10 Best Movie References In Tropic Thunder

10 Best Movie References In Tropic Thunder

Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder specifically satirizes war films, but it has nods to all kinds of Hollywood classics, from Forrest Gump to Freaky Friday.

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Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder is one of the greatest Hollywood satires ever made. Specifically, the movie targets war movies and the phoniness of the actors who star in them, but Stiller included nods to all kinds of classics. This is a movie with both a lot of derision and a lot of affection for traditional Hollywood filmmaking.

On top of references to Vietnam War masterpieces like Platoon, The Deer Hunter, and Apocalypse Now, Tropic Thunder contains references to such beloved movies as Freaky Friday, Terminator 2, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

10 The Deer Hunter (1978)

Since it revolves around the making of a Vietnam War movie, it should come as no surprise that Tropic Thunder is filled with references to classic Vietnam War movies. One such Vietnam War-set classic is Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter.

Kirk Lazarus’ attempt to persuade Tugg Speedman to come back to America is a comedic version of a tragic similar scene in The Deer Hunter in which Robert De Niro tries to convince Christopher Walken, his friend and fellow soldier who decided to stay in Vietnam after serving in the war, to return home.

9 Freaky Friday (2003)

On top of regularly working with Seth Rogen and Will Ferrell’s respective companies of actors, Danny McBride is one of Ben Stiller’s recurring collaborators. In Tropic Thunder, he plays Cody, the loudmouthed pyrotechnics expert.

At one point, Cody mentions that he was responsible for an accident on the set of Freaky Friday. He confesses that he “almost blinded Jamie Lee Curtis.” Interestingly, a decade later, McBride ended up writing Laurie Strode dialogue for Curtis in the Halloween reboot.

8 Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Tropic Thunder is primarily a parody of Vietnam War movies, but it’s broadly a satire of the phoniness of war movies in general. Stiller includes a nod to an iconic moment from Steven Spielberg’s World War II classic Saving Private Ryan.

The scene in which Tugg Speedman is temporarily deafened by an explosion is a shot-for-shot homage to a similar sequence from the opening D-Day set-piece in Saving Private Ryan.

7 Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Kirk Lazarus is shown to be deeply entrenched in his method acting style. He tells his co-stars that he remains in character until he finishes recording the DVD commentary. When he has a meltdown in the prison camp, he peels back all the layers, rotating through his history of Oscar-winning film roles before he finally returns to his own personality.

Kirk’s shifting screen personas – brilliantly performed by Robert Downey, Jr. – are a nod to the T-1000’s death scene in Terminator 2. As it writhes around in a furnace, the T-1000 reverts back through all its disguises from throughout the movie.

6 Platoon (1986)

The opening scene of Tropic Thunder sees the cast and crew of the titular film-within-a-film trying and failing to shoot the climactic sequence. At the end of the movie, the more successful reshot version of the scene is screened at the Oscars.

Tugg throwing his arms up and dropping to his knees as he’s riddled with bullets is a reference to Willem Dafoe’s iconic death scene in Oliver Stone’s Platoon, another Vietnam classic.

5 Natural Born Killers (1994)

Kirk Lazarus’ Australian accent is a nod to an earlier Robert Downey, Jr. character. Downey previously did an Australian accent for the role of Wayne Gale in the satirical thriller Natural Born Killers, also directed by Oliver Stone.

Based on an early screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, Natural Born Killers stars Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as a Bonnie and Clyde-style pair of lovers-on-the-run as they amass a celebrity following. Gale is the host of a true-crime show who hopes to exploit their killing spree for ratings.

4 Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977)

When Jeff Portnoy is let loose in the prison camp, he finds a table with a giant pile of heroin on it. This mountain of heroin is designed to look exactly like the recreation of Devil’s Tower that Richard Dreyfuss’ UFO witness Roy Neary constructs with his mashed potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

This reference creates an interesting parallel between Neary’s narrow-minded obsession with the UFO he saw and Portnoy’s substance addiction.

3 Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)

In the same scene as the Close Encounters reference, Stiller managed to include a nod to Raiders of the Lost Ark, too. This movie has two Spielberg references within one pile of heroin.

When Jeff Portnoy is kneeling in front of the pile of heroin that looks like Roy Neary’s mashed-potato mountain, he’s illuminated with a golden glow and rubs his fingertips like Indiana Jones preparing to steal the golden idol in the opening scene of Raiders.

2 Forrest Gump (1994)

In the world of Tropic Thunder, Tugg Speedman is one of the highest-paid and highest-grossing action movie stars in the world whose career is in a slump after his first box office bomb, Simple Jack.

This movie-within-a-movie is a hilarious satire of Oscar bait, framed as an overacted version of Forrest Gump that lacks Tom Hanks’ nuance.

1 Apocalypse Now (1979)

The Vietnam War movie that Tropic Thunder spoofs more than all the others is Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, widely regarded to be the greatest entry in the subgenre – and one of the finest war movies ever made.

Kirk’s backstory as a “saucier” is a nod to Chef in Apocalypse Now. His confrontation with Tugg at the camp is an homage to the final standoff between Captain Willard and Colonel Kurtz in Coppola’s epic. The delays and setbacks faced by the in-universe Tropic Thunder production are a reference to Apocalypse Now’s own infamous on-set difficulties (chronicled in the stellar documentary Hearts of Darkness).

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/tropic-thunder-movie-references/

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