10 Movies That Changed The Genre They Were Made In
9. Pulp Fiction
If you're reading this site that probably means you're a pretty avid movie fan, which probably also means you've seen at least one Pulp Fiction knockoff. You can always tell when a movie is trying to ape Tarantino because they copy the style without understanding how to mimic the individuality and substance.
An example of this is when you have violent young/hip characters swearing profusely, making inane pop culture references and talking in slang that is barely understandable even by filmgoers, like me, who can't seem to form a sentence in everyday life without using some kind of slang word.
Tarantino movies are so much more than their imitators because of Tarantino's inherent understanding of why we like certain genres (westerns, war stories, exploitation movies) and he knows how to alter each one to fit his vision.
He does this in Pulp Fiction by making a gangster film that kind of knows it's a gangster film. There are sly winks to audiences who have seen these types of movies a million times because he knows we've all seen the tropes ad nauseam.
This allows him to bend genres anyway he prefers to create stories that are at once familiar and also excitedly new.