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1990s in film

The decade of the 1990s in film involved many significant developments in the industry of cinema. Numerous feature-length movies were specifically filmed or edited to be displayed on both theater screens as well as the smaller TV screens, like showing close-up shots during dialogue scenes rather than just wide-angle shots in a room. The home video market also grew into being a major factor in the total revenue of a theatrical film, often doubling the amount.

Trends

These particular ten years are notable for milestone advancements in CGI technology, seen in such motion pictures as Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Jurassic Park, and Forrest Gump. 1995's Toy Story became the first feature film to be completely computer-animated, heralding the use of 3D graphics as a tool for filmmakers to achieve new visuals on-screen.
Stemming from the tail end of the 1980s, the mainstream successes of low-budget directors like Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, Paul Thomas Anderson, Gus Van Sant, Richard Linklater, Steven Soderbergh, and the Coen brothers; alongside the increased prominence of independent movie studios such as New Line Cinema, Miramax Films, and Gramercy Pictures; gave rise to a boom period of highly profitable indie films that include Pulp Fiction, Fargo, Boogie Nights, Good Will Hunting, The Big Lebowski, and The Blair Witch Project.
The Disney Renaissance began in late 1989 with The Little Mermaid, reached peak popularity with The Lion King in 1994, and ended in 1999 with Tarzan. During its influential run, the mass appeal of animated musicals got exceptionally rejuvenated (as opposed to The Rescuers Down Under in 1990, which contains no original songs and has been generally deemed a commercial disappointment even compared to its 1977 predecessor), resulting in supposed emulations from similar production companies. However, merely three of said attempts proved to be lucrative, namely The Nightmare Before Christmas by Skellington, Anastasia by Fox, and The Prince of Egypt by DreamWorks. Around six months prior to the decade's conclusion, Comedy Central's South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut prospered in part through parodying the conventions of this trend.
1988's Die Hard established what would become a common plot scenario for many 1990s action films, which is the matchup of an everyman hero against a colorful villain who is threatening the lives of innocents in an isolated setting, though with certain variations. Features of this kind, and the sequels that followed some of them, are often referred to as "Die Hard on a _____": Under Siege (battleship), Cliffhanger (mountain), Speed (bus), The Rock (prison island), Con Air (prison plane), Air Force One (presidential plane), and so on.
A resurgence of disaster films dominated the box office with blockbusters such as Twister, Independence Day, Titanic, and Armageddon.
Several leading figures of 1980s to mid-1990s Hong Kong action cinema migrated to Hollywood with varying success: Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, John Woo, Yuen Woo-ping, Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, etc. Updating martial arts and gunfight choreography in American motion pictures with such releases as Broken Arrow, Face/Off, Tomorrow Never Dies, Lethal Weapon 4, Rush Hour, and The Matrix. Three Western world directorial debuts of established Eastern filmmakers were for Jean-Claude Van Damme star vehicles, though these collaborations only performed moderately en masse at the global market.
Wes Craven's Scream revitalized the declining interest in slasher films through satirizing the subgenre with characters that are well-versed in its clichés. Leading to studios capitalizing especially on the high school to college age demographic with the likes of I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, Urban Legend, and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. The three biggest hits among these movies were written or adapted by Kevin Williamson, who also co-wrote the sci-fi horror The Faculty, which targeted the same audience as well.