The Influence of The Castle of Cagliostro on Romancing the Stone

The Influence of The Castle of Cagliostro on Romancing the Stone

I was recently re-watching the classic 80’s movie Romancing the Stone (1984) and at some part I started noticing some striking similarities to one of my favorite movies; the Miyazaki classic The Castle of Cagliostro (1979). For example, Danny Devito’s little car…

looks remarkably similar to Lupin’s

The characters also have a propensity for car chases and driving cross country. This by itself might be just a coincidence, but then towards the end of the movie, Michael Douglas’s character scales a wall to save the heroine…

Which bears a striking resemblance (and narrative, actually) to the famous rooftop run in The Castle of Cagliostro.

This is just before Lupin’s mad run down the precipitous roof and prodigious jump; ending in a spectacular splat against a neighboring tower, the last which has a similar counterpart in Romancing the Stone (when “Jack” slams in to the canyon wall trying to swing across).

This is all well and good, and could just be coincidence, but I think the quotation of The Castle of Cagliostro in Romancing the Stone is entirely intentional. You see, the director of Romancing the Stone is Robert Zemeckis, a protege of Steven Spielberg who went on to direct Back to the Future (1985) and Forrest Gump (1994) among others. As the DVD for The Castle of Cagliostro claims, Steven Spielberg called it “one of the greatest adventure movies of all time.”

While it is a source of speculation how much Spielberg was actually influenced by the Japanese director, it is reasonable to suppose that the film was known and discussed by the directors. We may never know for sure, but it seems plausible that Zemeckis made some stylistic choices in his film to subtly impress his mentor in a way that no one would ever notice.

Written by aliasmrchips next to the Rio Grande in Northern New Mexico. You can follow me on Twitter