BobbyWojak
Superstar
Fair enough, I should've said 'very influential' instead of 'changing how movies are made'; ironically Fury Road still meets my criteria for an important film. At the time it was lauded for it's use of political themes in an action movie and even more so for how Miller handled the mix of practical and digital effects, a decision that still influences movies today (Prey). It was unique, classic should mean more than 'a very good movie'. We're too soft on art in general anyways, it should take time to determine what and what isn't classic, people complain that music or movies aren't as good as they used to be and in the same breath make excuses for mediocre releases.In my opinion, your definition of classic is far too narrow, then. While that definitely describes A reason movie achieves classic status, it's certainly not the ONLY reason. And ultimately, what makes a movie classic is just the overall quality of the movie as a whole.
For example, Mad Max Fury Road is seen as a classic. The plot could easily be summed up as "It's basically just a really long chase scene", absolutely none of the performances were really all that amazing, and movie history definitely would be the exact same if the movie was never made. But it's a movie that's definitely greater than the sum of its parts, and everything combines to an amazing experience that holds up amazingly well.
The same exercise could be done for plenty of classics. So, sometimes it's really just that the movie was just really good, and not something genre or moment defining. Especially since it's hard to truly determine those factors until years later.
All that aside, I think the only actors on that list that are clearly above him are Denzel, Sam, and Will (who ironically walked through a lot doors Eddie's career opened. You could say that Will's career is a lot like Eddie's, but if he started in family friendly comedy and pivoted to more adult faire, as opposed to the opposite for Eddie).
Of that list, Morgan Freeman and Laurence Fishburne are really the only ones that are close, and I'd say they're generally seen as less important actors.

I wanted to compare Will and Eddie since they've done more comedy. If you keep Eddie on the list imo you gotta rank him pretty high as a comedian.


