Media in The Simpsons - Films

Films

Rainier Wolfcastle is an action hero star and a close parody of actor/bodybuilder/politician Arnold Schwarzenegger. The writers invented Wolfcastle as the action hero McBain for the episode "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" and the McBain films were meant to satirize clichés of action movies. In the episode "The Boy Who Knew Too Much", Bart Simpson tells Wolfcastle that his "last movie really sucked" with Chief Wiggum adding "Magic Ticket, my ass, McBain!", alluding to Schwarzenegger's film Last Action Hero, which was panned by critics. Wolfcastle owns a restaurant named Planet Springfield, a parody of Planet Hollywood, which Schwarzenegger co-owned with other celebrities. The episode "Radioactive Man" sees the film version of the comic book series Radioactive Man set up production in Springfield with Wolfcastle starring as the title role. Radioactive Man is a fictional superhero within The Simpsons, who works as a parody of comic books and superheroes in general. The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called the episode a "wonderful pastiche" on the Tim Burton Batman films, and several scenes in the episode reference the Batman television series from the 1960s.

In the later episode "Homer the Whopper", writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wanted to show how Hollywood generally ruins superhero films. He said that "the whole joke is that Homer is cast to play a guy who's an everyman and they try to make him into this physically fit guy." Rogen also noted that the plot mirrors the situation he was in while working on the film The Green Hornet, when he had to lose weight and do physical training for his role. Showrunner Al Jean commented that the writers tried not to repeat the comic book film theme from the "Radioactive Man" episode. Instead they decided to parody the fact that almost every comic book has been turned into a film. Jean commented that that scene in the episode in which the studio executives "are trying to think up an idea that hasn't been done really is what they are doing these days ."

In the season eleven episode "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)", The Simpsons go to a screening of The Poke of Zorro, which is largely a parody of the Zorro film The Mask of Zorro (1998). Jonathan Gray wrote in Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality that The Poke of Zorro "ridicules the outlandishness of Hollywood blockbuster fare," especially its "blatant historical inaccuracies" which sees the film feature Zorro, King Arthur, the Three Musketeers, the Scarlet Pimpernel, "the Man in the Iron Mask and ninjas in nineteenth century Mexico." The Buzz Cola advertisement shown before The Poke of Zorro is a parody of the opening Normandy invasion sequence from the film Saving Private Ryan (1998). Gray writes that it "scorns the proclivity of ads to use any gimmick to grab attention, regardless of the ethics: as an indignant Lisa asks incredulously, 'Do they really think cheapening the memory of our veterans will sell soda?'"