10 Movies So Good They Ruined Genres

7. Goodfellas

The Godfather may be the most iconic gangster film of all time, but its slower-paced, character-driven approach also means it'll never be as accessible or widely-imitated as Martin Scorsese's 1990 classic Goodfellas.

It's a film so staggeringly influential on the gangster genre that, if you watched it for the time today without knowledge of its lineage, you'd probably think it was actually a bit hackneyed and over-familiar.

The uncommonly charming depiction of the gangsters, the voiceover narration, the freeze-frames, the music: it all adds up to a bewilderingly entertaining cocktail, and one that basically became the standard-bearer for studio gangster flicks ever since.

Period mob movies rarely stray too far from Scorsese's formula because it's such an easy recipe for success, even if it's also left the genre pretty stagnant. After all, why bother doing anything new with the mob movie when you can just dine out on the brilliance of a master filmmaker?

That's not to say there haven't been great gangster movies since, but when was the last time anyone did anything remotely unique or interesting with the genre? Instead, the DNA of Scorsese's film has cross-pollinated practically every major gangster film of the last 30 years.