9 Movies That Were Responses To Other Films
Don't like a movie? Just retcon it out of existence.
There are a lot of movies out there that are deemed "spiritual successors" to other films, but in the case of these 10 projects, they didn't just settle for cheekily homaging their cinematic forebears: they offered up a full-bodied response to whatever movie they trained their focus on.
From franchises desperate to shake loose their prior baggage, to standalone films cashing in on their clear resemblance to an existing cinema classic, these movies are the undeniable product of whatever preceded them, be it for reasons subtle or totally, blindingly obvious.
Audiences aren't stupid, of course, and it didn't take long for the creative intent to come to light in each instance, either by way of the filmmakers themselves admitting it or the subtext basically flashing up in neon.
Though not every film on this list is a classic or even particularly successful in its response, each nevertheless has a pointed intent, to riff on that which came before it...
9. Revolutionary Road Perfectly Exploited Titanic's Fairytale Romance
Though the Richard Yates novel on which this movie is based predates James Cameron's Titanic by almost 40 years, it's tough to deny that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were intentionally cast as a warring married couple to cannily reflect the sweeping, saccharine romance from Cameron's Best Picture-winning epic.
If Titanic saw the couple in a dreamlike fairytale - albeit an ultimately tragic one - Revolutionary Road was the cold snap back to reality, with the pair deeply dissatisfied over their boring suburban family life, before Winslet's April eventually dies after performing a botched abortion on herself. Lovely.
Considering that Titanic's Rose (Winslet) is not an entirely dissimilar character - a well-off woman unhappy in comfort - the parallel feels even more potent and deliberate.
It's too perfect to be accidental, and you can bet the studio saw nothing but dollar signs when the pair signed up (yet Revolutionary Road was ultimately a modest box office success.)