Another incredible part of Life of Brian is the way it takes scenes from other famous movies and twists them to make them more comedic and less sacred to the audience. The best example of this is the way Life of Brian twists the iconic “I’m Spartacus” scene from Spartacus. In the original scene the audience is left in a sort of reverence towards the way these slaves would rather die free men and protect their leader than become slaves again. In contrast in the infamous “I’m Brian” scene, everyone seeks their own freedom and salvation from their crucifixion. These two scenes are brilliant in their own ways. Spartacus takes advantage of the American spirit and want for freedom, pulling at the heartstrings of all those watching, while Life of Brian piggybacks off that want for freedom, but hijacks it and delivers a crushing message of how fatalistic and out of control life is.

As the scene in Spartacus progresses the audience eventually gets to see Spartacus die, but there is an underlying hope that his family and child will be a free man, so his quest for freedom was not in vain, his life had purpose. In opposition as Brian hangs on the cross, he is in pain and dying while everybody starts to sing Always Look on The Bright Side. This song adds to the incredulousness of the scene, there is no hope for Brian. His life was pointless and just the butt of some joke, versus the hope at the end of Spartacus, Brian has a forced hope with the song. This mirrors and alters the scene from Spartacus to be more comedic and a commentary on forced happy endings.

Life of Brian also parodies the idea of the gladiatorial arena. In movies like Quo Vadis, Ben Hur, and Gladiator the arena is shown as a place of prestige and brutality. Prestige is shown in the glory of the gladiators and the excess used to fuel the arenas. While the brutality shown is always a controlled amount of gory, a cut here and there but nothing drastic. Life of Brian defies the preconceptions of the audience though, showing a completely offset match between a big gladiator and a tiny man in an area strewn with corpses and severed limbs. The match between gladiator and peasant seems like an open and closed book, however the little guy just runs until the gladiator has a heart attack. Not only does the break the normal preconceived notion that gladiator matches were even contests of skill, but it also breaks the expectations for the fight in the movie, having the little guy come out on top. Life of Brian beautifully satirizes gladiator matches, while also being self-referential hitting the audience with a double whammy.

Ben Hur (1959) is one of the biggest inspirations for Life of Brian and many scenes in Life of Brian are directly parodying Ben Hur. The best example of this is that the beginnings of both movies are almost scene for scene the same. Everything from the alignment of the stars to the imagery of three men on camel back going through the desert is the same until the wise men meet Brian or Jesus. The three wise men scene for Jesus in Ben Hur was created with much reverence, there is barely any dialogue and Jesus is not really shown. While riffing off this Life of Brian decided to make the whole scene seem completely ridiculous, with the mother of Brian being disappointed in the myrrh and just kind of hurrying the whole thing along as if she had something better to do in the movie. This scene finally comes to a finale when the three wise men come back to Brian’s room and promptly take back all their gifts in an uncouth way. The ridiculousness of seeing three figures from the Bible beat an old lady down just to get back their gifts is incredible off-putting and entertaining while seen in contrast with the scene from Ben Hur.

In Life of Brian the birth scene is immediately followed up with Brian, and some other strangers in the back of a crowd as Jesus preaches to them. This scene also takes its influence from Ben Hur where Judah goes to see the preacher who has been talking of peace. In Ben Hur Jesus is treated as a sacred symbol see the audience never gets to see his face, all they see is his back facing them. The reverence and respect towards Jesus in Ben Hur, makes it even more jarring when the audience sees the actor portraying Jesus in Life of Brian’s face. As the scene progresses no one can hear what Jesus is saying and people even start a fight. Again, Life of Brian pulls no punches when it comes to religion and makes use of the reverence ingrained into the audience from other movies to surprise the audience.

Life of Brian takes the audience preconceived notions about toga movies and uses them to reinvent famous scenes in a more comedic and jarring way. This style of comedy and use of parody is what makes this film so incredible in the toga film genre.