A Farewell to Movie Quotes

“Witness me!” A battle cry and one of the last cinematic memes I can remember. Sure, movies are re-made and copied and in a way, those are memes too, but I mean a real meme - a line of dialogue that’s quoted and said by thousands of people in their daily lives for years - that line that is instantly recognisable or tickles your memberberries.

“I love you 3000” and “Always”, which are better examples of recent lasting movie quotes because are they are from bigger film franchises which have been seen by more people and have therefore spread through culture on a more significant scale - evident in tattoos, and merchandise sales George Lucas would be impressed by. They will most-likely become cultural signposts for a generation, etched into collective emotion with themes of love and loss. Their emotional resonance can still bring tears to people’s eyes.

Despite a decades worth of movies released, how many of them have memorable quotes? I can only think of a few that became memes, and a few more that only a small amount of people would be able to identify. So what happened?

In part, it’s not that screenwriting got worse - though franchise fatigue, and bending the knee to ‘modern audiences’ to ensure all political boxes are ticked have likely had a toll - the real shift is cultural consumption. Memes have moved. They’re no longer born in cinemas of films - they’re forged, fostered, and devoured on TikTok, which is quite literally a meme machine, a platform designed to chew up and spit out a million micro memes every hour. TikTok isn’t waiting for a perfect line of dialogue, it’s making its own, often from throwaway moments, random sounds, or ironic overdubs. A paradigm shift occurred in media consumption and movies are no longer to go-to, they’re in competition with various social media platforms, streaming services spewing out content on a weekly basis, and a video games industry that annually makes billions of dollars. People no longer have the time to masticate on dialogue when they’re in the midst of a media orgy; their eyes darting from one visual treat to the next, not sure which video oogle or game to google.

In an effort to “look over here at our movie” some films have heavily relied on CGI and over-the-top violence to offer audiences something they can’t get elsewhere and possibly, in doing so, have abandoned great dialogue. In this era of media over-saturation, a screenwriter has to work extra hard if they want their script to be memorable. And there are definitely films that have done so; they may not have quotable lines, but there are filmmakers that have created movies that have resonated in other ways; films like, Annihilation, Arrival, and Dune, I will remember but not for their one liners. But they are up against cultural fragmentation. In the past, we all saw the same movies but now, good quality movies are rare and it’s rarer to be able to discuss a recent release with friends and family because it is highly likely they haven’t watched it.

Depending on your age, I’ll bet you can identify these movie quotes, some of them from films I had memorised from beginning to end, word for word, in my youth:

• “Party on, Wayne! Party on, Garth!”

• “Do NOT go in there!”

• “That Veronica Vaughn is one piece of ace; I know from experience, dude. If you know what I mean.”

• “It’s that Hansel! He’s so hot right now.”

• “They’ve done studies you know. 60% of the time, it works every time.”

• “Yeah, there were horses and a man on fire and I killed a guy with a trident.”

• “You’ve got red on you.”

• “I’m kind of a big deal.”

• “I’ll be back.”

• “Run, Forest, run!”

• “Show me the money!”

This paradigm shift leaves films with less room to resonate. Lines like “Witness me!” used to survive because we all watched the same things, and we watched them more than once. Now, a film can be brilliant and still vanish in a week. In a sea of media’s mediocrity, a quotable line used to be a life raft. Now, most films don’t even try to throw one. Here’s some movie quotes of the last decade that are not from franchises, (sorry Groot!) but films we thought were good but didn’t go next level.

1. “I'm just a boy in a neon suit, standing in front of a girl, reminding her that Notting Hill is her favourite movie.”

2. “Every good thing in this world, started with a dream. So you hold on to yours.”

3. “Character 1: You ever watch Thomas the Tank Engine? Character 2: Here we go. Character 1: Hey, you watch something nowadays, what is it, huh? Nothing. It’s twists, violence, drama, no message. What's the point? Huh? What are we supposed to learn? Everything I learned about people I learned from Thomas.”

4. “I'm here to bust criminals and lick my own butt. And I'm all out of criminals.”

How many could you identify? Did these lines not become meme worthy because they weren’t funny enough? Not emotional enough? Was it because our attention moved on so quickly? Are they meaningless and therefore forgotten? The quotes I chose from the last decade I did not remember myself - I had to go to IMDB and find films favourably rated and ones I liked too. And looking back, I quickly realised how few films I’ve bothered to rate and even less that I enjoyed. I like the quote above about Thomas the Tank Engine - it’s fun and comments on contemporary society and weirdly enough, ties in thematically to my message here - but it’s not memorable like “What’s in the box?!” [Both from Brad Pitt films.] Maybe these quotes are systematic of poor writing or maybe it’s because no one watches films any more?

Returning to my previous statement that films can be memorable in other ways, I’ve recently written analyses on Annihilation, Arrival, and the two recent Dune films that can elaborate on how the filmmakers have achieved that resonant success. They’re all fantastic and memorable for me, but, unfortunately, I rarely meet people who have seen Annihilation or Arrival. Even Dune has a limited audience and I haven’t been able to speak with anyone in my family or friendship group about it and it has nothing to do with Dune being poorly written and everything to do with what media we now consume. There’s a stark contrast in response to asking someone if they’ve seen a film to asking them if they saw a video on Instagram. Recently, I played a game of celebrity head and the teenagers I was playing with had no idea of the celebrity names I put on the board and I had no idea about all their celebrities. And I was writing young celebrities I thought they’d know from movies. Obviously there’s a generation gap issue but it actually speaks volumes about media consumption; this paradigm shift has divided us in our content and platforms and I don’t see how movies will retain the cultural power they once had. Movie music memes died out long ago - I haven’t seen a film in forever that had a memorable tune the majority of a population could hum or whistle (think The Imperial March from Star Wars), and now movie quotes are on the brink of extinction.