Your life may not be a TV show, but you're still being lied to.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Lies about movies used to spread like wildfire, and without any official way to disprove it,
00:05anyone from a sneaky kid on the playground to that drunk guy in a bar could spout nonsense
00:10about your favourite films, and for all you knew, they'd be right.
00:14Sure, there's an alternate ending to Raiders of the Last Ark, where the Ark burns the US
00:18logo off the box it's contained in.
00:20Oh, of course, Blair Witch is based on a true story.
00:23Now, with the internet at our fingertips, you'd think it'd be easy to verify what's
00:27truth and what's a stinking lie.
00:29Oh, how naive.
00:31So with that in mind then, I'm Ellie, with WhatCulture, here with 10 Lies About Famous
00:36Movies You Probably Believe.
00:38Number 10.
00:39Snow White was the first feature-length animation
00:42Snow White is the film that started it all.
00:45Disney had already found success with Mickey Mouse, but this was something bigger.
00:49The studio's first full-length animation was a major step forward for the company and
00:53the medium, grafting many of the conventions that remain in children's films to this
00:58day.
00:59The truth?
01:00There had been plenty of animations before.
01:02It shouldn't cheapen Snow White of its achievement in terms of the impact it had on cinema, but
01:07it really wasn't the first.
01:09That honour goes to Pinto Colvig, whose feature Creation was released in 1915, a whole 22
01:16years before Snow White.
01:18Like many smaller films from the time, it's been lost, presumably forever, but that doesn't
01:23hide the fact it, along with the handful of silhouette or stop-motion films that came
01:27out in the intervening years, beat Snow White to the punch.
01:31It's unlikely there was any bitterness, though.
01:33Colvig went on to design the Disney logo and voice Goofy, so clearly he was welcome at
01:38the house of Mouse.
01:39Number 9.
01:40Man of Steel
01:41It was out of character for Superman to kill Zod.
01:45Man of Steel was, to put it lightly, a mess, made more disappointing because there was
01:49clearly an interesting deconstruction of a character we all knew, hidden under the washed-out
01:54colour palette.
01:55It performed well, but not well enough to stop Warner Bros going all-in and enlisting
02:00Batman to save the sequel.
02:02One of the biggest complaints from audiences was the relentless, mind-numbing action, all
02:06of which culminated in Superman snapping General Zod's neck.
02:10A travesty, this was one of the worst changes to the mythology Zack Snyder and co had made.
02:16But the truth?
02:17He's done it before.
02:18There were a lot of changes made to the mythology of Kal-El that felt forced, just to give the
02:23story a new feel, but killing Zod isn't one of them.
02:27It's Batman, not Superman, who has that no-killing rule.
02:30Go back to Superman 2.
02:32The climax of the film has our hero depower Zod and his followers, before throwing the
02:36General down a cavern in the Fortress of Solitude.
02:39If that isn't murder, then the 80s clearly had a different moral code.
02:43Man of Steel made a lot of mistakes in trying to update the character, but the killing of
02:47an almost unstoppable villain who's stated he'll destroy the Earth isn't one of them.
02:538.
02:54Harry Potter
02:55J.K.
02:56Rowling told Alan Rickman Snape's big twist.
02:58The undoubted hero of the Harry Potter series is Severus Snape, the seemingly one-note potions
03:04master who, through a series of increasing reveals such as he was a Death Eater, Harry's
03:08dad bullied him, became the most well-rounded character in the films.
03:13This all culminated in the final moment reveal that all along he'd been in love with Harry's
03:17mother, turning seven books and eight movies worth of arsehole behaviour into hidden compassion.
03:24Of course, as the legend goes, Alan Rickman knew all this already.
03:28To convince him to take the role, series creator J.K.
03:30Rowling had told him all this way back at the start, but the truth is, she vaguely hinted
03:36at it once.
03:37We know Rowling does indeed plan ahead, with the first totally child-aimed book containing
03:42plenty of hints to later developments.
03:45Dumbledore's chocolate frog card mentions Dark Wizard Grindelwald, but more than that,
03:49we know she and publisher Bloomsbury were very tight on secrecy.
03:54Which is why it shouldn't be surprising that while Rowling knew Snape would always be on
03:58Team Potter, Rickman certainly didn't.
04:02Number 7.
04:03Batman Begins
04:04The Joker card tease is a direct foreshadowing for The Dark Knight.
04:08With films like The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel so forward-thinking, planning ahead
04:13at the behest of the story at hand, it feels strange for a big blockbuster to not be setting
04:18up whatever may be down the line.
04:20So if a slight nod to the fans is made, we immediately jump on it as some deep foreshadowing.
04:25When Batman Begins, a film whose villains were previously untouched on the big screen
04:29and thus new to many audiences, dropped the Joker card in the final scene, it was clear
04:35to everyone that we were going to get someone a little more familiar the next time around.
04:40But the truth is, it was a little wink to fans, nothing more.
04:43Although what the card suggested would go on to be perfectly explored in The Dark Knight,
04:48Nolan never intended it to be anything more than something to get audiences thinking.
04:53At the point the film finishes, Batman has just established himself as the protector
04:57of Gotham, and a good visual cue to cement this is to show that the stories we're more
05:01familiar with from previous TV and film incarnations are just around the corner.
05:06Nolan is notorious for only ever focusing on one film at a time, so even if the card
05:12was intended to be something more concrete for the series, in his mind, he was definitely
05:17going to be the guy exploring it.
05:196.
05:20Avatar
05:21James Cameron was making Avatar for a decade.
05:24In an alternate reality of cinema, we got Avatar ten years early.
05:28An idea he'd written a treatment for back in 1994, James Cameron's plan was to make
05:33the film immediately following his equally massive Titanic, but the limitations of the
05:38time meant he had to first work on getting the technology up to scratch.
05:42When the film finally arrived in late 2009, it was reported the director had been working
05:47on it for over ten years, making this a stupendous achievement.
05:51But the truth is, he kept pretty busy in those intervening years.
05:55You know this claim is greatly exaggerated when Cameron actually released a film in the
06:00interim, Ghosts of the Abyss, a documentary about the wreck of the Titanic.
06:05In fact, it was only after Abyss in 2003 that he began pushing on Avatar, and even then
06:10he was looking at other projects.
06:13The film wasn't greenlit and thus provided with money to properly push forward on the
06:17tech until late 2005, so in reality, he was making the film for four years.
06:235.
06:24Psycho
06:25The shower scene contains no actual nudity or violence.
06:28Psycho was such a progressive film that you could make a movie just about its clashes
06:32with the censors, and it'd be a damn sight better than the muddled Hitchcock.
06:37The first film to show a toilet flushing and also dealing with a psychological subject
06:41that could easily be sexually misconstrued, oh, spoiler, the killer's a guy dressing
06:45up as his dead mother.
06:47The biggest point of contention was the shower scene.
06:50A series of rapid cuts depicting the stabbing of Marion Crane, the sequence is a masterclass
06:56of suggestion.
06:57Despite what you may think, you never see any nudity or actual stabbing, but the truth
07:02is there's one shot that shows the stabbing.
07:05The claim, which was mainly made to get the film past the censors, that the shower scene
07:09is gore-free is easy to state when proving otherwise requires re-watching the whole film,
07:15which was difficult pre-home video.
07:17Nowadays, we can go through the Blu-ray frame by frame and see that actually there's one
07:22split second shot of the knife penetrating Marion's skin.
07:26Very slight and devoid of gore, it's subconsciously a key contributor to the scene's shock factor.
07:32Number 4.
07:33The Truman Show
07:34There's an official psychological condition named after the Truman Show.
07:39The Truman Show is about a guy whose entire life is in fact a TV show.
07:44His hometown is contained in a massive dome, his friends and family are actors, and the
07:49obsession with branded items is product placement.
07:52Everything that happens is overseen by a control booth in the sky, and it's all built so he'll
07:57never find out the truth.
07:59If that gets you questioning your own reality, then you'll not be surprised to hear there's
08:02an official name for that, the Truman Show Delusion.
08:06But the truth is, it's a colloquialism.
08:09The word official may be a bit misleading.
08:11The Truman Show Delusion is simply the name attributed to an existing condition.
08:16It doesn't actually appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
08:21It's the equivalent of calling filicide the Star Wars condition.
08:24The notion of a person's life being part of a fabricated reality is an old one, and the
08:29TV show's specific subgroup formed part of a Twilight Zone episode, as well as sharing
08:35many elements in sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint, people believing it is
08:40just an extension of the typical delusions of grandeur.
08:44Number 3.
08:45Planet of the Apes
08:46Planet of the Apes is Earth.
08:48The ending of Planet of the Apes is so iconic that giving it away barely constitutes a spoiler.
08:54The film's final image is even on the cover of the DVD.
08:58But the truth is, it was planned to be a different planet.
09:01It may seem like an attempt to replicate the original's shock value, but the twist at
09:06the end of Tim Burton's remake, Mark Wahlberg returns from a non-Earth planet dominated
09:11by apes to discover the same thing has happened to our home, is actually much more in keeping
09:16with the original concept.
09:17Pierre Ball's novel, off which the whole series is based, has Earth and the titular
09:22planet be two very distinct worlds, both on which the apes rise.
09:27It was only in early drafts of the film, written by Twilight Zone's Rod Serling, that the
09:31twist worked its way into the story, changing the scope of the franchise forever.
09:37Number 2.
09:38Titanic
09:39Titanic is an inaccurate account of events.
09:42The main criticism, exacerbated by the centenary of the ship's famous sinking a couple of
09:47years back, tends to be aimed at Rose and Jack.
09:51Not their dialogue, in the broad scope of the film it works, but the fact that they
09:54didn't exist, taking focus from the real tragic events.
09:59Couple that with claims that the steerage passengers were never locked down below decks
10:02and it all looks like one big expensive fabrication.
10:07But the truth is, outside of character-specific events, the sinking is spot on.
10:11Yes, those points are solid examples of James Cameron adding drama to already dramatic events,
10:17but for the most part, his take on the sinking is, for the time, pretty exact.
10:22The one big mistake the film makes is that it's now been determined the ship never
10:26stood vertical in the water.
10:28But as that was only figured out by a team containing Cameron, no less, after the movie's
10:33release, we'll let them off.
10:35Number 1.
10:37Blade Runner has lots of very different versions.
10:40Is Deckard a replicant?
10:41It's one of the biggest unanswered sci-fi movie questions.
10:45Depending on which version of Blade Runner you watch, you get a different answer.
10:49Confusing audiences and critics alike upon initial release, the film has since become
10:54regarded as a classic, noteworthy not only for its visual style, which is still imitated
11:00to this day, but the fact that there's so many different cuts of the film out there
11:04for fans to pore over for clues.
11:07But the truth is, it's all clever marketing.
11:09Do you know what other film has countless cuts?
11:12Every freaking film ever made.
11:14Few films, however, have the same studio interference as Blade Runner that allow for such a big
11:19marketing trick.
11:21Aside from two different director's cuts, one from 1992 and one from 2007, all the other
11:27versions are basically the same.
11:29They're either from different stages of production, or feature slight cuts for international
11:35TV release.
11:36Ultimately, it boils down to three key differences.
11:38Whether there's a voiceover, original release only, whether there's a happy ending, all
11:43pre-1992 releases, and whether there's the bit with the unicorn, the two director's
11:49cuts.
11:50Everything else is minor, and while interesting from a behind-the-scenes perspective, they
11:54don't deserve the mystique they've been given over the years.
11:57And yes, for our money, he really is a replicant.
12:00And that concludes our list.
12:02If you can think of any more that we missed, then do let us know in the comments below.
12:06And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
12:09Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias
12:13just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
12:16I've been Ellie with WhatCulture, I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real
12:20soon.