All the Movies 'Interstellar' Made Us Think of, From 'Back to School' to 'Signs'

Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar

As you watch Interstellar, don’t be surprised if you find yourself thinking about other movies. Over the course of its nearly three-hour run time, Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi epic seizes upon dozens of themes, images, and ideas from the annals of cinema. Here, the Yahoo Movies staff catalogues and explains all the films, from Contact to Ghost Dad, that crossed our minds during Interstellar. (Warning: spoilers.) Anything we missed? Leave it in the comments!

McConaughey’s getting shiny in A Time to Kill

A Time to Kill
All those sweaty Matthew McConaughey scenes reminds us of his first blockbuster, this 1996 John Grisham adaptation.

Aliens
The Nostromo made a similarly bumpy aerial landing onto a strange planet.

Armageddon
Forget all those scientific advances; nothing is more efficient at saving the doomed world than a father who really, really loves his daughter.

The Avengers
If the word “tesseract” hasn’t already entered the common vocabulary, these two films (plus the upcoming Wrinkle in Time movie) should do it.

Back to School’s Rodney Dangerfield likes Dylan Thomas too

Back to School
Like Michael Caine, Rodney Dangerfield will not go gentle into that good night.

Back to the Future
Not only do both films’ heroes struggle to keep their families together as they travel through time, but in Interstellar, Anne Hathaway literally gives a speech on the power of love. 

Big Hero 6 and The Iron Giant
There’s nothing sadder than a robot sacrificing itself for humankind.

The Black Hole
A space voyage ends with our heroes being pulled into a black hole, which contains a surreal, pseudo-religious finale.

Contact
McConaughey, wormholes, spiritual reassurance from space, a little girl who grows up to be a brilliant scientist: Robert Zemekis did it all first in his 1997 sci-fi drama.

Elysium
Those rotating space stations seen in both films may very well be the technology of the future.

EuroTrip
Here’s another movie in which a certain giant star makes a pivotal surprise cameo. 

Event Horizon
Interstellar’s David Gyasi uses exactly the same illustration of a wormhole — drawing two dots on a piece of paper, folding it, and poking his pencil through both dots — that Sam Neill uses in the 1997 supernatural thriller. 

Field of Dreams
Corn farmers make great heroes for emotional films about the time-and-logic-defying bonds between fathers and children. 

Frequency
Another film about a father crossing the limits of space and time in an effort to connect with his kid. 

Bill Cosby is a ghost AND a dad

Ghost Dad
Because ghost dad.

Gravity 
The wide, soundless space scenes, as well as the shots of space debris, recall Gravity. Not to mention the fact that ever third line of dialogue is “Gravity!”

TARS’ low-tech predecessor Gumby

Gumby
TARS is the most advanced robotic technology in the universe. Does he know that he walks like a Claymation character from 1953?

The Happening
In second place for “M. Night Shyamalan film Interstellar most resembles” (see below) is this eco-thriller about Earth harnessing the power of wind to destroy humankind.

Inception
Once again, Michael Caine plays an erudite professor who works out problems on a wall-sized chalkboard in his office. Both films also highlight director Christopher Nolan’s love of a rotating camera, in Inception’s hallway fight scene and Interstellar’s spinning-space-station scene.

Planet of the Apes
It’s not often that you see a spaceship make a water landing.

Reds
Both films open with wistful, nostalgic older people recalling the events we’re about to see.

Saving Private Ryan
Matthew McConaughey’s crying scene in Interstellar harkens back to this gold standard of man crying.

Mel Gibson get supernatural signal in Signs

Signs
Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir has called Interstellar “M. Night Shyamalan’s finest film,” and this is the actual Shyamalan film to which it bears a sometimes uncanny resemblance. Both are about single-dad corn farmers whose daughters save the world by unlocking a supernatural code, communicated across a time loop by a lost relative. 

True Detective
Okay, it’s not a movie, but the fact that True Detective McConaughey discovers that time is a flat circle, while Interstellar McConaughey discovers that time is a multi-dimensional circle, merits inclusion.

Twister
According to the expert we consulted, driving through corn is not as easy as it looks in either of these films.

2001: A Space Odyssey
The comparisons are too numerous to name, but this mash-up of Interstellar’s trailer soundtrack with images from Kubrick’s film is a good place to start. “Whenever you’re talking about getting off the planet [in a movie], 2001 is somewhat unavoidable,” Nolan told EW last year.

Related: Spoiler Alert! Some Theories About that ‘Interstellar’ Ending

Photo credits: Warner Bros. Pictures, Everett