it's not uncommon for filmmakers to borrow and pay homage to their favorite movies and Pixar is no different in fact Pixar absolutely filled their films with references to other great movies but they go by so fast that only the biggest movie buffs might catch them all while it may just be a similar frame or set design other times it's a straight-up shot-for-shot recreation don't forget to hit the subscribe button and ring the bell to stay up to date with all of the latest videos from Screen Rant it's safe to say the absolute best at recreating
famous movie scenes and animation other creators of Toy Story these movies are packed with scenes stolen from classic films and none more than Star Wars when buzzes first unbox in Andy's room he looks around from within the helmet of his spacesuit in the exact way that Darth Vader does when we first meet him in Star Wars a new hope the scene is complete with his trademark ventilated breathing sound and is instantaneously recognizable because of it almost immediately after buzzes intro comes another reference taken from another classic sci-fi film Total Recall while buzz is still convinced
that he needs his space suit to breathe what he attempts to show him that this isn't the case he pushes the button to release his helmet and buzz immediately starts flailing around and gasping for air before realizing that he's actually totally fine this scene is copied from the moment Arnold Schwarzenegger breathes in Martian air with a little less eye popping for Buzz in Toy Story there is a reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark that is totally unmistakable when a globe topples over woody watches in horror as buzz tries desperately to run away from it
before eventually diving out of the way very similarly to the giant rolling stone Indy must avoid the opening scene where India attempts to steal a priceless artifact and ends up in a maze of booby traps is one of the most famous scenes from any Indiana Jones movie and has been referenced over and over again in different movies and television even though Pixar's movies are geared towards a younger audience the creators know that for kids to see movies grown-ups have to see them too so they love to throw in some things just for the parents like
this reference to alien where the most gruesome scene is redone in a hilarious way while in the arcade kid plays a game called wacky alien trying to hit an alien monster popping out of the stomach of an astronaut suit we all know where that came from and it is definitely not kid friendly Toy Story 2 was no less full of stolen scenes some even more ambitious than the first movie like the beautiful recreation of Alfred Hitchcock's vertigo when Woody has an extremely creepy dream that Andy doesn't want to play with him anymore because of his
torn shoulder he drops woody in slow motion who falls through a deck of cards and into nothingness before waking up with a start it's a slightly less psychedelic but almost shot-for-shot version of Scotty's nightmare from Hitchcock's 1958 horror classic another classic movie reference in Toy Story 2 that is impossible for any film buff to miss is a recreation of a scene from Stanley Kubrick's 2001 a Space Odyssey the production design from this masterpiece is so singular and recognizable that it too has been referenced and redone time and time again so in the opening scene of
Toy Story 2 and Buzz's escaping Zerg on an alien planet he runs through an octagonal hallway that is almost exactly the same as the one from the Space Station in 2001 in another example of the fact that almost every modern filmmaker has been a little influenced by Star Wars there's another scene in Toy Story 2 that was taken this time from 1983 s Return of the Jedi in the same opening sequence of Buzz on the alien planet he hides against a rock a small robotic arm extends from a hatch and pokes out looking around he
comes face to face with buzz and jumps back startled in almost the exact way that it does to c-3po in the original film in Toy Story 2 when Buzz actually comes face to face with the evil Zerg we get one more scene taken from a different Star Wars movie and possibly the most famous Star Wars scene of them all after jumping down onto the top of an elevator and battling it out Bloods and Zerg proceeded to recite thee you killed my father I am your father scene from the Empire Strikes Back complete with buzz yelling
a prolonged No up to the sky as the camera pulls away it's impossible to miss there are a ton of stolen scenes and references in Toy Story 3 but for the sake of time we'll include just one this great one was taken from the original mission impossible in one of the most suspenseful scenes in the movie we see Tom Cruise being lowered into a hyper son of chamber in order to download stolen data onto a floppy disk but is accidentally dropped and left to hover an inch above the ground Toy Story 3 recreates this exactly
but with woody being dangled by the string that controls his voice box moving on to another Pixar favorite this time two Monsters Inc there's one scene in particular that is a pretty obvious reference to the right stuff and one that has been borrowed before by many other films the scene where we first meet the squad of monsters on their way to begin their days scaring they do a pretty classic slow-motion cool guy group walk into the workroom the original features a group of astronauts as they strut towards their upcoming mission one more move mister this
scene from Finding Nemo is so on the nose it's basically a shot-for-shot remake that could be watched side by side in near perfect unison in Kramer vs Kramer when Billy begins acting out and defying his father he goes to the freezer for a tub of ice cream in Finding Nemo the little fish is determined to defy his protective father by touching the butt or the bottom of the boat on the surface the dialogue is almost exactly the same as is the frustration it's pretty hard to make a movie with a villainous shark without making at
least one reference to jaws and Finding Nemo is no exception while the Pixar shark Bruce is still definitely a bad guy and pretty intimidating he doesn't hold a candle to the terrifying great white from Steven Spielberg's masterpiece and while he bears a resemblance the actual stolen scene comes from the shining as Bruce goes ballistic and smashes into the boat where Nemo and Dory are hiding declaring in true Jack Nicholson fashion Alfred Hitchcock's movies are so iconic it's pretty expected that they will be borrowed from again and again another excellent recreation and Finding Nemo comes from
the birds his beloved horror film about flocks of birds attacking humans the seagulls are already one of the best parts of Finding Nemo and the fact that the scene in which Nigel tries to reunite Nemo's father with his son is chased by a flock of menacing gulls all screaming mine looks almost identical to Hitchcock's flocks of terrifying birds makes it even better The Incredibles is such a great Pixar film on its own but when you notice the classic movie reference is embedded within it it gets even more incredible an early black-and-white montage that explains how
superheroes have gone out of fashion in The Incredibles Universe is nostalgic and sad but you may not notice that it looks exactly like a scene from Citizen Kane announcing that Charles Cain has died from the newspaper articles to the scrolling marquee it's an excellent image - one of the greatest movies of all time ratatouille is kind of a gross idea out of context but it's actually a heartwarming and fun Pixar classic it's almost hard to be mad at the French chefs for not wanting their kitchen to be filled with rats but that's if we weren't
already rooting for them to help when we first meet the rat Remy he comes crashing through a window with a stolen cookbook before it freezes frames which is actually a perfect recreation of how to Co is introduced in the classic Western the good the bad and the ugly once we've accepted it's not gross that this Paris kitchen is filled with rats we grow to love them pretty quickly and we get one more awesome stolen scene this time from Rocky when the rats have taken over the kitchen are beginning to cook there's a montage of them
getting ready in a quick shop we see a rat boxing with a piece of meat in order to tenderize it this is of course one of the most famous scenes from Rocky during his epic training montage that guy [Music] wali was instantly beloved upon its release because of it's heartwarming love story and also because it's a sobering look at humanity's place here on earth but it's not without its stolen scenes and one of the best is an homage to 1982 s Blade Runner when we pan back to see the world of garbage that wall-e has
been sorting it resembles establishing shots of the world of Blade Runner also the huge projections advertising that people should abandon earth echo those of the same type in Blade Runner cars is another Pixar franchise that is packed to the brim with references to other movies so much so that we could make a handful of lists just about that but our favorite is such a classic movie moment that it's instantly noticeable and very fun to watch in cars during the scene where the car mater drives backwards he launches high up into the air and flies directly
across a giant full moon exactly like et and Elliot do in et the extra-terrestrial another star was reenactment because Pixar really can't get enough also appears in wall-e when Eve arrives on earth to scan for biological matter and stumbles across wall-e he watches her scan the environment around her using a wide beam of blue light if you're a star Wars fan you know that that light looks exactly the same as the blue light r2d2 emits to project the hologram message from Leia asking for help from obi-wan Kenobi in a new hope startling Luke just as
much as Eve startles wall-e it makes sense that a movie about robots in space would make a couple of references to 2001 a Space Odyssey as it's so influential it's almost difficult not to in fact the entire subplot about Auto references the famous sci-fi classic more than once to start he looks just like Hal 9000 and has a very similar personality or lack thereof in another scene when the ship's captain fully stands Strauss's thus Spoke Zarathustra plays which is the very same song used in the opening of 2001 with very similar context up is another
one of Pixar's Heartbreakers with an opening sequence so sadly honest that most of us can't make it through without shedding at least one tear it's a movie about nostalgia and time going by which makes the fact that it references some true classics all the more poignant the first is the lost world a 1925 film about prehistoric dinosaurs which is recreated identically in up when an old black-and-white newsreel shows Carl about Paradise Falls the place that she dreams of living the second scene recreated an up is from the original King Kong when we first meet the
antagonist Charles F months Muntz was a great world traveler in the 1930s who Carl and Ellie revered and we see him being watched on screen by nine year old Carl at the movie theater Muntz is presenting his latest find a 13-foot bird skeleton to an audience of people this scene is visually exactly the same as the first reveal of King Kong for the 1933 black and white film lastly from up is one of the most obvious to those of us who loved The Wizard of Oz as children one of the most iconic shots in movie
history comes from that film and is redone here by Pixar in The Wizard of Oz Dorothy's house gets blown away to the magical land by a tornado and we see it swirling in the massive wind tunnel in up it is reimagined when the house is caught in a terrible storm through wind and rain and flashes of lightning inside out is a great movie not only for the excellent voices and animation but because it has actually helped children learn to understand their emotions it also happens to contain one of the best stolen scenes of them all
towards the end when two cops take a statement from a cloud woman about how her husband was blown away by joy she runs past them again before one cop takes action the other stops it and says forget it Jake it's cloud town in an amazing homage to the movie Chinatown starring Jack Nicholson it's actually pretty impressive that Back to the Future hasn't made it on this list until now but we couldn't end it without at least one call back to this beloved movie and inside out as Riley starts to forget about Bing bong when he
and joy fall into the memory dump in a near-perfect reference to when Marty McFly is almost written out of existence Bing bong looks down at his hand as it begins to disappear things would work out a little better for Marty though while Bing bong sacrifice is truly heartbreaking I wonder what that means Wow let's go in well there they are 25 times Pixar stole a scene from a classic movie and recreated it in animation what did you think of this list do you think that the classics are better left alone or did Pixar do them
justice are there any great ones that we missed let us know in the comments down below and don't forget to subscribe to keep up with everything Screen Rant has to offer thanks for watching and I hope to see you at the movies [Music]
