50 films in 50 states: Our favorite movies from across America

Forrest Gump takes viewers on a whirlwind of a ride with Tom Hanks’ titular character going everywhere from the White House to Vietnam, but at the heart of this movie is Alabama, as it’s where the movie starts and ends in his childhood home.

Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock need to team up again because they were magical together in The Proposal when he wound up taking her from New York City to the wilderness of Alaska to meet his family. All so that she can learn more about him to trick an immigration agent so she’s not sent back to Canada.

3:10 to Yuma doesn’t showcase a modern Arizona but instead what life was like for a Civil War vet with a debt to pay in 1884.

Matthew McConaughey stars in Mud as a fugitive who has decided to hide on a little island in the middle of the Mississippi River near Arkansas. Things get interesting when two teens discover his hideout and agree to help him.

California has been the backdrop to countless movies, but to pick anything other than the ‘90s staple Clueless would have had many totally buggin’.

Based on a true story, BlacKkKlansman doesn’t show off the picturesque beauty of Colorado. More importantly, it highlights one of the many instances of reckless racism in the United States.

Everyone can agree that Julia Roberts helped put Mystic, Connecticut, on the map when Mystic Pizza dropped.

Delaware isn’t known in pop culture for much, but it is the birthplace of Parks and Recreation  star Aubrey Plaza, as well as the backdrop of every Gen Xer’s favorite music movie, Empire Record

Florida has gotten an interesting reputation due to the bevy of headlines that make everyone question humanity. Still, it’s the setting for the fever dream comedy that is Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar.

Atlanta was sped through multiple times in 2017’s Baby Driver.

Based on one of the most beloved and corny sitcoms, A Very Brady Sequel paid homage to the episodes in which the family headed to Hawaii for some clean-cut fun in the sun.

Idaho has remained the state known for potatoes for so long that it’s hard to imagine it being known for anything else. However, the lightning in a bottle hit that was 2004’s Napoleon Dynamite helped the state be known for something more like llamas and awkward dances at assemblies.

Home Alone and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off are Illinois champions, but Halloween gets the spotlight this time out of fear that Michael Myers would strike if not given his flowers.

Hoosiers isn’t just a great movie based in Indiana, but it’s also one of the best sports movies ever made.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp have both done a lot in their careers, but many would say that the drama of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is up there for both as career-defining performances. All of that to say, this movie was set in Smalltown, USA, otherwise known as Endora, Iowa.

Dorothy may have spent the majority of the movie in Oz, but Kansas is forever synonymous with this classic.

A number of notable movies based around horses have called Kentucky home, but being that it’s well-known for the sweet taste of bourbon, The Moonshine War felt like a better fit.

Quvenzhané Wallis was just a kid when she starred in this movie that really captured the magic of the Louisiana Bayou.

If one takes the psychotic sewer clown out of the equation, Derry, Maine, actually looks like a wonderful place to live.

Before Mandy Moore was the mom of all moms on This Is Us, she played a devout (and sort of insane) Christian high schooler in Maryland in 2004’s Saved!

The Salem Witch Trials have always been one of the biggest reasons tourists have flocked to Massachusetts, but the popularity of Disney’s Hocus Pocus definitely helped bump up their tourism, especially during the fall.

Motown, the auto industry, and one of the wildest scenes to involve pie until The Help. That’s what Michigan is all about!

The sequels took this hockey team elsewhere, but The Mighty Ducks originated in Minneapolis after an attorney got a DUI and had to do community service. The most obvious place to send him would be a youth hockey league, right?

O Brother, Where Art Thou? made Mississippi proud because George Clooney took home a Golden Globe for this one, and the soundtrack won Album of the Year at the Grammys in 2002.

Long before Jason Bateman and Co. moved to the Ozarks, Jennifer Lawrence was there in what’s considered her breakout role in Winter’s Bone.

Yellowstone reps Montana on the small screen while everyone’s favorite blue hedgehog from the video game realm holds it down on the big one.

Children of the Corn made it so very few people ever wanted to find themselves in Nebraska.

If either Salma Hayek or Matthew Perry comes across this, the world is begging you two for a sequel to Fools Rush In.

The newest chapters of Jumanji transported a group of teens to the jungle, but in the original starring Robin Williams, all of the action took place right in New Hampshire.

It felt wrong to have New Jersey represented by anything other than the movie named after its nickname.

Oppenheimer really took his entire team and their families to New Mexico to work on his explosive project for two years like they didn’t have lives elsewhere.

New York City alone has been the backdrop of so many movies, but Home Alone 2 captures the magic of that place in a way very few others have.

I Know What You Did Last Summer made it so everyone in North Carolina drove safer.

Monster Trucks wasn’t the type of movie that was going to move mountains, but it was a fun time set in North Dakota.

Rick Moranis and Ed O’Neill were brothers with beef to squash and did so with a peewee football game in Urbana, Ohio.

If not the musical, then the movie about one of Oklahoma’s natural occurrences.

There hasn’t been a year since 1985 that has gone by without fans of The Goonies traveling to Astoria, Oregon, to take in all the locations from that one-of-a-kind adventure.

Note to self: Don’t rent a cabin in Pennsylvania.

A great deal of Osmosis Jones takes place inside Bill Murray’s body, but in the real world, the movie is set in Rhode Island.

South Carolina has been a part of the United States since 1776, but Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams put it on the map with the endearing love story that is The Notebook.

South Dakota will forever be associated with The Weasel, aka Pauly Shore, thanks to his best, Son in Law.

Johnny Cash was given the big screen treatment in Walk the Line, and while not originally from there, he did relocate to Memphis for a time.

Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean starred in Giant, a movie set in Texas that follows their characters over decades after they strike oil.

The natural beauty of Utah is unmatched, but it can also be a nightmare for those who wind up in the same situation as James Franco’s character in 127 Hours.

There is no Ben & Jerry’s movie, nor is there a Bernie Sanders biopic, but Vermont wasn’t left by the wayside. Don’t worry. Vermont will always have Dead Poets Society.

Remember the Titans paired Denzel Washington with a young Ryan Gosling, Hayden Panettiere, Ryan Hurst, and many others, and the results were wondrous in this Virginian film.

In Washington, the vampires sparkle.

Things get supernatural in the woods of West Virginia as The Mothman Prophecies puts one of the world's most infamous cryptids to work.

The town in The Great Outdoors may've been fictional, but that doesn't take away from this Wisconsin-set comedy starring John Candy and Dan Aykroyd.

Director Ang Lee told Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal to move in a scene for the lights, but they must've heard “change lives” because Brokeback Mountain was one of the most talked about movies in 2005 and still gets high praise whenever mentioned in conversation.