A visual exploration of cinema's hidden web of influence — how 75 landmark films across 100 years of filmmaking have inspired, referenced, and borrowed from one another to create the movies we love.
Each node is a film. Lines connect films that directly inspired or borrowed from one another. Click any film to see its full influence tree. Drag to pan, scroll or use +/− to zoom.
Quantifying how cinema's DNA passes from generation to generation.
Key films by decade that shaped the influence network.
Akira Kurosawa's films are the most borrowed-from in this network. Seven Samurai alone directly shaped Star Wars, The Magnificent Seven, A Bug's Life, and The Mandalorian. His film Yojimbo was remade as A Fistful of Dollars, which spawned the entire Spaghetti Western genre — which in turn influenced the crime films of the '70s and '80s. [1][2]
Japanese animation has been a stealth influence on blockbuster Hollywood. Ghost in the Shell's cyberpunk vision directly inspired The Matrix. Paprika's dream-diving mechanics appear in Inception. Akira's neo-Tokyo influenced Blade Runner 2049 and countless sci-fi aesthetics. Even The Lion King draws from Osamu Tezuka's Kimba the White Lion. [3][4][5]
Quentin Tarantino draws from more sources than any other filmmaker in this network. Pulp Fiction alone references Godard's Bande à Part, The Bodyguard (1973), Kiss Me Deadly, and Psycho. Kill Bill samples Lady Snowblood, Game of Death, and Shaw Brothers kung fu films. As he once said: "I steal from every movie ever made." [6][7]