17. 2001: A Space Odyssey EVA Pod - The Phantom Menace
Remember Watto? Of course you do! He was just another one of the bizarre, racially insensitive characters that George Lucas created for the likes of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. As a sleazy junkyard owner, then, Watto was all about the money. But don't judge the guy on that - he also had a penchant for classic movie memorabilia, too, given that it's possible to glimpse a pod from 2001: A Odyssey in amongst all the trash. Seriously: there's an EVA pod in plain sight during the scene where Qui-Gon attempts to wrangle a deal out of Watto, only to realise that Jedi mind tricks won't work. What was George Lucas trying to say with this inclusion, then? That Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey are set in the same universe? That these two movies cannot co-exist without one another? That the key to understanding Kubrick's notoriously complex motion picture is actually Watto? Yeah, probably all of those things.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
