Some films are truly revolutionary. Citizen Kane, Jaws, Gone with the Wind, and even Avatar changed people's ideas of what movies can be and do. However, I have to argue that the first film to really accomplish this on a large scale is Fritz Lang's 1926 masterpiece Metropolis. You might not have heard of this film, but you probably recognize it's iconic robotic woman. Sure it's a silent film, so what? The scale of this movie was unmatched for it's time. The sets are enormous and incredibly detailed, the special effects were decades ahead of their time, and the film used over 25,000 extras. Metropolis is the first great science-fiction movie, and so many films to this day owe a great deal to what it achieves, including, Blade Runner, Gattaca, The Fifth Element, Escape from L.A., The Bride of Frankenstein, and even Dr. Strangelove.
