Global film-making/cinema in the absence of the World Wars

CaliGuy

Banned
What would the global film industry have looked like in the absence of the World Wars?

What would be the most popular films and movies about?

Also, would the U.S.'s film industry still achieve the same level of dominance that it achieved in our TL?

Any thoughts on all of this?
 
I don't think U.S. film industry would receive the same level of dominance it has in our TL because the German film industry would probably not get gutted and the German language might still be the 2nd language for U.S.
 
Star Wars wouldn't exist, or would be heavily modified. That would make a big, big difference.
Without SW, you'd see a massively different film industry.
 
Don't get hung up on Star Wars. The cinema industry accelerated between the World Wars. In that period, many genres developed. By the mid seventies, George Lucas wanted to create a space adventure to utilize the new blue/green screen technology for special effects. His first choice was to do Flash Gordon, a story from the thirties with established domains and characters. But Lucas couldn't get the license to Flash Gordon, perhaps because its owners were very protective after a pornographic parody film in 1974 called "Flesh Gordon." So Lucas had to quickly start from scratch, with a story line that was only partially developed. He did not even make Darth Vader the father of Luke and Leia until the second film, Empire Strikes Back.

By the mid seventies, World War II was 40 years old, more than halfway back to the massive introduction of cinema. So, while Star Wars was a turning point for special effects, its story line was a very old-style good-guy, bad-guy battle.
 
I would think that the German film industry dominates at least Europe. And I see them being released into the United States in translated form (in the silent era).

Once sound comes about, American film industry would begin to catch up I think.
 
The Imperial German government had no sense of humour and would probably have had a nasty censorship board. I can see German directors and actors fleeing to America after being banned from working in Germany.
 
European film industries, particularly French, Italian and German (although Britain could also enter the competition), would dominate the worldwide film distribution.
 
The problem with working through this is that a world without the two world wars would likely be so different in so many respects that what happens in film would be a small part of a very different place culturally and economically. What happens there is going to determine what happens to the world of film; art usually reflects the world around it. I suspect that you would have had something resembling globalization much faster and you would also never have had a period of time where the United States enjoyed anything like the dominance it had after WW2. There is also the question of what happens ideologically. Does the world still see Communism and Fascism? Does monarchy remain dominant in Europe? These are huge questions and they can be argued a thousand ways, but the answers to the huge questions will illuminate the answer to what happens in film.
 
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