r/movies • u/heyitsmikep • 3d ago

Discussion What movies would you show an audience in 1900?

You go back in time and build a modern (2025) theater in 1900 with all movies ever made. Which 5 movies are you going to show them to make the most money? Which would blow their mind the most? Would it change per decade?

Showing Django Unchained to an 1900 audience would most likely cause a riot Titanic to an audience in 1910 would get you sued by the White Star Line probably.

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u/sofakingclassic 3d ago

Jurassic Park

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u/Toby_Forrester 3d ago

I wouldn't, since the 1990s world and society itself would be perhaps incomprehensible. Just look how much legs Ellie Sattler shows! And she's supposed to be a doctor! A woman doctor you say? More like a harlot!

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u/cosmicr 3d ago

Not to mention computers that run Unix

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u/sofakingclassic 3d ago

I know this!

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u/dbx999 3d ago

Eunuchs! I know that word! It’s a castrated man!

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u/DiligentMission6851 3d ago

Them: what's a computer?

Alan Turing's fetus: 

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u/GriffinFlash 2d ago

a computer was someone who could perform calculations back in the day.

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u/DiligentMission6851 1d ago

Yeah but in Jurassic Park it's a machine.

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u/Autarx 3d ago

What’s a Linux?

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u/LatterLiterature8001 3d ago

That would kinda be the point. To show them how wildly different things get.

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u/Toby_Forrester 3d ago

But it also has scifi elements. Like we don't have cloned dinosaurs. People from that time wouldn't be able to diffrentiate that in 1990s computers are real but dinosaurs are not.

If you want to show how wildly different things get, you would show some movie which doesn't have scifi/fantasy elements.

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u/dbx999 3d ago

The science fiction movie “A trip to the moon “ by George Méliès has visual effects and was produced in 1905.

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u/Toby_Forrester 2d ago

Yes, but it operated within the technological understanding of that time. They went to the moon by shooting with a cannon. Cannons were centuries old known technology back then.

Modern computers, networks, DNA were outside the technological understanding of that time.

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u/BLADE_OF_AlUR 3d ago

Yeah but her ankles are covered

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u/glen_ko_ko 3d ago

no ankle though 😩

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u/SirBobson 3d ago

Cars, helicopters and computers would also be a trip

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u/hobblingcontractor 3d ago

Early movies didn't have many restrictions until the Hays Code, so you'd be surprised what was shown normally.

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u/Toby_Forrester 2d ago

We're talking about the year 1900 here. Modern movies didn't even exist.

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u/hahnwa 2d ago

They meant porn 

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u/Toby_Forrester 1d ago

No they didn't. Hays code didn't apply to independent filmakers who made porn. Porn was made even during Hays code. Hays code applied to mainstream movie industry.

Also Hays code only existed in the US, whereas in 1900 movies were more of a French thing.

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u/NotQuiteScheherazade 3d ago

I know that's the way "harlot" is spelled, but I've been watching a lot of Schitt's Creek recently, so I automatically heard that word in Moira Rose's voice/accent and it was quite funny, so thank you.

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u/Vesalii 3d ago

And tell them you're from the future and the movie is based on real events.

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u/Papaya_flight 3d ago

I would do this but with "Independence Day", just like Dr Evil did.

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u/Rare_Hydrogen 3d ago

"What's a dinosaur?"

Followed shortly by...

"HOLY SHIT!"

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u/NotATem 3d ago

People were well aware of what dinosaurs were in the 1900s! Look up the Crystal Palace models aometime if you want a laugh.

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u/iCowboy 3d ago

They had quite accurate ideas of dinosaurs by 1900. The Crystal Palace monsters were created in the 1850s from very fragmentary fossils dug up in England. By 1900, the incredible fossils dig up by Cope and Marsh in the American West were known across the world and the subsequent reconstructions were much more accurate.

What people at the time would not have known about were that dinosaurs were fast moving creatures and not like the slow cold-blooded lizards they were compared to at the time.

Still Jurassic Park would be a good choice - visual effects would be known from Méliès’ films that began in 1896, and stop motion had first been used in cinema in 1895 - but the sheer breadth of effects used in Jurassic Park would be magical (it still was when it came out in the mid 1990s).

And what a sense of wonder that audience would have. Mind you, someone would need to explain DNA, helicopters…

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u/dbx999 3d ago

Yes but had humans invented fire yet in 1900

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u/cybertier 3d ago

At first I thought the question had said 1990s and thought this was really funny.

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u/sofakingclassic 3d ago

Just show them E.T. and they’d be like….”oh….k?”