10 Awesome Ways Movies Got Back At Critics

8. George Lucas Named General Kael After Critic Pauline Kael, Who Trashed Star Wars & Indiana Jones - Willow

Pauline Kael is probably the second-most famous and influential film critic who has ever lived - second only to Roger Ebert, of course - and her notoriously ruthless approach to destroying movies she hated earned her plenty of ire (and fear) in Hollywood.

Kael famously called Star Wars: A New Hope "an epic without a dream", and dismissed Raiders of the Lost Ark as "a machine-tooled adventure", while declaring George Lucas to be "in the toy business."

In a feat of hilarious revenge, Lucas decided to name the villain in his 1988 cult classic fantasy film Willow after Kael, with Pat Roach's villainous army commander literally named General Kael. In her review of the film, the critic deemed the nod an "homage a moi."

This wasn't the only film to call Kael out, though: the final Dirty Harry movie The Dead Pool featured a distinctly Kael-esque film critic being murdered by a serial killer, after Kael criticised the original Dirty Harry's "fascist medievalism."

In more playful terms, Willow did also feature a nod to legendary critic team Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, with its two-headed dragon being named Eborsisk.

Given that Siskel and Ebert gave generally favourable reviews to Lucas' movies, however, it didn't come loaded with quite the same antagonism.