What are some films that killed genres, stopped the momentum of a fad, or signaled the end of an entire movement?

[u/LouFerrignosGhost]

A good thing is hard to kill, but that doesn’t make it impossible for something like a trend to die with ease. The history of film is of course littered with trends, popular movements, and genres everyone becomes enamored with, and in more times than not there will come something that’s such a spectacular failure or a overwhelming detriment to a film industry’s funds that it will cause a genre to fall completely out of fashion. The end results often come up as products unbelievable repulsive in comparison to a genre’s heyday, and will discourage audiences, filmmakers, and producers from certain characteristics for a considerable amount of time. This kind of stuff has recently intrigued me, and I’m curious to know what examples exist of a film being the end of an era, so to speak.

The most obvious example (and thus the one I’m gonna beat everyone else to the punch in referencing) is Heaven’s Gate, a film that’s now been critically re-evaluated yet in its original theatrical cut was widely hated and loudly proclaimed that the Western genre, once a ubiquitous part of Classic Hollywood and Television’s Golden Age canon, was completely dead, to the point that further attempts post-1980 tend to be labeled as “resurgences” rather than anywhere close to a revival of the Western’s once prolific nature (perhaps a more extreme scenario of what tends to happen, but still an important death-knell). Not only that, but HG also tends to be the poster child in the death of New Hollywood, the end of that era marked by directors going wildly over-budget and way out-of-control to the point that producers had to step in and reel the reins away (other disasters helped in dismantling the director-driven Hollywood, such as Spielberg’s 1941, Scorsese’s New York, New York, or Coppola’s One From the Heart)

Any definitions on what films ended segments of history can be loose (usually sociopolitical contexts can be more to blame than anything), but I’m just looking for examples that for sure meant something once popular in film was at the very end of its prime.

[u/OuthouseRedback]

I disagree, I think there is more than ever now, if anything it is too much, not a reduction or death knell.