We all know Hollywood loves to recycle ideas.
In fact, while we often don't realize it, studios sometimes even reuse footage — from
old installments in the same franchise or from completely unrelated movies.
Let's take a look back at some of the most surprising examples of filmmakers recycling
parts from another movie.
Life and Spider-Man 3
The idea of using stock footage in multiple movies is nothing new, but we received an
unexpected reminder of that when someone discovered that a scene in a TV spot for the 2017 sci-fi
film Life is actually taken straight out of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3.
The scene in question appears about 34 minutes into Spider-Man 3, with people looking up
at Gwen Stacy hanging off the edge of a building, shortly before Spider-Man comes and rescues
her.
A slightly altered version of the scene appeared around the 26-second mark in a TV spot for
Life, though it didn't make it into the final cut.
It's just B-roll footage used for the commercial.
It's no coincidence that the footage came from Columbia Pictures, since they're the
studio that produced and distributed both Spider-Man 3 and Life.
Considering that Venom was one of the villains in Spider-Man 3, fans of the superhero franchise
have begun to speculate a possible connection between the two films.
What if the organism in Life is actually the Venom symbiote?
That's a twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon and The Island
Recycling doesn't bother Michael Bay.
He's guilty of reusing several scenes from some of his older films, and often does it
so seamlessly that it's difficult to tell.
One of the more recent examples can be spotted in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
The third Transformers movie features a car chase scene on a freeway, which includes a
portion of another car chase sequence Bay had previously filmed for his 2005 release
The Island.
Instead of having bounty hunters chasing the good guys, though, Bay replaced them with
Decepticons.
The inclusion of The Island's sequence may have been due to the studio wanting to limit
liability.
The Dark of the Moon set was particularly accident-prone.
The first major accident, due to a snapped steel cable, left an extra permanently brain
damaged and partially paralyzed.
A second accident occurred a month later, when the Camaro that portrays Bumblebee collided
with a police SUV, injuring both drivers.
At that point, someone may have gotten the bright idea to just use a car chase from another
movie.
Transformers and Pearl Harbor
Throwing $150 million into a summer blockbuster movie based on a toy line would have been
enough to put any studio on edge.
So it's understandable that when Michael Bay was filming the original Transformers, he
cut corners by reusing a piece of footage of an aircraft carrier from Pearl Harbor.
While making Harbor in 2000, Bay used the USS Lexington to represent the USS Hornet
as well as a Japanese carrier.
Instead of shooting another scene using one of the Navy's carriers for Transformers, Bay
just recycled his old footage.
Definitely cheaper than arranging a whole new shot.
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Apollo 13
When one movie uses footage from another, they're usually similar in some way.
But there's nothing even remotely alike between Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and
Apollo 13.
These two films ordinarily wouldn't find their titles uttered in the same sentence — were
it not for one particular scene.
In Austin Powers, Mini-Me escapes with Dr. Evil to his Moon Base at the end of the movie.
To capture him, Austin and Felicity hitch a ride on Apollo 11 along with one of NASA's
astronauts, and if the whole sequence seems out of place, that's because it is.
An eagle-eyed viewer noticed that it was taken right out of Apollo 13.
It was a sequence created by Academy Award-winning visual effects designer Robert Legato, who
received an Oscar nomination for his work.
Rogue One and A New Hope
In some cases, filmmakers are upfront about reusing old footage, as was the case with
Lucasfilm's first Star Wars anthology film.
In the original Star Wars, the Rebel Alliance destroyed the Death Star after obtaining the
space station's blueprints and discovering its fatal design flaw: an open exhaust port.
The reason for the vulnerable opening, as well as the way the Rebels obtained the Death
Star plans in the first place, became the basis for Rogue One.
Rogue One's story unfolds days before the events of A New Hope, and ends mere moments
before the original film begins.
To give the impression that the film is a prequel to Episode IV, director Gareth Edwards
worked with ILM to digitally recreate Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher's likenesses, but
they didn't stop there.
The filmmakers also brought back the original Gold and Red Leaders, played by Angus MacInnes
and Drewe Henley, respectively.
Edwards was offered access to the Lucasfilm vault, so he found old and archived footage
from A New Hope for the duo.
MacInnes even recorded new dialogue specifically for Rogue One.
Still, it was a gamble.
Edwards was skeptical about using the old footage at first, but when the two Rebel leaders
appeared on screen during Rogue One's premiere, the audience cheered.