Eiffel Tower in popular culture

The Eiffel Tower has appeared frequently in works of fiction because of its iconic nature. Movie critic Roger Ebert has noted in his online column that no matter where in Paris a film scene is set the Eiffel Tower will be visible in the background.

Major plot element
In some cases the tower is the key plot element or a significant plot element.


 * 1949 In The Man on the Eiffel Tower, the tower plays a central role, and the climax involves a climbing chase that predates the Mount Rushmore scene in North by Northwest.
 * 1951 In The Lavender Hill Mob, models of the tower are central to the plot, and the climax takes place on the real tower.
 * 1980 John Denis' novel Hostage Tower (written under Alistair Maclean) features an audacious scheme to capture the tower and use the threat of its destruction to extort millions from the French government. The story was adapted into a telemovie of the same name.
 * 1985 The James Bond film A View to a Kill contains a scene in the tower, including scenes in the Jules Verne restaurant there (filmed elsewhere), a fight on the stairway, and a BASE jump off the top of the tower. The video for the title song feature the members of Duran Duran as assassins and spies in or around the tower.
 * 1995 The third season finale of Highlander: The Series, "Finale part 2", Duncan MacLeod defeats the Immortal Kalas atop the tower.
 * 2007 Featured in Rush Hour 3 as the climax battle. Portions of the fight was actual footage of the famous landmark, whilst other sequences were replicated built sets.
 * 2007 The plot of the mystery Murder on the Eiffel Tower: A Victor Legris Mystery by Claude Izner involves a murder on the tower, during the Paris Exposition of 1889.

Destruction of the tower
In a notable subtype, the action of all or part of the work centers around the real or threatened destruction of the tower.


 * 1965 In The Great Race Jack Lemmon's character Professor Fate misfires a cannon, which causes the tower's collapse at the end of the film.
 * 1987 In The Real Ghostbusters episode The Ghostbusters in Paris, it is revealed that the Eiffel Tower was a massive Containment Unit to store ghosts, long before the Ghostbusters developed present day ghostbusting equipment.
 * 1992 In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode Tower of Power, Krang has a giant electromagnet, and wants to use it to pull the Technodrome from its Dimension X asteroid location by using the Eiffel Tower as an antenna. The Eiffel Tower begins to be pulled loose from its foundations and towards the dimensional portal. At the last minute, Donatello destroys the generator and the Eiffel Tower falls down to the ground undamaged.
 * 1992 In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode Rust Never Sleeps, Bebop and Rocksteady blast metals with Krangs "oxidizer rocket". The "oxidizer rocket" was originally planned by Krang to use to send the Technodrome to Earth, and when it failed, Krang thinks that it can be used by threatening to rust metal if the people don't surrender to Krang and Shredder. Even the Eiffel Tower gets blasted, and begins to collapse from rust. In the end, Donatello reverses Krangs device to turn the metals back to normal.
 * 1995 In the real-time strategy game of Command & Conquer, the tower is one of four selectable targets for the Global Defense Initiative's hijacked Ion Cannon weapon, during the ending sequence of the Brotherhood of Nod campaign.
 * 1996 The tower appears in the Paris level in the PlayStation game Twisted Metal 2. The tower can be blown up using a remote bomb and falls as a bridge to other buildings.
 * 1999 In the French Sentai amateur series France Five, the destruction of the tower in the main objective of the evil empire Lexos, as it generates a barrier around the planet that keeps it from sending armies en masse.
 * 2004 In Godzilla: Final Wars, Kamacuras attacks the tower.
 * 2004 In Team America: World Police, a rocket blows up the tower, and it crushes the Arc de Triomphe.
 * 2008 The History Channel's "Life After People" features the collapse of the tower around 200 years after the disappearance of humans, due to corrosion.
 * 2009 the movie, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, depicts the tower being destroyed by a rapidly expanding cloud of metal-eating nanites.

Destruction of the city, or the world
In another notable sub-type, the tower and its destruction is used as a symbol of the real or threatened destruction of the city, or the world.


 * 1953 In The War of the Worlds, the tower and most (if not all) of Paris is destroyed by the martian attack. The tower can be seen in ruin at the end of the film depicting the death of the martians.
 * 1980 In Superman II, the tower (and the rest of Paris) are almost blown up by a terrorist nuclear bomb, and Lois Lane almost plunges to her death under its elevator. In the original 1977 script, one of the 3 Supervillains, Non, was originally supposed to destroy the tower with his heat vision.
 * 1995 In Command & Conquer once the player wins the Nod campaign, Nod hijack's GDI's Ion cannon satellite network via computer hacking and the player is given a choice of four famous land marks to turn the weapon on. If the player chooses the Eiffel tower, a cutscene will play showing the Eiffel tower being subjected to a massive blue particle beam, which causes the tower to explode.
 * 1996 The tower can be seen on TV in Independence Day (film), ,as the UFO lands on the tip of the structure.
 * 1996 In Mars Attacks!, the tower is melted/destroyed by Martians.
 * 1996 In Command & Conquer: Red Alert during the Allied campaign there is a mission where the player must stop a series of nuclear missiles from reaching europe, if the Player fails these missions, a cutscene will play, showing a missile landing in paris with the eiffel tower in the foreground and detonating, creating an Enormous Mushroom cloud, and the Eiffel tower can be seen melting before the heat of the blast.
 * 1997 In the Simpsons episode Treehouse of Horror VIII the tower was used in the segment The HΩmega Man by the French government as a nuclear launch site to detonate a missile on Springfield.
 * 1998 The tower, along with Paris, is destroyed by a meteorite in Armageddon.
 * 2006 The Eiffel Tower is destroyed along with numerous other landmarks in Category 7: The End of the World.
 * 2007 28 Weeks Later ends with people infected with the fictional Rage Virus heading towards the Eiffel Tower.
 * 2009 The game cover of Resistance: Retribution features the Eiffel Tower and sections of Paris invaded by the Chimera.
 * 2009 the animated movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, features the tower is being toppled by a large-sized sandwich causing chaos in Paris.

Embodiment of Paris
In others, the tower is used as an embodiment of Paris, the symbol of the city, to set the scene for a film or other work centered on the city.


 * 1923 René Clair's Paris qui dort starts, ends and has many scenes on the tower.
 * 1939 In Ninotchka an involved flirtation takes place around a discussion of finding the Eiffel Tower around the 26 minute time point.
 * 1958 At the beginning of Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows, the tower is seen between Parisian apartment blocks.
 * 1964 In Paris When It Sizzles, Richard's movie within the movie is called "The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower" and several key scenes take place there.
 * 1995 In French Kiss, Kate misses seeing the tower several times while she wanders around Paris, but later spends several minutes rapturously watching it while on the train to Cannes (from which line it is not possible to see the tower).
 * 1995 In Forget Paris, Miki and Ellen are shown in front of the tower numerous times throughout the film.
 * 2003 In The Real World Paris television show on the US MTV network, the tower is seen.

Symbol of Paris
In yet others, as a symbol of the city in a more peripheral way.


 * 1953 At the end of The War of the Worlds, the tower is seen destroyed.
 * 1965 At the end of the Blake Edwards' The Great Race, starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, the tower is blown up by a misfired cannon shot from Professor Fate's car.
 * 1967 In The Beatles song, 'I Am the Walrus', a character called 'Semolina Pilchard' climbs the tower.
 * 1968–2001 A miniature tower is the home of the puppet Grandpere in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood of Make-Believe.
 * 1970 The tower is shown in the classic animated film The Aristocats.
 * 1979 In the Doctor Who serial City of Death, several scenes were filmed at the Tower, including the final scene of the final part of the serial.
 * 1985 In National Lampoon's European Vacation, Clark throws Rusty's beret off the tower. A dog, thinking it is a frisbee, jumps after it. Because a PG-13 was sought, the dog's life is saved by landing in a pond at the bottom of the tower.
 * 1992 The tower was the logo of the bid of Paris for the 1992 Summer Olympics.

Familiar visual element
Other uses, to establish the tower simply as a well known visual element.


 * 1994 In the French film Un indien dans la ville (aka Little Indian, Big City) 13-year-old Mimi-Siku (Ludwig Briand) who has been raised by a Native South American tribe, climbs partway up the tower in tribal costume. (The film was remade in English in 1997 as Jungle 2 Jungle, but the venue is changed to New York City and Mimi-Siku climbs the Statue of Liberty.)
 * 1995 In La Haine, the main protagonists lament the fact that they cannot switch the lights of the tower off like people can in the movies. The lights switch off just after they have given up and turned their backs on the tower.
 * 2001 In Moulin Rouge!, a pistol thrown from Montmartre by Christian (Ewan McGregor) during the finale bounces off the tower underneath the smiling moon.

Other appearances

 * 1977 The tower appears in background shots in Wim Wenders's The American Friend
 * 1980 The song "Sexy Eiffel Tower", by the pop group Bow Wow Wow.
 * 1981 Condorman attempts to fly off the tower in the movie by the same name.
 * 1984 Robert J. Moriarty flew a Beechcraft V-35 Bonanza, N111MS, owned by Mike Smith of Mike Smith Speed Conversions in Johnson City, Kansas, through the arches under the Eiffel Tower in Paris.




 * 1997 - current Programs on the Fashion TV channel are headed by an animated Eiffel Tower logo complete with lighting display, accompanied by the words "MichelAdam Presents".
 * 1998 The tower is stolen by Rex the Runt and his associates in order to replace Blackpool Tower after it is destroyed by an explosion at Bob's International Hiccup Centre following Doctor Dog's takeover of the facility. After the Eiffel Tower is put into place at Blackpool Beach, the Union Jack is flown from its top and Bad Bob comments that "no one will even notice the difference."
 * 2000 In Rugrats in Paris: The Movie, the babies are atop the tower while using the giant Reptar invention.
 * 2000 In the real-time strategy game of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, Soviet forces turn the tower into a giant, extremely long ranged, incredibly powerful, and rapid firing tesla coil capable of destroying all French forces in the area and a major portion of the city. For copyright reasons, it is called the "Paris Tower" in the game, and has a radical change in design, however enough of the original design remains for the tower to be recognized.
 * 2000 The Eiffel Tower makes a couple of appearances in Max Steel; in overhead shots of the city, the building the European N-Tek base is located under, and the scene where an hour-long EMP is almost used.
 * 2001 In The Royal Tenenbaums, the tower appears reflected on the window in a brief scene of Margot Tenenbaum (Gwyneth Paltrow) with her French lover.
 * 2003 The tower is seen in the Paris map of Midnight Club.
 * 2003 In The Core the tower is seen when the Earth's electromagnetic field repairs itself.
 * 2003 The tower features in Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
 * 2003 In Le Divorce the tower features on the movie promo poster and is also mentioned a few times in the film. Two mentions are due to the purported tour guide audio for the tower being audible in the soundtrack.
 * 2003 The Deathray Davies song "The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower"
 * 2004 In Van Helsing, the tower is under construction.
 * 2004 In Onimusha 3: Demon Siege, the tower is turned into a stronghold time-portal built by Genma Head-Scientist Guildenstein.
 * 2004 The tower flies and moves around Paris in the puppet version of Without a Paddle, in a scene that starts only after the credits end.
 * 2004 The tower is seen in Eurotrip, and mentioned when a protagonist asks whether they should "check out the huge line at the Eiffel Tower".
 * 2005 The tower features in A View from the Eiffel Tower by Montenegrin director Nikola Vukčević.
 * 2005 In Evil Genius, the tower can be shrunk and stolen.
 * 2005 The tower can be built as a World Wonder in Civilization IV.
 * 2005 In Munich the tower can be seen in the background.
 * 2006 In the game Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII, part of the French Resistance level requires the player to destroy German anti-aircraft guns on and around the tower.
 * 2005 In the BBC documentary End Days, when the accelerator of particles is destroyed, natural disaster hit Europe. The Eiffel Tower is seen on television when the hole reaches Europe.
 * 2007 In Mr. Bean's Holiday, Mr. Bean goes past the tower in a taxi.
 * 2008 In Impact, The Tower was seen when comets flying all over The Tower and A News Broadcaster standing right in front of the Tower.
 * 2008 In NYC: Tornado Terror, After making destruction in New York City, The Tornado moves east towards Paris. Then, A Little Tornado forming right in front of the Tower and the Green Thing that previously appear at NYC Buildings now Appear on the Tower as it appear briefly.