The battering ram approach, if you will.

It worked, although word of mouth and ecstatic reviews helped.

But the sea change would begin with 1999sThe Blair Witch Project.

Its easy to overlook just how clever and groundbreaking theBlair Witchcampaign was.

Secondly, people wildly, wildly reacted to it.

In a way they hadnt wildly reacted toLethal Weapon 4.

Bruce Willis was still there, but the firstStar Warsprequel was hardly sold off the back of its stars.

Mike Myers headlined an Austin Powers sequel, and Keanu Reeves broke through inThe Matrix.

In short, big genre blockbusters were out-trumping big movie stars.

The trend would continue.

Even Will Smith struggled, hardly aided by the final cut ofWild Wild West.

Only Tom Cruise and hes had his occasional blips has arguably consistently managed to deliver box office.

Even Tom Cruises flops are blockbusters still, just not so much in the US.

But then Cruise adapted, and arguably was ahead of the game with theMission: Impossiblefranchise.

He was developing material to produce in the 1990s, and continues to do so.

Now, its far more commonplace.

It made $67m worldwide in cinemas, and by most measures, thatd be that.

And then video and DVD gave it one hell of a second life.

Whats interesting aboutAustin Powerswasnt just that it was such a huge video hit, but such a quick one.

Films such asThe Shawshank Redemptiontook time to find a big audience on video and disc formats;Austin Powersdidnt.

As such, the sequel followed just two years later.

The sequel took nearly five times more money than the original, and the innovative marketing campaign certainly helped.

Actually, thats not technically true.

But trailers evolved in two ways for 1999 releases.

TheStar Warstrailer was demanded en masse.

But also, 1999 was when the teaser trailer really came into its own.

The first trailer forAustin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Mewas a work of genius.

Heres the trailer in question it remains lateral and quite brilliant.

1999 wasnt the only defining year in the development of the movie trailer.

But it feels like an important one.

The Phantom Menacewas the epitome of a fan demand project.

As such, it came back to the big screen off the back of a clamour of fan demand.

This wasnt, to be fair, a lesson quickly heeded by Hollywood, but it wasnt ignored.

See also:belated franchise revivals, the new Hollywood trend?

Because of two low budget films, that went on to be hugely, hugely profitable.

All of a sudden, projects such as Todd Phillips breakthroughRoad Tripfound themselves positioned inAmerican Pies slipstream.

Tom Green would even be allowed to direct a movie, andAmerican Pieis partly responsible for that.

This was arguably the huge change.

But the difference here was that lots of films and filmmakers broke through in one go.

Its hard to think of another year where so many talents came to so much prominence at once.

And crucially, theyre actually given far more control.

With some success, too.

This time around though, Hollywood studios seem a little less scared of them.

Three hand drawn Hollywood animated films got a mainstream release in 1999.

Each had a different style, each tried different things, each had different fortunes.

This was a very tangible peak.

ButToy Story 2would arrive later in 1999, and do huge box office.

Pretty much every studio with a computer in it noticed, and the CG arms race followed.

It has been a whole day since we talked about that film and we were getting withdrawal symptoms.

But nowhere else in Hollywood is it even being attempted.

1999 might have felt like an embarrassment of hand drawn animated riches at the stage.

As its turned out, thats exactly what it was.

Weve touched on this already, but its worth exploring further.

The entire $100m+ budget came from outside the studio system.

But thats just part of the story.

The immediate influence of this was seen in how 2000s movies were sold.

All the while, Miramax was still doing what it did too.

Theres an element of win a little, lose a little there.

But then there are elements of that to much of what weve talked about.

Not everything that happened in 1999 moved mainstream cinema forward.

But its hard to think of too many years in recent memory that have had such a dramatic effect.