8 Iconic Movie Moments You Didn't Realise Were Taken From Other Films

6. The Podrace in The Phantom Menace Mimics The Ben-Hur Chariot Race

The Iconic Moment: In all honesty, I could have picked so many moments from Star Wars here, ranging from the Flash Gordon-lifted opening crawl to the attack on the Death Star replicating The Dam Busters, by way of everything from The Hidden Fortress, but instead I'm going to take a look at something from the prequel trilogy, because it's less likely to have been totally done to death. Depending on who you ask, the podrace is either a fun sequence delightfully free of politics or a monotonous, never-ending slog as kid Vader whoops his way to victory (and freedom) against a bunch of CGI weirdos. Either way, we can all agree it's very unique in the backdrop of the Star Wars universe - nothing like it has been seen in the movies before or since. The Film It's Taken From: That uniqueness might be because the sequence is pretty much George Lucas' love letter to Ben-Hur's climactic chariot race sequence, hand-wavingly justified into the Star Wars universe. The general set up of going up against a violent, cheating rival is there, as is the slave background, leading to two sequences that, fancy laser-connected engines aside, could be substituted for each other with minimal effect on the plot. Even the rocky/sandy setting, with lots of oranges and browns, is reminiscent of Ben-Hur's arena. The prequels are full of moments that are clearly born of Lucas going "I like that, let's do it but Star Wars" - the Geonosis arena is clearly inspired by Gladiator's success and down-town Coruscant is a stylistic copy of Blade Runner - but few are so overt as this.