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Might not be exactly what you’re asking for, but if you’ve seen ever seen Rocky and Bullwinkle, you’ll know the villain “Boris Badenov,” but you might not know his name is a pun of a historical figure, “Boris Godunov”. Old cartoons like that are great because they’re full of these super obscure references and jokes that completely fly past you until years later when you encounter something in a history class and suddenly burst out laughing. Another example I remember from that show is “The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam,” a reference to “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”
Spinal Tap. The reactions to it are telling enough: allegedly Steven Tyler didn’t think it was funny, and the Edge just wept.
Steven Tyler didn’t think it was funny
This Is Spinal Tap should have had one of the band members with a pre-pubescent girlfriend, but I guess that would have been too over the top even for them.
In case anybody doesn’t know this, '70s rockers were notorious for their consumption of literally underaged girls. Tyler in particular even assumed legal guardianship of his bit of jailbait so he could take her on tour with him.
They were just jealous they couldn’t go to 11.
getting lost backstage is a joke ozzy didnt like because it happened to him so many times 😂
The best parodies are humorous takes that treat the source material with repect.
Shaun of the Dead
Galaxy Quest
Army of Darkness (person out of time becomes a leader against evil)
I guess Army of Darkness is an indirect parody of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court?
I am sure that is one of the inspirations.
I mean I’m trying to wrap my head around what work it would be a parody of. like, Hot Shots! is primarily a parody of Top Gun with some scenes parodying other films.
Evil Dead 1 was a horror film. It’s not a parody, or a comedy, it’s a horror film. Evil Dead 2…defies definition. It’s as much a remake as it is a sequel, it’s still a horror movie though it leans more on comedy. Army of Darkness, better known by its actual title “The Studio Wouldn’t Let Us Call It Evil Dead 3” is a horror themed action comedy. It’s not really making fun of an existing work the way Hot Shots! or Airplane! does.
He is an overpowered white guy in a new land like John Carter adventure type stories. He is a chosen one the prophecy foretold! Person out of time who brings knowledge from the future to win war against evil. The deadite army is a comedic take on the stop motion armies of the dead from B movies. He even fights his evil twin!
It is a parody of a genre, not a single movie or series.
I remain unconvinced that Army of Darkness is a parody. A comedy yes, but…Sam Raimi didn’t set out to say anything about the genre, he’ll tell you he just wanted to entertain his audience. A fun setting to throw your protagonist into to see what breaks isn’t necessarily a parody.
Hot Fuzz is up there for me too
Galaxy Quest belongs at the top of any such list. It’s widely considered to be one of the best Star Trek movies.
Yeah! The wild part is that hardcore Trek fans - myself included, of course - just take it for granted that Galaxy Quest will be included, and toward the top end, of any ranking of Trek films.
By Grabthar’s hammer, what a movie.
WHAT’S MY LAST NAME??!?
…Maybe I’m the plucky comic relief…
“Let’s get out of here before one of those things kills Guy” is still low-key one of my favourite lines.
Army of Darkness (person out of time becomes a leader against evil)
So an isekai
How dare you‽ You’re right, but how dare you‽
thanks i hate it
For my wife Spaceballs is the original and Star Wars is the spoof.
But more seriously, too many people didn’t register that Scream was a parody. That way it managed to surpass older slashers.
Before Spaceballs, contemporaneous with Star Wars, we had “Hardware Wars”:
You’ll laugh!.You’ll cry! You’ll kiss three bucks goodbye!
I saw Spaceballs before I saw Star Wars. I cannot take any Star Wars movie seriously now.
Imagine that.
A movie set in the future with advanced space craft yet has guys dueling with pink glowsticks.
I didn’t need Spaceballs to come to that conclusion when I was about 9.
My gf used to believe that Scary Movie was the original. She didn’t had idea that there was an actual movie called Scream.
I wouldn’t call Scream a parody. Scary Movie was the parody. Scream was just self aware that it was a scary movie in a universe where scary movies exist.
I watched the original Scream years after seeing Scary Movie, and realized Scary Movie is just Scream on cocaine. A lot of the jokes are the same or just slightly different.
What’s the line between being self aware and a parody?
What’s the line between being self aware and a parody?
I feel like this would require a Venn diagram. Not so much a “this crosses the line” but some movies are parody, some are self aware, some are both and some are neither.
Funnily enough, I looked up self awareness vs parody, and the first movie based article specifically addressed those two movies.
To summarize, parodies show why those things being parodied are dumb, while self awareness is embracing the tropes while not taking itself seriously. Which answers my question.
Can confirm scream was one of the first horror movies I watched and I just figured the rest were like that.
The Orville
I don’t even consider that show parody, I consider it Star Trek with a different brand name
Season 1 was basically Seth MacFarlane’s TNG fan scripts… it’s a Star Trek series through and through.
As an animation nerd I gotta mention Shrek. As a parody of “Disney princess movies” it killed the entire genre dead.
The only time Disney tried to play the tropes somewhat straight again was the Princess and the Frog, and THAT was a major flop (though racism probably also played a part in that).
Since then Disney only made remakes or titles like Frozen that spend 70% of their runtime mugging at themselves and poking fun at their own tropes (… While still circling back to them anyway and failing to make any point or commentary)
On a less “this made a major cultural impact” note and more of a “this personally completely altered my entire sense of humour and replaced the original in my heart” – SnapCube’s Realtime Fandub Games Sonic Adventure 2
princess and the frog had no chance, disney wanted it to fail so they had an excuse to never go back to 2d animation again
That part I didn’t know but it doesn’t surprise me either.
Still, “Disney wanted to kill off their traditional animation department” might explain why every movie since has been CGI/Live Action. – It does NOT explain why every movie since has been so metalinguistic and self-satirising. THAT can be laid at Dreamworks’ feet entirely, with the influence of Shrek et. al. on the cultural zeitgeist.
Hi, it’s me, The Devil
Wrong game, but I always appreciate SnapCube regardless.
The only time Disney tried to play the tropes somewhat straight again was the Princess and the Frog, and THAT was a major flop (though racism probably also played a part in that).
Probably, because I watched bc of my kid recently and it striked me as one of the better Disney movies. In fact, it’s a pretty awesome one compared to recent bigger hits like Frozen and etc.
I also quite liked it. It feels like a ‘classic’ Disney movie.
's a good movie. Predictable as those disney princess musicals tend to be–
– But still. It’s pretty. It’s entertaining. And the music sequences are awesome.
Pretty much everything from Weird Al.
Amish Paradise came to me, even over White N’ Nerdy
Word Crimes for taking a song about dubious consent and changing it into a legitimately educational song.
Definitely White and Nerdy, and Like a Surgeon and Amish Paradise are on par.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is better than Hamlet. Sure, it had the benefit of an extra couple of centuries of progress in art, but I think it still counts.
Deadpool It was a parody of DCs Deathstroke, right down to the guy’s name Slade/Wade.
deleted by creator
i am pretty sure he was called the merc with a mouth in his first appearance but someone who knows more about comic history can correct me
I always thought Deadpool and Deathstroke look eerily similar
Don Quixote
The Princess Bride
Cold Comfort Farm
The Onion is way better than real life, especially currently.
Galaxy Quest!
Still the best star trek movie
By Grabthar’s Hammer…
Airplane parodying the airliner movies like Zero Hour
Dr Strangelove parodying atomic terror movies like Fail Safe
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a parody of a book by Peter George called Red Alert.
The book plays it perfectly straight. They started to adapt the book into a movie, but found they kept having to cut elements out to keep it from being absurd or funny because of the sheer…bullshit that is mutually assured destruction, so they leaned into it and made it a farce. And now just about no one is aware of Red Alert.
Dr. Strangelove was released before Fail Safe. The story goes that they were both being filmed around the same time and Kubrick used his pull with the studio to make sure Fail Safe was released later in the year.
Seems a really odd thing to insist your parody is released before the movie it’s parodying. And I don’t think there were all that many movies about the terror of nuclear war until after the Cuban missile crisis. It takes a couple of years to make a movie and Dr. Strangelove came out less than two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, so it was pretty much the first of it’s kind.
Seems to me like Dr. Strangelove is a black comedy, not a parody.
Fail-Safe is amazing though. And I actually prefer that it’s a computer glitch, that no individual causes everything to go bad, because the problem is the system
Dr Strangelove parodying atomic terror movies like Fail Safe
I legit didn’t know it was parodying something else. I thought it was just gallows humour.
Nobody watches the other airliner movies, but at least with Airplane! know you’re watching a parody.
Edit: Per other people in this thread, apparently not.
Cunk - parodying Attenborough and cosmos style docs
Starship troopers - more of an active ignorance of source material
Happy Gilmore
Starship troopers - more of an active ignorance of source material
It can be pretty telling how someone reacts to Starship Troopers being what it is, and I love it for that.
Gotta squash them bugs
Thagomizer, it’s the end of stegosaurus. There was no scientific name for the spiked end, the paleontology side decided the Farside comic called it Thagomizer so let’s use that
