Icarus imagery in contemporary films and television

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Icarus imagery in contemporary films and television is a commonplace.

• In the 1993 movie Little Nemo Adventures in Slumberland, Nemo's pet flying squirrel is named Icarus.
• In the film Apt Pupil, there is a graduation speech which references the story of Icarus: we are given wings and we should fly in a noble direction with those wings instead of taking them for granted.
• Books by Sara Douglass feature a race with wings, known as the Icarii (plural for Icarus).
• Actor and playwright Sam Shepard titled a one-act play "Icarus's Mother", with thematic content of a plane crashing for an unknown reason and a group of picnic-goers witnessing the event before a fireworks show.
• In the film 24 Hour Party People, Tony Wilson (as played by Steve Coogan) suggests that his story is akin to the story of Icarus, characteristically adding "If you know who that is, that's great; if not it doesn't matter...but you should probably read more."
• In an episode of The Monkees, Peter Tork tries to dissuade Davy Jones's grandfather from taking him back to England, as they approach their waiting airplane. Dressed in a quasi-Greek costume with feathers, Tork flaps his arms and declares "Don't fly! Don't fly! If you fly too close to the sun, your wings'll melt!"
• In the James Bond movie Die Another Day, Gustav Graves's superweapon is named the Icarus Satellite. It is a huge articifial satellite capable of harnessing solar energy and focusing it on any part of the world he wished.
• In the upcoming film Sunshine, the names of the missions sent to the sun, are Icarus, and Icarus II.
• In the 1968 film Planet of the Apes, the Icarus is the ship on which the astronauts who are protagonists in the film begin their journey, the ship's name foreshadowing the fate of the crew.
• In the television series Babylon 5, the Icarus is a ship sent on an archaeological dig to a planet in the previously unexplored galactic rim by the Earth corporation InterPlanetary Expeditions. The crew of the ship, seeking advanced alien technologies, awaken a malevolent alien race instead.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation's second season saw an episode entitled The Icarus Factor; the main story involved Commander William T. Riker being briefed by his estranged father on a possible deep space command.
• In the anime and manga Fullmetal Alchemist, the protagonist Edward Elric makes a reference to Icarus while talking about bringing humans back to life.
• The Man Who Fell to Earth, a 1976 (sci-fi/drama), became a cult classic. David Bowie plays an alien disguised as a human who is put on earth to find a way to ship water back to his dying planet.
• Poet Jack Gilbert wrote a poem about the end of a marriage using the story of Icarus as a metaphor for the triumph of the relationship before it died. The poem is called "Failing and Flying". Read the poem on www.poets.org.
• Varekai, a Cirque du Soleil show, currently touring, is about Icarus, and what would have happened if he had fallen into a forest instead of the ocean.
• In the television series Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, Daedalus is the name of one of Earth's ships - often used as a transport between Stargate Command on Earth and the Atlantis outpost in the Pagasus galaxy.
• In the television series Seinfeld, George alludes to Icarus after failing to combine sexual activity with eating food and television viewing, saying that "he flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami."
• In the television series The Cosby Show, Theo discovers his dyslexia after his poor performance on a test on the story of Icarus. When his parents say he is overconfident, Theo says as he exits, "Icarus's father didn't support him either. He just let Icarus's wax wings melt and let Icarus fall right in the ocean."
• Daydreams & Nightmares, a theatrical aerial production company in Baltimore Maryland, produced an experimental aerial theatre work based on the myth of Icarus, his wings, and an active volcano. Kel Millionie designed and performed the Icarus role with ensemble cast by Pete Pegulise, Mandy Tenly, John Flannery, and Eric Robinson.
• In the episode "3.02 Cane and Able" of House, Dr. James Wilson tells Dr. Gregory House that he withheld the knowledge that House's wild guess in the first episode cured the patient. He cited his reasoning because he "was worried [House's] wings would melt." A metaphor implying that Wilson is Daedalus and House is Icarus.
• On the Elevator of Death, Levitation Machine episode of MythBusters, when Adam's thrust mechanism for his hovercraft failed, he tried using pizza boxes as wings and dejectedly commented "We're at the Icarus part of the evening: I think you know what happened to Icarus". Indeed, the plan failed.
• On the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, the plot of the episode "High and Low," tenth episode of the third season, parallels the story of Icarus; a young man (with a tattoo of Icarus, called "The Chosen One") is killed after falling from his aerofoil because of his arrogant oneupmanship with another young man bearing a tattoo of the Three Furies.
• In the film by Daren Afronofsky π (film), It is Sol Robeson's pet fish who he introduces as being the "renegade" just like his pupil Max (Star Character).
• In Suzan-Lori Parks' 1986 play Imperceptible Mutabilities, the character Mr. Sergeant Smith and others reference the "boy fallin out thuh sky. On fire. ...They say he was flyin too close to thuh sun" (The America Play and Other Works 71).
• In the TV show Venture Brothers, Brock Samson has a tattoo of the Swan Song Apollo on his arm. Brock, however, refers to it as Icarus.
• In the Anime Air Gear, Air Trecks are often referred to as "wings", which will also bring up the question of whether or not a person's wings are like that of Icarus, or a bird (the former referring to Storm Riders who are mere pretenders in the AT world and the latter to real Storm Riders who are destined for greatness).
• In the animated series based on Walt Disney's Hercules, Icarus (voiced by French Stewart) is one of Hercules' friends. He is shown as a complete nut (due to his flying close to the Sun) and loves Cassandra.
• In the TV show South Park, when Butters tells Kyle not to "fly too near to the sun or else he will fall into the ocean," he is talking about the story of Icarus.
• In "The Rage in Placis Lake", the main character takes a job in an insurance company called Icarus in his quest to be 'normal, like everybody else'.
• In the movie Quiz Show, Charles Van Doren's ending speech confessing to his role in the quiz show scandals of the 1950s references the Icarian myth, specifically the sentence, "I flew too high on borrowed wings; everything came too easy."
• On the Cartoon Network show Sealab Captain Murphy tells Doctor Quin to beware of hubris and learn from Icarus.
• Nintendo's Kid Icarus video game series is loosely based on Greek mythology and features a winged protagonist named Pit.
• Included as a character in the 2007 PlayStation 2 video game, God of War II, Icarus is portrayed, wearing his wings, as a frail, insane man who infuriates the game's protagonist, Kratos. The two begin to wrestle, thus causing them fall into a bottomless chasm all the while fighting and struggling over control of Icarus' wings so that one will fly to safety, and the other one falls into oblivion.
• In Daft Punk's Electroma, the two robot protagonists try to become more human, but their facade melts while trying to fit in, relegating them back to robotic form.