Modern Movie Quotes Quiz: 2010 Onwards
The era in which the franchise reached its maximum and the films that pushed back became the most decorated of the decade. Both halves are in this set.
Loading the quiz…
Two film industries running in parallel
This set splits almost perfectly in half, and the halves have very little to do with each other. On one side is the shared universe at full extension: The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Thor: Ragnarok, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, Infinity War, Endgame, plus the competing DC entries and the concluding Nolan Batman film. On the other side is a run of mid-budget, director-driven films that were made in explicit opposition to that model and that took most of the decade's critical honours: Whiplash, Black Swan, The Witch, Get Out, Hereditary, La La Land, Parasite, Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Reading a quotation and deciding which half it comes from is most of the skill in this set, and it is easier than it sounds. Franchise dialogue is written to work for a viewer who may have missed two instalments, so it explains, recaps and jokes. The other half assumes you are paying attention.
Parasite made history twice in one night. At the 2020 ceremony it became the first film not in the English language to win Best Picture, and the first film to win both Best Picture and Best International Feature. It had already taken the Palme d’Or at Cannes the previous year, a combination only a handful of films have ever managed.
The elevated horror strand
Four films in this set belong to a cycle that critics spent the decade arguing about the name for: The Witch in 2015, Get Out in 2017, Hereditary in 2018 and A Quiet Place in 2018. What they share is not a subgenre but an economic position. Horror is the cheapest way to make a film that can still return a large multiple of its budget, which meant it was the one part of the studio system where a first-time or unproven director could get final say. Get Out went on to win an original screenplay Oscar, which is not something the genre had historically been offered.
What the set covers
| Strand | Films |
|---|---|
| Marvel and DC | The Avengers, Infinity War, Endgame, Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: Ragnarok, Doctor Strange, Captain America, Batman v Superman |
| Nolan and hard science fiction | Inception, Interstellar, The Dark Knight Rises, The Martian |
| Awards drama | La La Land, Whiplash, Black Swan, Parasite, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Help |
| Modern horror | Get Out, Hereditary, The Witch, A Quiet Place |
| Family and young adult | Frozen, The Hunger Games, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Harry Potter |
The set runs slightly past the decade: a few entries are from the early 2020s, because the films that closed out this period of cinema, Everything Everywhere All at Once most obviously, belong to the same conversation as the ones that opened it.
Why modern quotes are harder than old ones
Counter-intuitively, most players score worse on recent films than on the classics, despite having seen far more of them. The reason is that older quotations have been filtered by time: a line from 1942 that is still circulating in 2026 has survived eighty years of selection and is therefore extremely distinctive. Recent dialogue has not been through that filter yet. A great deal of it is competent, memorable in the moment and almost interchangeable between films made by the same system.
The practical consequence is that elimination works less well here. You are more often choosing between two genuinely plausible answers, which is what makes this the hardest era set in the game.
Frequently asked questions
Which non-English film won Best Picture?
Parasite, at the 2020 ceremony. It was the first film not in the English language to win Best Picture and the first to take both Best Picture and Best International Feature, having already won the Palme d’Or.
Why does this set include films from the 2020s?
Because a strict decade cut would separate films that belong to the same period of cinema. Everything Everywhere All at Once is in the same conversation as the films that opened the 2010s, so it is included here.
Why are recent movie quotes harder to place?
Older quotations have been filtered by decades of survival, so the ones still circulating are highly distinctive. Recent dialogue has not been through that filter, so more of it is plausible for more than one film.
How many films does this set cover?
Forty five quotations from twenty nine films. A round draws ten at random and reshuffles each time.
More Guess the Movie sets
- Classics, 1937 to 197942 quotes from the studio era through New Hollywood, and the Casablanca line nobody actually says.
- The 1980s53 quotes from Die Hard to Ferris Bueller, and the Star Wars line everyone gets wrong.
- The 1990s60 quotes, the largest set here, from Pulp Fiction and Fight Club to Toy Story and The Lion King.
- The 2000s50 quotes from the decade the franchise took over, from Gladiator to Avatar.
Guess the Movie Trivia guides How we source our answers All games