16 Jan

How The Mandalorian Influenced Marvel’s WandaVision

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While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has, over the past 13 years, gone from milestone to milestone, churning out billion-dollar babies like Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Captain America: Civil War and the highest grossing movie of all time, Avengers: Endgame, the company’s stablemate under the Disney corporate umbrella — Lucasfilm — has stumbled. Lucasfilm’s most recent theatrical entries in its iconic space opera franchise, Solo: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, were respectively an outright flop and the lowest-grossing entry in the Sequel Trilogy. Then came The Mandalorian, the first live-action Star Wars TV series to…

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27 Oct

How The Twilight Zone Influenced Are You Afraid of the Dark?

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In the last half decade, D.J. McHale has noticed a significant uptick in interest in Are You Afraid of the Dark?, the Nickelodeon anthology series he co-created nearly 30 years ago. Though he spent much of his career as a television writer, director, and producer, he’s had a successful second act as an author of sci-fi, fantasy, and supernatural novels. When fans of his novels put it together that he also produced all 91 episodes of the original run of the Nickelodeon classic, he started receiving an outpour of appreciation.  “Suddenly this wave of social media came to me about…

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04 Aug

How Marvel’s Kevin Feige Influenced the First X-Men Movie

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Back in 1999 as the first X-Men film was developed and produced, executive producer Lauren Shuler Donner promoted a 26-year-old assistant in her office to the role of associate producer on the movie, thanks to his encyclopedic knowledge of the Marvel Comics universe from which the X-Men had sprung. That associate producer’s name was Kevin Feige, and based off his work on X-Men, he was hired by then-Marvel Studios head Avi Arad as his second in command. From that point on, Feige became Marvel’s president of production in 2007, and was eventually named head of Marvel Studios after the company…

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23 Jun

Stars Recall How Joel Schumacher Influenced Their Careers

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After battling cancer for a year, Joel Schumacher passed away this week at the age of 80, and some of the more famous people he helped in his long career have been remembering the different ways his work, friendship and support affected them. Schumacher directed a number of memorable films over the decades, including St. Elmo’s Fire, The Lost Boys, Flatliners, Falling Down, Tigerland and A Time to Kill. In a statement, Matthew McConaughey has opened up about his breakout role in that 1996 John Grisham adaptation, crediting Schumacher with altering his professional trajectory against the odds. “Joel not only…

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19 May

How Gone with the Wind Influenced Game of Thrones

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How many children did Scarlett O’Hara have? That’s the question George R.R. Martin always raises when asked about the differences between his literary series, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” and HBO’s television adaptation, Game of Thrones. He mentioned it on his blog when defending the TV series surpassing the books’ narrative in 2015, and he repeated it more than once in 2019 when Game of Thrones ended, seemingly by revealing the final betrayals and tragedies Martin has planned for the novels. So just how many children did Scarlett have? For those who’ve never read the book or seen the…

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