As perhaps the most beloved movie studio of our time, Pixar doesn’t exactly suffer from a dearth of acclaim. And yet, there is one aspect of its work that’s often overlooked: The sly and frequent homages to classic cinema one can find in almost every one of its films.
These allusions never feel shoehorned in; they’re subtle, and involve an effortless folding of resonant images and scenes into a film’s narrative. In this remarkable video essay, Jorge Luengo Ruiz collects many of those references in one video, illuminating the tributes to Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible, Star Wars, The Shining, and Indiana Jones—to name a few—that shade Pixar’s modern classics.
