Roger Ebert wrote the introduction to a book called ‘Mad About the Movies,’ a collection of Mad magazine parodies of Warner Brother movies, in which he talks about how Mad and it’s skewing of cinema and it’s conventions- with things like parodies and ‘Scenes We’d Like to See’- may have helped bring in the modern self-aware film-making era that we live in. I’m interested in how many movies there have been that either parody or pay tribute to a certain genre or sub-genre of movies. By this I don’t mean the Scary Movie parodies and such that target specific movies, but ones that take place- for parody or tribute- in a universe created by other movies of the like. For instance:
Action: Last Action Hero was an imaginative parody of all those ridiculous action movies. The Matrix was based so much, IMO, on the old John Wu action films that I consider it a tribute, but maybe not.
Adventure:Star Wars was Lucas's tribute to many different types of film listed here, including adventure, noir, romance, sci-fi, war, and western, while Indian Jones was Lucas's tribute to the adventure serials of his youth, which showed in theaters but weren't actually movies, were they? Still, it's a tribute film. The Mask of Zorro, The Three Musketeers, and The Pirates of the Caribbean are all modern movies that draw from the old swashbuckling adventure movies, but they most likely don't count here.
Animation: The only one I can think of is Who Framed Roger Rabbit, what with the jokes on cartoons and such. Maybe Cool World.
Black films: I'm Gonna Get You Sucka (blaxploitation) and Don't Be a Menace to South Central (urban drama) were parodies, and Bones (blaxploitation revenge) was a tribute.
Comedy: A parody of a comedy? I think that Stallone movie Oscar was a parody of comedies with Idiot Plots, as in, the whole thing would be solved if everybody would think rationally and be honest.
Cop: The Naked Gun movies. And Loaded Weapon 1.
Crime: Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs is like a tribute to heist films (sort of), and Pulp Fiction is a tribute to crime films. Some others go under Noir.
Disaster: Airplane! is a classic. And what about Cast Away? It has ideas, and it changes the standard lost-on-island-gets-home format, so is it a tribute?
Documentary: This is Spinal Tap spoofed documentaries, with the editing and camerawork, but it's hard to say that a documentary has conventions, so I don't know. So was CB4: The Movie, for that matter.
Film-Noir: Chinatown is a tribute to noir of 30s, 40s. LA Confidential is same deal.
Horror: The original Scream ushered in an age of self-aware teen horror by being both a great parody and, IMO, a tribute to horror and slasher movies. It was preceded, though, by self-aware jokes or twists on the genre, by Wes Craven's New Nightmare and Ernest Scared Stupid.
Kung-Fu: As many times as Kung-fu has been parodied, I know of only one entire movie that does it: Kung-Pow: Enter the Fist. But as a tribute, Kill Bill is king.
Musical: The South Park movie was a good example of a self-aware musical, one that maybe parodied them by being such a ridiculous example of one- but I don't know. Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite and Everyone Says I Love You might count as tributes and parodies.
Romance: Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally and Alex and Emma are pretty self aware about their love stories, and America's Sweethearts picked fun at romance cliches- again, I'm unsure. But Hot Shots probably counts.
Sci-Fi: Galaxy Quest has fun with the Trekky, outerspace part of this genre, but don't forget The Faculty- it was written by the same guy as the Scream movies, and does the same thing for alien takeover movies (Body Snatchers) that Scream did for slashers. Independence Day, if you consider it, is like a big-budget tribute to the old alien movies, too, and the awful Mars Attacks might count. Signs is like a throwback to the old stuff, too.
Sequels: Remember Scream 2? It poked fun at sequels and horror sequels while being both.
Sports: Million Dollar Baby sounds like it's self aware enough to be similar to many sports films partway through but then change in many respects, so would it fit here?
Spy: The Austin Power movies for sure. True Lies is also a contender.
Superhero: Plenty of parodies, i.e. Blankman, Meteor Man, Mystery Men. Unbreakable was a tribute.
Teen Movies: Not Another Teen Movie does the job, and so did High School High and Ernest Goes to School, to a much lesser extent.
Trilogies: Scream 3, again.
War: Dr. Strangelove and Duck Soup come to mind as possibilities, but I would go with Hot Shots: Part Deux.
Western: Tombstone was a misguided tribute to violent westerns, with gunfights every 2 minutes it seemed. The Wild Bunch is a modern western tribute too. Clint Eastwood made Unforgiven, a film that takes the conventions of westerns and flips them over, an acclaimed tribute by a man at the end of his acting career.
Zombie:Is 28 Days Later, with its similarities to and it's original ideas using the old zombie format, a tribute to zombie movies?
What do you think is the future of self-aware films? Do you think we’ll ever see Not Another War Movie, or The Last Comic Book Hero?