Ther are a LOT of media, so I'll go by it in groups, and for a change, I'll be concise, because frankly, these are some of my favorite stories today and I'm talking about how they could become classic literature and legends like some of my literary favorites, so really this is the sort of thing I could write a whole book about here probably...that and philosophy, those two things, literature, legends, and sports- three things, literature, philosophy, sports, and politcs, DAMNIT, four things...

And with that shameless Python in-joke ripped off to satisfaction, let's start.

-Comics:

I really ever got into comic reading, but I honestly don't think SUPERMAN or BATMAN will ever be forgotten. They're so embedded into our consciousness, and besides that and all the literary underpinnings they have, these two will outlive all the other comics because most great heroes we remember have another figure that foils them, and no one foils each other in our modern media today better than Superman and Batman.

You have Superman, this amazingly superpowered guy, essentially another Hercules, always kind, heart of gold, outgoing and friendly, humble, and lest we forget that infamous catchphrase, "Fighting for Truth, Justice, and The American Way!" so even though America really has lost it's way, we can look to Superman as sort of an idealized version of how Americans liked to see themselves and a nation, at least at a certain time in history- and that will surely survive, just as Gilgamesh fascinates us in part as it gives us a glimpse into what what one of the first civilizations ever, the Sumerians, called and looked for in a hero.

Then you have Batman, and he's totally opposite. He's not humble and kind, he broods more than Hamlet and he's about as kind and sociable as him as well. Actually, that connection, ironically, is really what drives Batman in my mind to literary immortality- where Superman is superpowered and a work of fantasy, what man wishes himself to be, maybe, but can never be, Batman's just the opposite, just like the Dane Prince himself he's so painfully human that we see all his frailties and all of ours, so to see them overcome those all-too-human issues and become something greater, that's arguably a great portion of the human experience right there, striving to overcome yourself and master yourself, to be BETTER than man without being, ironically enough, a high-powered Superman.

And before anyone tracks down where I'm going with that philosophical argument, I exit the Comic arena, knowing if there are any fans on the site of those thousands of books I'll be flamed and burnt alive. Yes, Spiderman is fun and has values, and maybe some other ones, but I think no two are quite as well-known or quite as esteemed today as our modern-day Hercules and Odysseus, Superman and Batman, and their contrasting values, seperate very strong and meaningful (when, of course, they're not being played by Adam West or George Clooney or that kid from "Smallville") but when put next to each other, two heroes are better than one, and stronger- they'll survive to be read forevermore when comics as a medium are all a trash heap.

-Action Franchises:

Almost none, totally spectacle, so they won't be looked over much.

But I will say that with a truly great film series (out of 6 only 1, #5, is a bad film, #4 is average but still not at all bad) and a distincty American feel to it, the "Rocky" series might surive, or, to be more accurate, the character of Rocky Balboa will be remembered, a very classic rags-to-riches story, but it's the fact that he gives us a ride through America itself and changes accordingly, from being a humble stiff in the 1970s to this flashy boxer and champion to match the flashy 1980s while petering out near the end there just as the decade did and eventually coming full circle in the 2000s, I really think a lot of American guys (myself included) really identify with Rocky Balboa, that struggle to make yourself worth something and, as he puts it, "to go the distance," to try and let your whole hand play out, so even if you do fail in life you can at least look yourself in the mirror knowing you tried, you did your best.

Rocky Balboa- He's Gonna Fly Now, and Forever (and it doesn't hurt he's got a statue of himself in his home city of Philadelphia, the same way Greek heroes were immortalized in bronze statues...)

-The Mythology Bunch

We all had to read Greek stories and most of us read or at laest heard of the Old and New Testament myths growing up, most at least know who King Arthur and his Knights are, and what they seek ("I seek the Holy Grail!" "What...is the capital of Assyria?" ...oh, right, already used a Python joke...RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!) and Robin Hood.

These are simply etched forever into Western Lore, they're some of the very things, the very characters and stories that make and have made Western Civilization what it is.

But these days we have so many "mythologies." Which will survive in relevance so 500 years from now some poor grade school children will ahve to read or watch them?

Three picks, a Fringe Pick, and One That Will Fade Fast:

Pick #1: The Lord of the Rings saga- easy choice here, the books are already literary classics, the movies are fantastically acclaimed and one's a Best Picture winner, and there's just so much thought and detail in there that this really is the closest thing we have nowadays to the sort of effort Homer or Virgil or Dante or Malory put into crafting their great opuses. The themes are timeless, the characters memorable, and it has that added advantage of not only having memorable characters but what I'd call "The Significant Item," that one thing the hero or heroes look for or use that is so iconic to the story and helps to define it- think Trojan Horse or Holy Grail again. The Ring will be remembered long after the movie "The Ring" is lost to the ages (and from the reviews I've read, the ages can HAVE that terrible flick...)

Pick #2: Star Trek with Kirk: This seems surely like a Trekker waxing on, but I do think this will stand the test of time. Larger than life characters, they deal with so many issues and topics it makes your head spin, iconic place...I really think if Lord of the Rings is the Modern Myth in the classic Greek sense, ie, a huge sprawling world with immense literary detail and lowery language and glory in battle, this is the Modern Arthur. Captain Kirk and his Crew of the USS Enterprise...King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. It just seems to fit. Kirk. Spock vs. McCoy is Logic vs. Emotion incarnate and recalls the quarrels of Arthur's knights at times. Picard's crew may be remembered, but Kirk and his Crew fit so well, Picard and hsi Crew could very well be the Aeneid to the Iliad and Odyssey- good, but less remembered in the mainstream 500 years from now. The other shows and captains and crews- dust or insignificant or remembered in passing, no one will really wax on about the Great Janeway or the Confident and Assuring Archer...there's no such thing, you see, and Sisko is already very much a fringe character as is his show. That central idea, "To boldly go where no man has gone before," it's timeless, and so even when we're in the year 2500 and people look to Star Trek tech and say "How archaic they were in their ideas, they don't even have the ability to simultaneously become God and prove you couldn't possibly exist!" that will never die, and neither will the greatest adventurers and comrades this side of the Round Table.

Pick #3: Star Wars the Originals- this seems an obvious choice, those movies are already talked about so much as being the great myth of our time...or they were until the prequels came out. But literary history has a way of overlooking poorer works by authors and focusing on the ones that transcend time and resonate. For instance, hardly anyone today remembers that Shakespeare was once had his main body of work comprise of his slower history plays, his earlier comedies, and "Titus Andronicus," the tragedy all literary critics seem to love to hate and call an abomination, even though frankly I think it's a good work and powerful and not NEARLY the worst thing he ever wrote. We don't necessarily remember that Gene Roddenberry's first attempt to get Trek done was a failed pilot. And who among us upon hearing "Edgar Allen Poe" instantly jumps to thinking about the only play the he ever wrote, "Politian," which was a huge bomb? Or the fact that Gilbert and Sullivan had their share of duds in their time? Art tends to forgive failure over time if great success was achieved by the artist somewhere along the line; whether or not you want to attribute "Wars" as a success to Lucas, his team, both, or none is up to you, but the fact remains those original films still are immensely important and laden with thematic elements, and by themselves are likely to survive, especially, like Batman and Superman and Trek, given the fact they have a huge following and impact even today- allow for III to be called mediocre and a "prologue" work, the modest "The Hobbit" to the LOTR saga, and let time have its way with the other flicks, and Star Wars looks to still have a consuderable Force with it in the future.



The Two Works On The Fringe:

The Narnia and Potter Books- this is tough to call; both are based off of or largely taken from older legends (Narnia's rather Biblical in its inspiration and themes, and Potter first takes the Arthur story almost page for page in creating a dark time, in Britain no less, give a kid in a hostile home a special wand that for him does more than any other wand could, a la Excalibur, a circle of friends a la or the Round Table or, with Ron and Hermione and to be contemporary, Spock and Dr. McCoy, to save the day and perform many feats with an older Merlin-like mentor...and that's not even mentioning all the GREEK stuff that's taken) and as such it's debatable how much is really "in these" and how much they'll matter. Narnia's not exactly got the clout Arthur or even LOTR has literarily, and Potter is hugely popular now, but, again, a lot of it is reworking of older material, and can that popularity last? Time will tell...if I were to guess both might survive as maybe "minor works" of our period, the way we remember the anonymous Elizabethan play "Arden of Faversham" far less as a domestic or grandc tragedy of that period as we do, say, a Marlovian play or Shakespeare's "Macbeth" and the like, but, again, time will tell, though I will make an additional statement and say while Narnai is maybe the more fringe of the two now and not nearly the phenemonenon Potter is at the moment, Potter could very well fade far faster than Narnia, which seems to maybe have more long-term staying power. But BOTH will outlast and are far superior to...

The Franchises that Will Fall:

-X-Men: A million characters, a few distinct ones and even they aren't the forces Batman and Superman are, so in an industry hurting, I can't see these creations of the 1980s/1990s lasting forever the way The Trojan and Greek heroes have.

-Avatar: Nice visuals, forgettable characters, a story that's hardly...much at all, really...if you've ever seen the "Settlers vs. Natives" story you've seen this.

-Twilight: Do I hAVE to day why this will die and die hard (now there's a fun movie...the franchise probably won't last long into the future, but it's an action flick it doesn't give a shit, it just wants to blow stuff up around Christmans, and frankly- who doesn't want to do that, even just once?)

;)

Im going to be totally lazy and agree with everything you took a huge amount of time to write, because i do.

I think that we could add TV series and computer/ video games to this list as they are fast becoming industry's in their own right. What parts of our current entertainment industry will be taken as 'classics' and remembered in years to come and will any of this have the kind of impact as Homer, Shakespeare et al?

Considering that Fallout 3 was awarded a Bafta as the game of the year in 2008 maybe other mediums should be added...I just want Obi to do more work ::)

The StarCraft series will be remembered. July 27th is the beginning of a new era.

I don't think any "media" will be remembered for a very long time. The things that will last are things that aren't just "a book series" but are an entire legend.

So Lord of the Rings and Star Wars... probably... though maybe not. I think we are being too generous about what will last for centuries. Especially you obi lol.

I do agree that the moon mission will probably get the same kind of treatment as Chris Columbus and that sort of thing though.

Other things..... probably WWII. Other than that. Not really. Not much at least in the 20th century that we will remember forever.

Not to say the *history* won't be studied. I just don't think you will have people who are gaga over, say, Harry Potter or Star Trek in 500 years.

What you will have is people who think they should make a movie (or equivalent) out of the story of the moon landing or of WWII.

In fact, 500 years down the line, WWII is even a stretch.

Unless of course, you take the extremely optimistic route which says that WWII maybe the largest war humanity will ever endure. In that case it will be remembered by everyone in 500 years. But if you have like... WWIII, WWIV, WWV, etc... then no. Probably not.

And video games.... yeah, no.

I think the Lord of the Rings has a 500 year shot and I think Sherlock Holmes (which is less than 125 years old) will have the lifespan of Shakespeare, I also think the works of Charles Dickens will as well.

As far as film legends, the James Bond series will have a long film memory. I know they were books. Hell, I've read everything Fleming ever wrote, plus all of Gardner's and Benson's and even Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun. But, honestly, Fleming would have faded into history had the movies never been made (as would Connery's career) as his writing is an aquired taste.

Star Wars and Star Trek may be remembered, due to the effect they had in sci-fi (as with LOTR, as most if not all modern fantasy owes something to Tolkien), and I agree with Draugnar.

But I think there is a difference b/w Star Wars/Star Trek/Harry Potter/LOTR and say Gilgamesh/Homer/King Arthur (note Shakespeare wasn't mentioned) as they are (mainly) oral traditions, that form part of a culture's/nation's psyche (something like that), I don't think we have many (if any) modern examples that. One *could* argue that Harry Potter had a profound influence, but I'm inclined to disagree.

WW2 may be remembered due to the Holocaust, but looking at where the world is going, I'm sure we'll see much larger conflicts in the future.

i agree largeham that the epics and myths are fundamentally different.

which is why modern "myths" won't really take the shape of books, movies, etc. I think instead they will be events that make great stories, like apollo 13, which we be told and retold.

it would be one thing if the nation/world was swept by the harrowing tale of an imaginiary han solo etc.... but that doesn't happen anymore. than only happens if there's a movie to go see. and when the movie fades, the tale fades.

some live on as classics, like shakespeare, but it remains to be seen if the medium of the film will live on in that way. technology may yet eclipse it forever.

thus i agree about say sherlock holmes... but i think what will be remembered will be classics that are well regarded artistically. and for that reason i think books like... uh.... mark twain's books, will be well regarded for a long time.

cheap fare like, say, star trek, not so much. a phenomenon it is, a classic it is not.

oh and tales of sports feats remain to be seen in their timelessness too, before obi makes the claim that babe ruth will be remebered forever.

sports have really only been around in their current form for like... 150 years. so who knows tales from the 2000s will last till 2500.

for instance The Play. hehe.

Since myths and epics are a mix of truth and fiction mixed in the blender of time and retellings, after a couple thousand years it would be difficult to guess. But my guess would be WW2 and 1 mixed as a single war, perhaps from the warriors view, the Cold War with the nucs and the space race, the 20th century advances in the medical science(a battle with death). to name a few.

Generally the stories that live on are tales of good versus evil and epic journeys. I can see LOTR living on, perhaps Star Wars, but that is about all from modern fiction. Like Warspite says I think people will retell and confuse historic events, especially those that have some relevance to their lives for example: early spaceflight, the creation of the internet (Tim Berners-Lee vs. the evil hackers!), the two world wars leading to first use of nuclear weapons would be another (you can argue that the two wars are part 1 & 2 of the same event, 21 years between them is nothing in historical terms).

I didn't think about real historical events being remembered, because those are so documented now; WWII will definitely stand out 500 years from now, even if we have, though forbid it, WWIII or WWIV, WWII was so much, had so much leading up, has larger than life figures, caused so much- it's never gong to fade and, for that matter, neitehr will man landing on the moon, I think (no conspiracy theories, please,) as that's such a huge moment in human history.

As far as the fictional works, looking again...

LOTR has the berst chance, I think, so successful in many forms...
Star Wars and Sherlock Holmes have been very enduring and have the components that are very enduring so I think they'll last...
I maintain Trek in some form will be remembered, because if nothing else it has such great characters and then also has the additional factor of relating to our time, so in 500 years I think people will look to Trek as sort of our mirror, how some of us viewed ourselves, so maybe the works won't be remembered as much as just it being a social thing that occured, and the characters, sort of the way most people don't remember Robin Hood's adventures all that much, but they certainly remember him and Little John and the Merry Men, and what they stood for- that's what I think Trek will be like, we'll remember Kirk ans Spock and Bones, a Crew and "to boldly go where no man has gone before" the same way we remember for Robin "steal from the rich to give to the poor."

And then I think Superman and Batman will at least be remembered by name in 500 years, the way we know Hercules as being a strong Greek hero and Odysseus a thoughtful one...I mean "Superman" isn't exactly a hard name to figure out what we meant by that, what he was supposed to be...

Out of curiosity, are there any franchises or works in particular you'd hope would survive?

I'd hope LOTR, Holmes, Trek, some of Wars and Superman and Batman, at least their characters, survive...and also The Beatles, I honestly think they'll never be forgotten, just because they had such a big impact on our music and that whole decade they lived in, if I were to bet one musical act or one composer would endure to be heard still 500 years from now, it'd be Lennon/McCartney and the Fab Four.

Not Gaga, sorry. :p (Running joke, don't spam me over my dissing the Lady...)

You will also have to think about *why* these stories, legends and occasions are and will be remembered: because they speak to the mind in high appeal, with great metaphores and in some cases literature or theathre art as well.

For instance, Robin Hood is not just a story of some dude living in the woods and shooting bad guys, it is much much more. It displays the 'true, free spirit' of England and it's a tale of righteousness, of a 'true' king and the justice of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor (early socialism perhaps?).

As for theater, it is said that every scenario has already been played out by the great Greek play makers. If you look at Eudipus, you've already got a wicked story: and that's even before Christ. So every new play (sorry to say so) is a variation on the theme.

Though I think we'll remember Les Miserables :)

I highly doubt Les Miserables will be remembered as a theatrical production, but it will be remember from Victor Hugo's original massive novel.

I noticed everyone grabbed onto my Sherlock Holmes and feels the same as I do about Sir Arthur Conan-Doyles great detective, but no one looked to my Dicken's reference...

Come on folks, everyone knows of two Dickens characters (the same two from the same story, I dare say) andyou know as well as I do that they will live on forever as well. Tiny Tim Cratchet and Ebeneezer Scrooge. You know A Christmas Carol will never die and, with it, Dickens' other great works will be remembered much like Shakespeare's.

Other writers who came out of the 19th century and will be remembered for eternity are Alexandre Dumas (the Three Musketeers), Victor Hugo (Quasimodo: the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables), Mark Twain (Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn), and Edgar Allan Poe. Honestly, the 19th Century was one of the greatest in the history of literature and the arts and, as such, the century itself will be remembered in legend, albeit I think in time it and the 18th Century will blur together into one period in history and mankind will lump Mozart in as a contemporary of Tchaikovsky though there was more than a hundred years between them. I can only hope our record of history will not be as lost over time as the Dark Ages were or we could see the 16th through 18th Centuries all blur into one time period and not have the distinctiveness that each has brought to the table.

*16th through 19th centuries blur (small typo there).

oh yeah draug you are definitely right about lumping.


the same way we say: oh yeah 100 BC, 300 BC... it was all BC.

lol.

it will take a long time though, and the lumping will be gradual. many people lump the end of the 19th with the end of the 18th already, even though 1890 was so different from 1790.

i think you are right about 19th century stories though. they endure as myths. the books themselves or whatever the original source material was are still read of course but it is less and less about that and more and more about the stories themselves, retelling them in the current formats, telling them to kids, and so on.

since nothing like that has really materialized for star wars, it is difficult to say if it will endure. yes it has been morphed into every available medium but... i don't know. it's hard to say. it is not considered a classic in the way that huck finn is. but given time i guess it could.

i would argue, of course, that the actual quality of the star wars saga is not as high as the adventures of huck finn by twain.... one is an action movie, the other is literature, after all.

so it is harder yet to say. obi claims that historical events won't really make it because they're so well documented.

my claim is the opposite. it is books and movies that are well documented, in that you can always just... go and watch the movie or read the book. it is quite a different thing than the traditional tale or myth.

which is why you find in an historical event the room for storytelling. because not ALL of it was captured on film or whatever, you can tell peripheral stories to kingdom come. and this has already occurred with events like WWII/WWI.

off the top of my head:

-All Quiet on the Western Front
-Valkyrie
-Downfall
-Saving Private Ryan
-Band of Brothers
-The Great Escape
-A Bridge too Far

-Battlefield 1942
-Medal of Honor
-Call of Duty

-Countless books.

My point is that that sort of thing will continue to happen for events of our time into the future. Whereas people will probably not keep reading Lord of the Rings. Though they may..... it doesn't seem likely. What's relevant about it? Same with Star Wars. In the end they will just look at it and say:

"A wildly popular action franchise of the late 20th and early 21st centuries."

In the same way that we would look at, say, comic operas of Mozart's day.

@Obiwan "I didn't think about real historical events being remembered, because those are so documented now; WWII will definitely stand out 500 years from now, even if we have, though forbid it, WWIII or WWIV," Your assuming continuity for the next 500 years or like I said in the next 2,000. I don't mean a nuclear war just disruptions in cultures and decline nations can cause loss of info. Also let's say 100 years from now a super solarflare causes massive damage to the world's electronics including storage, or any of the many other natural or man made events can cause a loss of documentation. I'm sure sooner or later at least one such event will happen.

Well, the themes and that sort of thing are very relevant in LOTR and Wars and those types of things...

After all, you could ask why we still remember Oedipus or Antigone or the Trojan War heroes?

Nearly every lasting mythos has a war in it, and LOTR and Star Wars have that, so they'll definitely last, I think...and I'm still pulling for Trek to be remembered for something, again if for nothing else the characters, like Robin Hood.

Robin Hood may capture the "true, free spirit" of England and serve as a sybol there, but that's precisely why Trek works so perfectly for America, because what's more fitting for a nation that was founded by explorers and colonizers and then later by pioneers that that bold phrase, "to boldly go where no man has gone before."

That's America, or rather, America when it's working, boldly growing and expanding, meeting new people and new ideas, and all about diversity.

You have a captain from Iowa, a doctor from Georgia, a communications officer from Swahili, a helmsman from Japan, a navigator from Russia, an engineer from Scotland, and a science officer from a different planet, all striving towards the frontier to explore.

Diversity and Exploration- that's America, or at least a big chunk of it. Throw in the fact those charactes have that larger-than-the-work appeal (even if you've never seen an episode in your life you probably know who Kirk and Spock are, maybe Scotty and Uhura, and then more fringe are McCoy, Sulu and Chekov, though all three of them are also relatively known, at least that they exist, so just as if you don't know about the story but know Robin Hood is a guy with green and tights and shoots arrows and steals from the rich to give to the poor with Little John and the Merry Men, chances are most folks know Kirk to be the captain who gets into a lot of fights and has some sex and love to explore and womanize while speaking Shatner-ese, Spock's the "pointy-eared one" with the logic and the Salute and Nerve Pinch, McCoy's the doctor who always says "I'm a doctor, not a ___" or "He's dead, Jim!", Scotty's the Scottish guy with the silly accent and drinks and works on the engines and says "I'm givin' 'er all she's got, cap'n!", Uhura's the black lady with the funny silver thing in her ear and is the token woman and token black person all in one, but at least she gets to do something occasionally, Sulu's the Asian and his original actor is gay, and Chekov's the guy with the funny accent that's supposed to be Russian but there's no way that's fooling anyone) and a ship that's itself iconic, and I really think at least the Original Crew will be remembered the same way Robin Hood is- not so much the intricate little missions and intricacies that Trekkers like to have nerd-fights over, but jsut the fact that they were Kirk and Spock and the Crew of the Enterprise, they explored in space, and their big thing was "to boldly go where no man has gone before."



LOTR and Wars probably will last for literary merit, LOTR more than Wars, and Trek will be remembered in passing, 500 years from now that'll be a fairy tale or something, these fun characters and explorers in their little ship, when 500 years from now a lot of that technology will seem so obsolete. After all, from 1500-now we've gone from barely being able to safely cross the Atlantic Ocean, around 1522 was Magellan and his just circumnavigating the world over a long period of time in a wooden sailing ship (don't quote me on the date, that's a rough guess) and now in 2010 we've been to the Moon, sent rovers to Mars, launched probes deep into space, and have teloscopes that can see lightyears away from Earth- who knows, in 500 years, maybe the idea of fast, intergalactic ships will seem obsolete, what with our ability to just atomize ourselves and appear wherever we like at will (sure, why not, lol...)

Also, and I'm surprised no one's mentioned it yet...

The Godfather saga, maybe?

Amazing film, very lauded, and the next one also won Best Picture, if I'm not mistaken, the third one's not bad, and there's a lot of jnust great storytelling in there...anyone think that'll last?



Also, what about comedy, we've mentioned all these serious and thematic things, but a lot of comedy survives from Arisophanes and Spencer and Shakespeare and the like...

The Marx Brothers? The Pythons?

Think they'll last or, maybe to be more precise, their plays/movies will be remembered, the scripts at least?

"Duck Soup" and "Animal Crackers?" If anyone is capable of making sure vaudeville is remembered, it's the Marx Brothers, and with a straight comedy in "Animal Crackers" and then a comedy and satire of dictatorships with "Duck Soup" (Mussolini actually had kill orders for the Marxes, he hated that film and their mockery so much, how's that for comedy having some effect?)...can that survive, at least some of it? A lot of their jokes were topical and even today seem dated (though still funny) but plenty more are still timeless ("One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas- how he got in my pajamas I don't know...We took some pictures of the native girls, they weren't developed- but we're going back again in a couple of weeks!") XD

And then the Pythons...

Personally, if no one gets the "You're individuals!" * "We're all individuals!"* "I'm not.." joke from "The Life of Brian," I'm not sure I want to see the future 500 years from now, lacking a sense of humor...

Comedy that lasts...?

Will they get are jokes if they cyberlife? How many bioforms does take to change a LED?

Ummm... I dunno.. six?

Oh, and to respond (belatedly) to whoever asked "what about video games being remembered?"

In 500 years, if we haven't bombed ourselves out of existence, I suspect we'll hae so many games and they'll be so different (if we haven't invented the Holodeck in 500 years I'll be very disappointed) that probably no game series of today will really hold sway.

Video games as a part of our culture will be remembered, and maybe some old images of Mario, Pac-Man and Link will survive, but not much more, likely...

If asked what I think deserves to survive, or what I would, say, put in a time capsule to save it for them 500 years later if given the choice:

I'd put in Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda...come to think of it, I'd almost like to see The Legend of Zelda survive a bit to be appreciated. Mario was my favorite video game character growing up, and he basically is the face of the medium, easily one of the Top 10 Most Recognizable Fictional Characters In The World Today. However, Zelda really tries for that epic feel, and even though ir really doesn't ahve a coherent game-to-game plot or anything that would connect that way, somehow I'd just like to think that 500 years from now people would be able to see Link and see why we loved him and those games so much...the feeling of going on an adventure and solving puzzles and hunting treasures, stories and odd creatuers, a princess to save, and even some odd philosophical issues (I read a bit of a book in Barnes & Nobles once all about The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy, and they raised a neat issuen that really is shown with the Zelda games- the Link in every game is always different, either a past or future version of himself or just another "Link," and sometimes he changes in game...but what does this mean for the sake of life, death, and identity, that there are so amny Links? Is this sort of archetype just so important it reoccurs naturally? Is this really one Link or a few versions of him, and if so, if you took all fourteen or so Links and lined them up and asked "Who's the 'real' Link?" what'd be the answer? Or is this a case for Eternal Return? And to top it off- suppose Link's going about his business and you pause the game, is he then in limbo, what msut that be like...or if you turn off the game, does Link only "exist" when the game's playing, ie, when you're active and in the world, or is there an "essence" of Link, the data, maybe, and he "lives on" even if he never gets to play? Obviously this is WAY overthinking what's really just an amazingly fun adventure game, but still...)

I'd like to think in 500 years people can appreciate out love for that feeling of escaping into fantasy and adventure with Link...maybe the same way we can appreciate the adventures of Odysseus or the Grail Quest for King Arthur, even though Ancient Greece or Dark Ages England is far removed from our time...

LOTR has influenced by WWII heavily and, as such, carries with it much of what the classics like the Illiad and the Odyssey have. Star Wars - meh. Trek - meh. But LOTR is very much a classic by every standard and will reamin around for a long time to come.

As far as comic operas from Mozarts day (the 18th century). Mozart's own comic opera are well remembered and some of his best like Die Zaubeflote and Le Nozze di Figaro. Both are light hearted fun operas that rank right up there with Don Giovanni.