Philip Kaufman
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(As is appropriate for an arrival from space, she’s briefly intrigued by a VHS tape of “The Right Stuff.”
After crashing through the top of a Blockbuster video store, Vers feels drawn to a VHS box of The Right Stuff.
Making her way to the vicinity of our humble globe, she hurtles down from outer space and crashes through the roof of a Blockbuster store—it’s 1995 on Earth—where she notes without comment a videotape of “The Right Stuff.”
Instead, she picks up a VHS box of “The Right Stuff,” which earns a mild chuckle, since while we know that she’s a space alien named Vers (rhymes with “cheers”), we also have reason to suspect that this young woman is connected with the United States Air Force, and maybe the space program, too, like the guys in that film.
Not only are the Blockbuster and a Radio Shack brought back, but there’s an LA Weekly box, and references to “The Right Stuff” and pioneer aviatrix Pancho Barnes.
“Planet C-53”), Boden and Fleck pepper the film with cheeky references (Vers lands in a Blockbuster Video, where she promptly photon-blasts the head off of an Arnold Schwarzenegger standee and peruses a VHS copy of The Right Stuff ) and tease the idea of a Lethal Weapon -style buddy-cop action movie (first with two Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., then with Vers and Nick Fury), complete with car chase.
First Man (2018)
Directed by Damien Chazelle
influenced by The Right Stuff (1983)
Themes Plot Visuals
More so than other films about the US space program, including " The Right Stuff " and " Apollo 13 ," it makes the experience seem more wild and scary than grand, like being in the cab of a runaway truck as it smashes through a guardrail and tumbles down the side of a mountain.
Although inferior in its depiction of the early days of the space program to such riveting productions as The Right Stuff, Apollo 13 , and From the Earth to the Moon (the 10-part 1998 mini-series that one might consider to be definitive), First Man offers an intimate portrayal of Armstrong, offering a peek behind the taciturn mask he wore as an icon and hero.
Adapted from James R Hansen’s book by Spotlight screenwriter Josh Singer, First Man’s 60s-set narrative essentially picks up from Philip Kaufman’s 1983 adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff .
The shot seems to be a deliberate echo of the most iconic still from Philip Kaufman’s 1983 space epic The Right Stuff , in which test pilot Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard), his glass helmet shattered and scorched, calmly walks from the flaming wreckage of a test plane.
The 1950s - 70s heyday of the United States’ manned space program has been a relatively successful (if strangely infrequent) source of compelling cinematic stories, inspiring both rousing dramas (The Right Stuff [1983], Apollo 13 [1995]) and engrossing documentaries (For All Mankind [1989], In the Shadow of the Moon [2007]).
The moon landing itself, and the other space sequences, don't really look like space movies of the past—you can see Chazelle going to great lengths not to actively lift shots from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gravity or The Right Stuff.
Interstellar (2014)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
influenced by The Right Stuff (1983)
Characters Themes
And to pilot the ship, he needs Cooper, an instinctive flight jockey in the Chuck Yeager mode, much as McConaughey’s laconic, effortlessly self-assured performance recalls Sam Shepard’s as Yeager in “The Right Stuff” (another obvious “Interstellar” touchstone).
Here is a film that provides plenty of 70mm action (cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot the whole thing on film with IMAX cameras he calls “the world’s heaviest Go-Pros”), as well as references both obvious and veiled to such influential sci-fi and/or science touchstones as 2001: A Space Odyssey , Close Encounters of the Third Kind , The Right Stuff and the best speculative fiction of to-the-stars maestro Robert A. Heinlein.
There is also a “hotdog” swagger to his performance that reminds of the thrill seeking pilots, turned astronauts in Philip Kauffman’s 1983 space-race epic The Right Stuff .
Matthew McConaughey plays a former test pilot named Cooper (surely an homage to cocky test pilot Gordo Cooper of “The Right Stuff”).
Set in a near future when a dusty, ravaged Earth seems unlikely to sustain another full generation of humans, Interstellar finds Matthew McConaughey playing a cross between Richard Dreyfuss' Everyman from Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind and any of the brave astronauts seen in Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff (two more classics whose DNA can be detected in Nolan's film).
Matthew McConaughey stars as “Coop,” basically playing Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff and doing a fine job of it.
Us (2019)
Directed by Jordan Peele
influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Right Stuff (1983)
Themes
Meanwhile, the pod people in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”—first in 1956 and then, with an added dash of humor from which Peele has learned, in 1978—morphed into us, mocking our social conformity and daring us to tell the difference between human simulacra and the real thing.
Throughout the years, moviegoers have bitten their nails to The Student of Prague (1913), The Man With My Face (1951), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, 1978), The Other, Sisters, The Stepford Wives (all from the 1970s), Mirrors (2008), Enemy (2013), and of course Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017).
Esta inquietud nace de otras influencias en el cine de horror con películas y series que muestran el miedo a encontrarse con uno mismo: ahí tenemos el episodio de “Mirror Image” de The Twilight Zone (1960), tenemos Dead Again de Kenneth Brannagh (1991), tenemos Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) o la muy inquietante Enemy (2013) de Denis Villeneuve.
“Us” borrows several tropes from such landmarks of the horror genre as George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” Don Siegel’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and Wes Craven’s “The Hills Have Eyes.”
Peele's uber-nerd cinephilia—the clever echoes of such horror-canon treasures as Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers , Stanley Kubrick's The Shining , George Romero's Day of the Dead , Michael Haneke's Funny Games , and on and on—is non-stop fun ("Isn't that the Lost Boys boardwalk?").
Cinephiles will also notice shades of Don Siegel’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956), Michael Bay’s “The Island” (2005) and Charlie McDowell’s “The One I Love” (2014), which fittingly starred Elisabeth Moss (“Mad Men”) in a double role.
Hidden Figures (2016)
Directed by Theodore Melfi
influenced by The Right Stuff (1983)
Themes Visuals Plot
In its best moments, Hidden Figures supplies the same work-the-problem thrills of Apollo 13 (if not the cosmological rapture of The Right Stuff), and benefits enormously from Kevin Costner in full lefty righteous-rage mode as the NASA director who smashes the sign off a segregated bathroom: “Here at NASA, we all pee the same color!”
An incredibly timely and well-told story that serves as a nice counterpart to 1983’s “The Right Stuff,” the film shines a light on the African-American women who helped put Glenn into space during a time when neither African-Americans nor women were given those kinds of opportunities.
Melfi also makes sly visual allusions to iconic moments from The Right Stuff : Johnson does a lot of running around NASA’s Langley, Virginia, campus à la Jeff Goldblum in that other film, though for wildly different reasons.
So it goes for the black women pioneers at NASA at its number-crunching offices in Virginia during the Mercury spaceflight program — the same one chronicled in “The Right Stuff.”
If you lived through the early days of the U.S. space program–or saw or read “The Right Stuff”–you know names like Alan Shepard and John Glenn and the other heroic astronauts who were part of the Mercury program to put an American astronaut in space.
A distaff counterpart to The Right Stuff (1983), this exuberant, inspiring drama tells the fact-based story of three black women who strove for upward mobility—both professional and atmospheric—as NASA mathematicians during the JFK era.
Ford v Ferrari (2019)
Directed by James Mangold
influenced by The Right Stuff (1983)
Themes Characters
Its structure and sentiment is familiar from movies from “The Right Stuff” and “Seabiscuit” to “The Fighter” and “First Man,” hitting all the right notes as a maverick-versus the-corporate-suits movie.
Telling the story of the 1966 Le Mans auto race, a 24-hour ordeal that pitted underdog Ford against perennial champion Ferrari, director James Mangold draws out his two-and-half hour runtime in what could have been The Right Stuff of car racing.
Like Tucker: The Man and His Dream or The Right Stuff , Ford v Ferrari is an acutely observant examination of the holes that an obsession with the envelope, the edge, the very line of what’s possible can leave and the ones it can fill.
Car movies need more than visceral excitement, and although Ford v Ferrari features the pride of production, national representation, and performance (through the hierarchy of owners and risk-taking performers), it never quite grasps the aspirational aspect of American adventure that distinguished The Right Stuff or Tucker: A Man and His Dream (although the scene where Henry Ford II lifts off in a private helicopter at a crucial moment in the race says something real about how obligation meets privilege).
Given the era, there are echoes of "The Right Stuff" in these hard men -- speed junkies, risking all in their '60s-era machines -- with Damon as a glib good ol' boy and Bale as a working stiff with a Dickensian accent who, it's noted, fought his way across Europe during World War II.
Like the Chuck Yeager character in The Right Stuff, he’s married to a good woman (Caitriona Balfe) who understands his passion for cars and gives him the space he needs.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Directed by Don Siegel
influenced Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Plot
Don Siegel directed this, the first of four movie versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
The much underrated 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers is still probably the best movie based on Jack Finney's 1955 science fiction novel, The Body Snatchers — but that doesn't make this 1956 version bad, quite the opposite.
Whatever its unfortunate flaws, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS was always worth seeing, because enough of Siegel’s original survives on the screen to make the film a genuinely creepy experience — a horror film not about death and bloodshed but about the loss of personality — the loss of one’s very self — which may in a sense be the ultimate horror, even worse than death: a sort of emotionless, zombie caricature of one’s former existence, drained of everything that gives life joy and meaning.
When they come as thrilling as Don Siegel's 1956 classic , "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", it seems ludicrous to attempt a remake.
There is something for everyone in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
For example, compare the likes of "Mission to Mars," "Red Planet" or "Ghosts of Mars" to space movies set elsewhere such as "Gravity," "The Right Stuff" and "2001: A Space Odyssey," and the difference in artistic quality is off the charts.
With echoes of movies like “Apollo 13” and “The Right Stuff,” the film hearkens back to the days when America was not crippled with self doubt, but filled with optimism about the ability to overcome.
But I kept waiting for someone to command the room like Ed Harris in “Apollo 13” or Scott Beach in “The Right Stuff.”
The Martian boasts the group and individual heroics that have energized our aviation classics from Howard Hawks’s Only Angels Have Wings to Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff .
After a disappointing “Prometheus,” the great English filmmaker Ridley Scott returns to science fiction, the genre that made him a legend, and gives us an “Apollo 13” and “The Right Stuff” for our times.
Vivarium (2019)
Directed by Lorcan Finnegan
influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Visuals
Occasionally he merely stands and, mouth unnaturally agape, screams like Donald Sutherland in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
The World's End (2013)
Directed by Edgar Wright
influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Themes
Other touchstones include the fiction of John Wyndham (“Village of the Damned,” “The Day of the Triffids”), plus big dollops of “ Invasion of the Body Snatchers ” (both the 1956 and 1978 versions) and a bit of John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” plus many other references, even to chopsocky classics.
The big joke comes when the conventional, characterless home counties town they revisit is a British replica of the California township taken over by conformist aliens in Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers .
The Duke of Burgundy (2015)
Directed by Peter Strickland
influenced by Henry & June (1990)
Characters
The cyclist is Evelyn, played by Chiara D’Anna, whose demure Euro-exoticism appropriately recalls Maria de Medeiros circa Henry & June.
The Thing (1982)
Directed by John Carpenter
influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Themes Plot
Unreasonably tense, with a key scene in particular still nigh unwatchable for me, The Thing is as good a remake in theme as it is in glorious Technicolor function--as good, in fact, as Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (a movie to which it pays homage in a pretty creepy moment), and in much the same way.
Anyway, the late 1970s and early 80s saw two excellent remakes of iconic 1950s' horror films: Philip Kaufman's 1978 "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and Carpenter's 1982 revision of the old Howard Hawks production, "The Thing From Another World."
It borrows from some recent hits: the isolated location of Alien (1979) and some of the unease and mistrust of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), but Carpenter plunks his movie square in the Reagan era, and beyond.
To this day, Kaufman’s remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is one of the best remakes ever done, right up there with John Carpenter’s “The Thing.”
Training Day (2001)
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Visuals
The mean streets of this L.A. evoke a paranoid agoraphobic's point-of-view, not unlike the San Francisco of Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers--the California sun is a startling counterpoint to the Stygian darkness at the heart of Alonzo's smearing of the thin blue line.
Although he freely borrows from other filmmakers with many of his shots (was the slow motion shuttle march from The Right Stuff really necessary?), he puts them together in a way that’s exhilarating.
While the plot line is predictable (think “Dirty Dozen” crossed with “The Right Stuff”) and concocted almost by recipe (take one tough but lovable hero — Bruce Willis in his “Die Hard” mode — and add in a lovably diverse group of misfits, then wisecracks to taste and just a touch of sentiment and a dash of young love for seasoning), the 10-14 year olds in your household (and the 10-14 year old in many of us) will find that it delivers as a summer explosion movie.
“The Right Stuff” meets “The Dirty Dozen” in a frenzy of special effects and ear-shattering detonations.
The President of the United States gives an incredibly over-the-top speech (as in Independence Day), there are long, lingering, slow motion shots of Harry's team approaching the space craft (as in The Right Stuff), and there's a sequence near the end that might have been touching if it wasn't so overdone.
While the movie passes on opportunities to touch on ripe-for-the-plucking social and political themes that linger around the edges of the plot (something last year's speed-zombie modernization "28 Days Later" did very well), it's smart enough and cinematic enough to have much more in common with great genre reinventions like John Carpenter's "The Thing" and Philip Kaufman 's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" than it does with recent trashy cash-in remakes like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Thirteen Ghosts."
Under the Skin (2014)
Directed by Jonathan Glazer
influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Visuals Themes
In stark contrast, such rough-and-ready sequences sit alongside extraordinarily elegant and evocative FX tableaux that combine the shock factor of Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake (bodies disintegrating from the inside) with the serenity of artist Richard Wilson's breathtaking installation 20:50 (vast pools of oil that appear solid, but threaten to engulf) as aroused men disappear into the cosmic void.
It’s strange and arbitrary the way science fiction was from the 1970s and early 1980s, whether the movies were flamboyantly idiosyncratic like Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth or commercial but unrelentingly eerie like Philip Kaufman’s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
If you have a problem with Dreamworks' penchant for poaching from other movies, then by comparison to Planet 51 , their work seems like subtle homage: co-directors Jorge Blanco, Javier Abad and Marcos Martinez (first-timers all) shamelessly steal from E.T., WALL-E, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Back to the Future and The Right Stuff, among many, many others, and uses none of them in a way that respects their influence, much less acknowledges it.
He is, in a sly reference to “The Right Stuff” which is also overtly cited, little more than “spam in a can.”
This film by committee has three directors – Jorge Blanco, Javier Abad and Marco Martinez – that foregoes originality and attempts to dazzle with refs to “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “The Right Stuff” numerous times, “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “Alien,” “Singing in the Rain” (!?), “Star Wars,” “Terminator”….
Space Cowboys (2000)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
influenced by The Right Stuff (1983)
Themes Plot Visuals
This odd hybrid of comedy, science-fiction and action-thriller genres touches at times on "The Right Stuff," "Grumpy Old Men" and "Armageddon," among many others.
The attempt to make an emotional connection fails to take hold, and the "Grumpy Old Men" meets "The Right Stuff" scenario, while funny at times, runs out of steam.
"Space Cowboys" lacks the urgency of a movie like " The Right Stuff "--it's too secure within its traditional story structure to make much seem at risk--but with the structure come the traditional pleasures as well.
It's not as slow and methodical as, say, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or The Right Stuff (1983), but it's not in-your-face like Armageddon (1998).
The film tries to achieve the level of The Right Stuff or the HBO miniseries From The Earth To The Moon, and the effects and stunning Earth-from-space photography help a lot, but story-wise, what emerges is something more akin to Armageddon : technical mumbo-jumbo, slick-but-inexplicable action sequences, and a trite romantic subplot.
Essentially remaking The Right Stuff to fit its condescending ideas about old farts (smart, tough and reliable), young snotnoses (dim, weak and slippery) and the man's-man milieu of hotshot piloting, Eastwood's movie is simple-minded hootch, dispensing with reality (honestly, these fogies would drop down dead in a real g-force training session) and trafficking in relentless dentured camaraderie.
Color Out of Space (2020)
Directed by Richard Stanley
influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Music
It reminded me of 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers in which we find as the movie goes along the sound design begins to remove any natural or organic sounds, replacing them with the mechanical.
Godzilla (2014)
Directed by Gareth Edwards
influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Themes
Like Kevin McCarthy in the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which matched Gojira as a vibrant Cold War parable in sci-fi garb, he is the lone sane man in a world myopic to the truth; his research got him a serious prison term.