How ‘The Godfather’ directly inspired ‘Breaking Bad’
While many great television shows have defined 21st-century popular culture, none of them has surpassed the cultural impact of Breaking Bad. Vince Gilligan struck gold with this iconic crime drama, and he only improved upon his creative sensibilities in the beloved prequel series titled Better Call Saul.
Starring Bryan Cranston as a brilliant yet undervalued high school chemistry teacher who embarks on a quest to become a notorious drug lord, Breaking Bad is a modern epic. It chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of a man who has had enough of oppressive social structures, choosing to take his destiny into his own hands.
Ultimately, he becomes consumed by his own greed and turns into an unrecognisable monster. Over the years, Gilligan has cited cinematic masterpieces such as The Treasure of Sierra Madre and Once Upon a Time in the West as sources of inspiration, but Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather is probably the most significant influence on Breaking Bad.
“You can’t do a TV show like Breaking Bad and not highlight the influences of The Godfather,” Gilligan once explained in an interview. “It’s a brilliant tragedy of this man, Michael Corleone, doing everything in his power to save his family and keep them together, and that’s why it ends up destroying it.”
The thematic similarities are certainly evident, but Gilligan was also deeply influenced by cinematographer Gordon Willis who worked on The Godfather. In addition to the cinematography of Breaking Bad and Walter White’s association with Michael Corleone, Breaking Bad had a lot of other Godfather references.
One famous example is Gilligan’s incorporation of murder montages similar to the iconic Godfather segment. Not just that, Saul Goodman – Walter White’s notorious “criminal lawyer” – thinks of himself as Tom Hagen from The Godfather. For those who are unfamiliar, Hagen was a consigliere and lawyer for the Corleone family.
“I learn from this film every time I see it,” Gilligan added. “From photography, I learned that you don’t need to see everything on the screen. It’s amazing how often you don’t show the faces of the characters that are talking. You can focus on the character; you can dwell on the small details if the audience is interested and involved. You don’t have to rush the plot at breakneck speed.”
