Five silent films that inspired modern blockbuster franchises

Silent cinema gave the blockbuster its visual grammar: impossible stunts, painted moons, shadowed monsters and cities built as symbols. These five silent landmarks established repeatable ways to deliver wonder, danger and release long before widescreen projection, franchise branding or streaming shaped today’s mass audience.

Influence does not always mean a documented credit. A film can supply a motif, a rhythm or a production solution absorbed by later filmmakers. In these examples, a robot becomes an object of desire, a chase turns obstacles into jokes, and darkness makes an unseen antagonist feel physically close.

Made in Sydney in 1912, The Squatter’s Daughter is one of Australia’s earliest surviving narrative features. It offers a local reminder that Australian screen storytelling was already ambitious before Hollywood’s global machinery matured.

A trip to the moon and cinematic space

Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon (1902) sends astronomers beyond gravity, fires them at the lunar surface and unleashes a giant creature. The compact film supplies a model for franchise storytelling: a specialised team, hostile terrain, comic monsters and spectacular reversals, all packed into one visual invention.

Its moon functions as destination, spectacle and threat. That role feeds the space-opera imagination later associated with Star Wars, while the moon-rock egg, transformation scene and choreographed attack preserve Méliès’s sense of cinema as staged magic rather than realistic reportage.

The thief of Bagdad and repeatable adventure

The Thief of Bagdad (1924) combined Douglas Fairbanks’s athletic screen presence with Alexander Korda’s elaborate production. Its flying carpet, cave trials, chariot escape and monsters made danger move at changing speeds, linking spectacle, slapstick and peril within one continuous adventure engine.

The film helped define the swashbuckling formula inherited by modern sagas from Indiana Jones to Pirates of the Caribbean. It also proved that obstacles could work twice: each threat could endanger the heroes while creating a comic set piece for the audience.

Metropolis and the architecture of scale

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) made machinery, architecture and class hierarchy part of one visual argument. Rotwang, Maria’s robot and the towering city showed that a futuristic spectacle could carry moral conflict, making the imagined world feel both monumental and politically charged.

The appetite for engineered scale later moved into colour animation, and this examination of Disney animated cinema shows how technical reach became part of studio appeal. Lang’s example was different, but its insight survives in superhero sagas and speculative epics, where machines and built environments expose who holds power.

Nosferatu and the modern vampire myth

F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) made vampirism a visual disturbance rather than a polished society guest. Distorted acting, narrow sets and animal-like movement turned infection, desire and dread into a single threatening atmosphere, giving later horror a remarkably durable model.

Its descendants range from Gothic villains to modern vampire romances. Underworld turns the myth into a supernatural war, while Twilight makes concealed hunger central to romance; both inherit Nosferatu’s core tactic of making the monster’s presence alter every space around it.

The General and the logic of impossible action

Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman’s The General (1926) converts a locomotive, loose railway logs and steep tracks into the architecture of a running joke. The hero outmanoeuvres obstacles that would wreck a less agile film, and the chase advances through precise cause and effect rather than random destruction.

This remains a foundation of blockbuster action. Chases in franchises such as Mission: Impossible and Deadpool work because physical risk creates jokes, delays and reversals, preserving the principle Keaton and Bruckman demonstrated: the more exact the setup, the more forcefully the payoff can land.

Watching the silent lineage in Australia

For Australian viewers, these classics need not remain museum objects. ACMI in Melbourne places silent cinema within wider programs of film, games and art, while the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra connects public screenings with the preservation of local screen history.

Begin with A Trip to the Moon for a brisk introduction to spectacle, surprise and cinematic invention.

See The Thief of Bagdad when you want brisk action, exotic locations and comic peril in constant motion.

Choose Metropolis on a large screen so its masses, architecture and carefully organised movement can register.

Save Nosferatu for a dark room, where its stark compositions can heighten the feeling of intrusion and dread.

Finish with The General to appreciate how exact timing turns technically risky choreography into polished comedy.

Australian collectors can also reach specialist releases through online catalogues rather than waiting for mainstream streaming. Sasquatch Video offers emailed gift certificates from $20 to $1,000, with an optional message for purchasing films and related video products. The certificates are non-refundable, making the balance, redemption terms and edition format important purchase details.