Grab Some Popcorn for This Quiz on Film Firsts

The PG-13 rating originated after 1984’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” was given a PG rating, despite it being the darkest film in the franchise. Given the ensuing parental outrage, a new rating was conceived that fell in the middle ground between PG and R. On August 10, 1984, the inaugural PG-13 rating was bestowed upon “Red Dawn,” a film starring Patrick Swayze.

Decades before HBO’s stylish remake series, 1973’s “Westworld” was a simple tale of a Western theme park where the animatronic cowboys start killing tourists. To simulate the perspective of Yul Brenner’s murderous gunslinger, writer-director Michael Crichton employed the use of computer graphics. Because this was unprecedented in Hollywood, filmmakers used scans from a Mars satellite as inspiration.

Director James Cameron was sensitive when asked by the press about the budget for 1994’s “True Lies” — the first to top $100 million, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. “This is how much the film costs: $7.50 plus parking — $8 in New York," he once quipped in response. Now, of course, $100 million movie budgets are the norm, and $8 movie tickets seem pretty inexpensive.

On May 16, 1929, the first Academy Awards were handed out at a small banquet event in Hollywood. At the ceremony, the film “Wings” (starring Clara Bow) took home the award for Best Picture. Boasting a $2 million budget, it was one of the most expensive movies of its time. The film tells the story of two World War I pilots who fall in love with the same woman.

Though not acclaimed for its script or its acting, 1935’s “Becky Sharp” (an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel “Vanity Fair”) did stun audiences as the first movie to be shot entirely in three-strip Technicolor. Previous attempts at color film had produced washed-out images that weren’t terribly true to life. With Technicolor, red, blue, and green reels were all recorded at once on the same massive camera and mixed together later.

Though CGI (computer-generated imagery) was used as far back as the 1970s, it wasn’t until 1995 that “Toy Story” became the first feature-length film to be entirely created by CGI effects. Until the release of “Toy Story,” films only partially relied on CGI technology. The film also marked the first feature movie release from the now-legendary Pixar Animation Studios.

While a 1922 melodrama titled “The Power of Love” was technically the first 3D movie to be commercially shown, it was exhibited only once in L.A. and once in Newark before it was lost to time. Decades later, in 1952, “Bwana Devil” kicked off a new era of 3D filmmaking, this time in color. Audiences couldn't get enough of the movie, which featured in-your-face lions and "The Untouchables" actor Robert Stack.

Georges Méliès was working as a stage magician when he caught an early film presentation by the Lumière brothers in 1895 and began his foray into movies. After a camera malfunction made one of his actors appear to become someone else, his magician’s mind became obsessed with the possibilities of film trickery. Inspired by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, he created the 14-minute-long “A Trip to the Moon,” often considered the first-ever sci-fi film.

In the history of the Oscars, only three films have swept the so-called “Big Five” categories, which include Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay. The first was 1934’s “It Happened One Night,” earning Frank Capra, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, and Robert Riskin individual awards in the latter four categories. The feat wasn’t replicated until “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1975.

In 1980, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi brought their “SNL” characters to the silver screen in “The Blues Brothers.” The film marked the first time that an “SNL” sketch was adapted for cinema, and the movie has since been preserved by the Library of Congress. The next “SNL” sketch adapted for the big screen was “Wayne’s World” in 1992.

Although Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” was nominated in 1992 for Best Picture (eventually losing to “The Silence of the Lambs”), animated movies didn’t get their own Oscar category until 2001. "Shrek" took home the first statue in that category.

Hoping to take the home media market by storm like an F5 tornado, Hollywood executives chose the 1996 smash disaster flick "Twister" to show off the resolution and sound upgrade that DVD had over VHS. Interestingly, "Twister" was also among the last movies released on the HD-DVD format before it fell to Blu-ray.

Kathryn Bigelow has broken through the glass ceiling from the director’s chair on more than one occasion. In 2002, with the Soviet submarine flick “K-19: The Widowmaker,” she became the first woman to direct a movie with a $100 million budget. Then, in 2010, she made history as the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director, for 2008’s “The Hurt Locker.”

In the late 19th century, Thomas Edison invented a motion-picture camera called the Kinetoscope. Naturally, he needed a place to film, so he built a studio — now considered the world's first movie studio — behind his West Orange, New Jersey laboratory. He named it Black Maria, a term used for prisoner transport vans, which the building resembled because of its tar-paper covering. The studio had a removable roof and rotated on a track to let in an optimal amount of sunlight.

Although it contains no nudity, “Midnight Cowboy” was given the dreaded X rating by the head of its own studio, United Artists, because the studio head was uncomfortable with how themes such as prostitution, homosexuality, and sexual assault were explored in the film. Later, when the film surprised everyone by getting rave reviews and winning prestigious awards (including the Best Picture Oscar), United Artists took the movie to the ratings board and received a gentler R rating.

"You ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” Al Jolson said before bursting into song during the first “talkie,” 1927’s “The Jazz Singer.” The previous year, Warner Brothers’ “Don Juan” used the Vitaphone system to show a film with sound, and a similar system was used to show speeches with recorded words, but “The Jazz Singer” was the first full-length movie to incorporate spoken dialogue, thus changing the industry forever.

The 1997 smash “Titanic” was the first movie to earn more than $1 billion at the box office, and it did so just 74 days after its release. “Jurassic Park” (1993) also crossed the $1 billion mark, but only recently thanks to myriad big-screen re-releases. Eventually topping $2 billion, “Titanic” remained the king of box office returns until it was dethroned by “Avatar.” Both were directed by James Cameron.

In 1940, Hattie McDaniel walked into “Gone With the Wind” director David O. Selznick’s office and dropped on his desk a stack of reviews praising her work as Mammy in the Civil War movie. Selznick took the hint and submitted her in the Best Supporting Actress category. She was nominated and won; infuriatingly, the event was held at a still-segregated hotel, and McDaniel was not allowed to sit with her costars.

Although "Jaws" cost less than $9 million to make, it was way over its initial budget of around $3.5 million. Still, Universal got back its investment — and then some. “Jaws,” directed by then-rising-star Steven Spielberg, became the first movie to earn $100 million at the box office. By the end of its run, it had raked in more than $260 million domestically and almost twice that globally.

Although Walt Disney already had a few animated shorts under his belt by the 1930s, he had to borrow most of the $1.5 million needed to produce “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” which was the first animated feature released by his studio. Disney’s wife doubted adults would want to sit through a feature-length cartoon, but his bet paid off: “Snow White” became the highest-grossing film of its time and helped finance future Disney projects.