
The thing is, without these early works, we would still have films... someone else would have come up with the idea. There are so many instances where people come up with almost identical ideas in the same year as each other without ever having met. Sometimes it's even the same month/week/day.
i mean it’s not like his movies don’t inspire modern filmmakers. like, would we even have nope without eadweard muybridge? any thom andersen movie? even if he somehow doesn’t directly inspire modern filmmakers, he inspired the ones who inspired them! you can’t not feel that power and that history watching the horse in motion or the kiss.