Hey does anybody know all of the Homages in the Star Wars movies? The Phantom Menace 2 references to E.T. the Extraterrestrial: 1.) The E.T.'s in the Senate 2.) "It's working! It's working!: Anakin says when they get the pod racer running in the same way Elliot does in the forest when E.T. gets the homemade communicator going. 2 references to Forbidden Planet 1.) One of the belts a Jedi wears is identical in style, but a different color than the belts the crew wore in Forbidden Planet. 2.) When Qui-Gon Jinn puts his lightsaber into the control room door on the Trade Federation ship, the other side melts and drops to the ground. It looks very much like when the Id Monster tries to melt through the door of the Krell laboratory on Altair IV. The name Qui-Gon Jinn might be an Homage to Pierre Boulle and Alec Guinness. Guinness played the main character in the movie "The Bridge over the river Kwai" and one of the characters in the prologue of "The Planet of the Apes" novel is named Jinn. Pierre Boulle wrote both stories. Anybody have any more?
The pod-racing sequence in The Phantom Menace is an extended homage to Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, which serves as a sort-of inverted foreshadowing for the story of Anakin Skywalker. The titular Judah Ben-Hur begins his story as a Jewish prince who is betrayed by the Roman man he loves and is sold into slavery. He survives impossible circumstances in his quest for revenge, but his ultimate salvation comes not through violence but through Christ (whose story intersects with his at various points throughout the film). Anakin is Christ and Ben-Hur in one, but his experience of these dual roles is inverted, and that creates an internal conflict that cannot be reconciled. He begins as a slave, through violence proves himself and becomes a "prince" in service of his Emperor. The Jedi assume he is their Chosen One, their savior, but there is no salvation in walking his path.
In The Phantom Menace, there's a scene in the ground battle, where one of the tanks goes over a battle droid. I always thought it was an homage to the movie Patton. The same thing happens with a tank and a German soldier.
I always thought the scene where Chewbacca holds up C3P0's head in Empire was an homage to Hamlet, I think.
I don't know them all, but here's three I do: 1. The scene In Star Wars when Obi wan Kenobi cuts Bum Face's arm off is a homage to a similar scene in Yojimbo. 2. The opening crawl of Star Wars is a homage to the Flash Gordon serial from the 1930's. 3. In The Phantom Menace when Queen Amidala appears on the Trade Federation Communicator Screen the sound and visual effect are the same as that used in the Buck Rogers serial from the 1930's.
And the "hiding under the Falcon's floor panels" thing is also taken from Yojimbo. There are many Kurosawa influences in the saga, including the similarities between ANH and The Hidden Fortress ( notably, the phrase "hidden fortress" is what Motti is in the process of saying when Vader chokes him off ), Han and Luke on Hoth being derived from Dersu Uzala, and the Gungan army's emergence from the swamp being inspired by a scene in Throne of Blood.
Certain terminology is pretty obviously name-dropped in homage to Star Trek: deflector shields tractor beam starship star fleet Federation Other terminology is cribbed from Asimov's Foundation trilogy, such as Corellian (spelled "Korellian"). Tatooine pretty obviously homages Dune. There's moisture farming, the Sand People wear something like stillsuits, C-3PO encounters something like a sandworm skeleton, and the word "spice" gets name-dropped. The bridge that Luke and Leia cannot extend where they swing across the chasm in the Death Star seems to homage the light bridge in Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars.