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Homage Shot

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Homage Shot (trope)

Film directors start out as movie buffs, often of the most obscure sorts of films. On top of that, many modern directors went to film school and saw hundreds of legendary movies. Even after they get to direct movies of their own, they often love to use angles, compositions, and shots they saw in school. Of course, all directors use tricks and shots invented long before. But while anyone can do a Team Power Walk, it takes skill and devotion to light and shoot a power walk exactly like Philip Kaufmann did in The Right Stuff (especially if your film isn't about astronauts).

This trope does not count deliberate parody, or remakes of old movies, unless it's a new adaptation from the original medium. (Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy qualifies for this trope, while the remake of Psycho does not.) Something similar occasionally appears in comics, but the comparative ease of copying (light tables) makes it hard to tell the homages from the flat-out swipes.

Occasionally this is Inspiration Nod, but usually it's more of a Shout-Out to a director that inspired them to get into the business. It's Art Imitates Art of cinema. If the homage is referential to a series or property's own past, it's an Internal Homage.


Examplesnote 

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    Anime and Manga 

    Comic Books 

    Fan Works 
  • The Star Trek Online fic The Headhunt has a literary homage shot (i.e. described instead of shown) to Star Trek Into Darkness. The scene where the USS Bajor effortlessly overtakes the Enterprise-A was based directly on the Vengeance's attack on the Enterprise in the movie.
  • In A.A. Pessimal's Discworld fic Gap Year Adventures, two adventurous voyagers in Klatch reflect on the fact that if they're found out, an awful lot of Klatchians will be pursuing them. Especially since they've already been responsible for quite a lot of cheerfully-applied destruction and violence which the Klatchian authorities are quite unreasonably holding against them. Poised on the border to enter the Empire, their conversation revolves around each being in possession of a fully fuelled camel, they're wearing sunglasses, it's getting dark, and they have a packet of cigarettes. They unanimously agree to hit it. As the camels are duly hit and lumber forward, one turns to the other, puzzled, and says "but we don't smoke..."

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 

In General:

By Creator:

  • George Lucas is also an old Kurosawa fan. (He, Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola were instrumental in finding the money for Ran.) While Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope is built off Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress and The Dam Busters, the homage shot (the pan along the ground to a severed arm) is lifted from Yojimbo. There's also bits and pieces of other stuff, like Westerns and older Sci-Fi movies, if you pay real close attention and know what to look for.
  • Steven Spielberg is the absolute king of this. While his own style is distinctive (and subject to homage by other directors), he loves to work in bits from other movies.
    • His longest sequence of homage shots comes in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. As the rangers hit the beach, Spielberg slips in bits from war movies that have come before (this case might count as Pink Bunny Slippers). After Tom Hanks falls into the water, we have a shot of bullets making water trails round floating bodies that looks like a scene from Peter Weir's Gallipoli. As the troops crawl along the beach, we see a medic checking a wounded soldier and discovering that he's been completely eviscerated. The wounds and the pose are straight out of Catch-22 (1970). Lastly, we catch a glimpse of a wounded man holding his own severed arm, a twin of a shot from Kurosawa's Ran.
    • Many people noted the use of the generic "Japanese man looking back at Godzilla" shot in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. More obscure is the sequence where the hunters are running through the tall grass at night. A series of tracking pans of each figure, snapping back to pick up the next man, it's a direct lift from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, down to the tall grass. The moonlight helps match it to the black-and-white original.

By Movie:

  • Alatriste: The scene of the surrender of Breda is modelled after Velazquez's famous painting.
  • The confession scene in American Psycho is very evocative of Walter's confession scene in Double Indemnity.
  • In Aragami there is an Homage Shot to Metal Gear Solid, of which the director, Ryuhei Kitamura, is an outspoken fan. When the nameless Samurai shoots at Miyamoto Musashi, Musashi dodges, and then stands framed exactly like the cyborg Ninja in Metal Gear Solid does if you try shooting at him in battle. He performs an identical sequence of Weapon Twirling as him, and then directly quotes the Ninja by saying "You can't defeat me with a weapon like that."
  • In Avengers: Infinity War Spider-Man brings up Aliens to suggest taking care of Ebony Maw by getting him Thrown Out the Airlock, and Maw's corpse drifting towards and past the camera is even a shot-for-shot recreation of the Xenomorph Queen helplessly drifting away from the USS Sulaco after being ejected.
  • Back to the Future Part III: Doc's idiosyncratic way of dancing in 1885 is stated in the commentary to be an homage to My Darling Clementine. There is also a careful reproduction of another shot from that film: a gun being slid down a bar toward the camera, in deep focus.
  • Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: There are three shots in this film that are directly taken from velociraptor scenes in Jurassic Park (1993).
    • The opening prison cart drop off is blocked just like the velociraptor intro.
    • The overhead shot where the party pulls Doric away from the dragon's bite is nearly identical to when Grant pulls Lex up into the air ducts away from the jumping velociraptor.
    • After the displacer beast victim realizes the true hunter is over his shoulder, it is framed the same way as when Robert Muldoon meets his end after muttering "Clever girl" to the alpha hunter.
  • Fargo: The scene where Carl buries the Briefcase Full of Money beside the road is a homage to a similar scene in the 1960 British film The Criminal where Johnny Bannion buries a suitcase full of stolen cash in an empty field.
  • Another animation to (sorta) live-action lift: Luna's Patronus in the film version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a rabbit. It runs around the air in a pattern lifted from the opening narration/montage of the movie Watership Down ("Prince with a thousand enemies").
  • Iron Man 1: Almost the entire final battle between Tony Stark/Iron Man and Obadiah Stane/Iron Monger is a shot-for-shot homage to the final battle between Alex Murphy/RoboCop and the larger RoboCop 2 in RoboCop 2.
  • Jennifer's Body contains several homage shots to the Twilight movie, all twisted in some way, like Jennifer kissing her victim in a forest clearing that looks like the one where Edward confessed that he was a vampire to Bella; and the deer lapping the victim's corpse, which recalls the deer sipping from a pool that Edward ate at the start of Twilight.
  • The Lord Of The Rings:
    • Peter Jackson shot one bit at Bilbo's birthday party in The Fellowship of the Ring ("Proudfeet!") as an exact copy of a shot in Ralph Bakshi's animated The Lord of the Rings. Jackson even helpfully points this out in the commentary. A circle-round shot of the four hobbits at Weathertop is also lifted from the original, although the camera moves much faster and Aragorn is absent. And the hobbits hiding in the crotch of a tree from the Nazgûl? Also from the Bakshi version. (It's the last shot you'd expect, isn't it?)
    • The scene at the black gates of Mordor appears to be a homage to The Wizard of Oz: Frodo and Sam (and Gollum) crouching behind a boulder as they watch enemy troops march past and into an enemy citadel essentially duplicates the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion as they plot to enter the Wicked Witch's citadel as the Winkie legions parade past.
    • Saruman telekinetically closing the 4 doors in his tower to keep Gandalf trapped in Orthanc mirrors a similar scene in Dragonslayer where Ulrich traps Galen in the wizard's tower - yes, four doors are also involved.
    • Wormtongue brings a flame too close to some gunpowder, Saruman deftly moves the flame away = The Wise Man and Ash respectively in Army of Darkness.
    • Another The Wizard of Oz example: Saruman (through a possessed King Théoden) telling Gandalf that "You have no power here!", a line for line echo of what Glinda says to the Wicked Witch of the West.
    • And another: Galadriel kisses the top of Frodo's head as he prepares to leave Lothlorien in a manner very similar to how Glinda kisses Dorothy as she is leaving Munchkinland.
    • Aragorn throwing an apple at Pippin parallels the apple trees doing likewise at The Scarecrow; Billy Boyd's reaction when he is hit by one even uncannily mirrors Ray Bolger's. Can you tell that PJ loves this film yet?
    • The fight scenes at Helm's Deep in The Two Towers have a certain similarity to those in Zulu. Orc's Drift, anyone?
    • The look of King Theoden when he is possessed by Saruman owes a lot to the dusty visage of King Bruno the Questionable in Jabberwocky.
  • Word of God has stated the scene in Love Actually where Mark reveals that he's in love with Juliet by showing her his tape of her wedding, which is entirely made up of shots of her is a homage to the ending of Cinema Paradiso.
  • The Parent Trap (1998): After checking in at the hotel, Nick and Meredith enter the elevator en route to their suite, when Nick turns around and sees Elizabeth in the lobby. The sight of his old wife poleaxes him so thoroughly that he leans dramatically to the side to keep her in view as the elevator door closes—just like Cary Grant does in My Favorite Wife.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: Gore Verbinski stuck in a virtually identical shot of Orlando Bloom in Tortuga echoing one he did in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in Lothlórien: in both cases Bloom reacts to an offscreen comment or activity with a concerned look as he turns his head.
  • The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time film had a scene where the camera rotates around The Prince on a high tower to give a good view of the landscape. The exact same shot which was used for viewpoints in Assassin's Creed. Not surprising, considering that both franchises are owned by Ubisoft and the videogame Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands even allows the Prince to wear an assassin costume as a completion extra.
  • Spotlight: When Rezendes is finally able to get the Smoking Gun documents attached to Garabedian's response to the church's motion, the files with them are shown being put down on the desk by the court clerk from straight above—exactly the same way Woodward and Bernstein are shown receiving documents from the Library of Congress early in All the President's Men, a film to which Spotlight has often been compared.
  • Star Trek: First Contact: Word of God said the movie was heavily influenced by Aliens, e.g. the scene where the Enterprise security team goes into the assimilated deck 16 is shot in homage to the Marines going into the infested LV-426 atmosphere processor plant.
  • Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope: The trench run scene in the climax is heavily inspired by The Dambusters.
  • The train crash in Super 8 is set up almost identically to the one in The Greatest Show on Earth.
  • Titanic (1997) homages A Night to Remember in the scene where Andrews is checking the clock and calmly accepting his fate (the page pic).
  • Tremors 5: Bloodlines: There's a homage to the Velociraptor kitchen scene from the first Jurassic Park when an Assblaster breaks into the kitchen of the main compound In pursuit of its prey. Most noticeably, there's an almost identical shot centered on the Assblaster's foot claw tapping on the floor.
  • Us: The position of Becca and Lindsey Tyler's corpses are identical to the Grady Twins'.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Babylon 5: President Clark's swearing-in scene is intentionally shot to resemble that of Lyndon Johnson.
  • In a very weird example, the "windowpane scene" between Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift Of All is a direct clone of the Tear Jerker ending of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Without the Vulcan hand sign, obviously.
  • Jane the Virgin: "Chapter Fifty-One" has a bit of a Alfred Hitchcock theme, including a few of these:
    • To Alfred Hitchcock Presents before the first segue, where "Jane Villanueva Presents" appears on the screen along with an outline of her.
    • To Vertigo as Rafael realizes that his father's paintings were stolen from the convent Elena deposited the checks to.
    Narrator: OMG I’m getting vertigo! Stop spinning!
    • To The Birds as the birds circle around the convent. Acknowledged by the narrator, who "couldn't help Hitchcock-ing it up".
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:
    • The shot of Elendil covering the sun with his silhouette while making a shadow over Galadriel and Halbrand is inspired by the shadow scene of Lawrence adopting his savior complex and leading the Arabs to their potential freedom.
    • Subverted with the scene of Galadriel and Theo hiding under a log from the Orcs. According to Alex Diesenhof, the similarities with the hobbits hiding under a long in both the Bakshi’s and Jackson’s films were accidental.

    Music Videos and Album Art 

    Pinball 

    Video Games 

    Western Animation 


 
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The Great Piggy Bank Homage

Bob Clampett's Great Piggybank Robbery features a scene where Duck Twacy encounters his entire Rogues' Gallery, and soon gets chased by them after his attempt to subdue them fails. This scene is faithfully recreated in Batman: The Brave and the Bold where Bat-Mite encounters Batman's Rogues' Gallery as part of Batman's lesson that being Batman isn't easy. Amusingly, Batman is one of the Duck Twacy's villains, long before Warner Bros. even acquired the rights to Batman.

How well does it match the trope?

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