List of appearances of Monument Valley in the media

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Monument Valley, located on the Navajo Nation within Arizona and Utah, has been featured in many forms of media since the 1930s. It is perhaps most famous for its use in many John Ford films, such as Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956). It has also been featured in such films as Easy Rider (1969), directed by and co-starring Dennis Hopper; Forrest Gump (1994), directed by Robert Zemeckis, and The Eiger Sanction (1975), directed by and starring Clint Eastwood; and in two episodes of the popular United Kingdom television show Doctor Who: "The Impossible Astronaut" (23 April 2011) and "Day of the Moon" (30 April 2011).

The twin buttes of Monument Valley ("the Mittens"), the "Totem Pole", and the "Ear of the Wind" arch, among other features, have developed iconic status. They have appeared in many television programs, commercials, and Hollywood movies, especially Westerns.[citation needed]

Monument Valley Panorama, taken from the Visitor Center and showing "the Mittens", Merrick Butte and the road which makes a loop-tour through the Park

Motion pictures

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Films

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John Ford's Point in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park
US163 between Agathla Peak and Owl Rock as seen in Easy Rider
The location along U.S. Route 163 where Forrest Gump ends his run, with Monument Valley in the background
  • In Forrest Gump (1994), Forrest ends his cross-country run here. He is running north on U.S. Route 163 before he stops running.
  • Lightning Jack (1994)
  • Paramount Pictures 1994 film Pontiac Moon featured this location as part of the roadtrip.
  • The Sunchaser (1996) features the site
  • Wild America (1997) features scenes of Monument Valley.
  • The Return of Navajo Boy (2000), a documentary about uranium contamination of Navajo lands, was shot largely in Monument Valley where its central characters live. Additionally, the film deconstructs historical media depictions of Navajos and the land where they live (including Monument Valley).
  • The opening scene of Vertical Limit (2000) features several rock climbers in Monument Valley.
  • The opening song of the Telugu Film Takkari Donga (2002) features Monument Valley.
  • In Windtalkers (2002), the opening and closing scenes are filmed in Monument Valley.
  • In Cars (2006), a spoof of Monument Valley called "Ornament Valley" is shown as a once-popular side trip for cars entering Radiator Springs from U.S. Route 66. In keeping with the automotive theme of the film, the peaks are shaped like the hood ornaments of cars. A map shown in a flashback places Radiator Springs in a Peach Springs, Arizona-like position with respect to US66/I-40, but depicts the valley as local instead of 175 miles further north at the edge of the state.
  • Alex Cox's film Searchers 2.0 (2007) is about a road trip to Monument Valley. The final scenes feature a rare depiction of the area covered in snow.
  • Jacques Mesrine and his mistress were arrested near Monument Valley in the film Mesrine (2008).
  • Location sequences for the documentary Reel Injun (2009), on the history of Native Americans in the movies.
  • The Lone Ranger (2013) filmed numerous scenes in Monument Valley.
  • In The Lego Movie (2014) it is depicted in the early part of the movie
  • A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014) was partially shot on location in Monument Valley.
  • In Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) the scene in which the surviving Autobots reunite was shot in Monument Valley.
  • The Monument Valley is featured in the Disney theme park attraction, Soarin Around the World (2016).
  • Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)
  • Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) - One of the ending scenes shows a convoy of trucks, one of which contains an Allosaurus traveling through Monument Valley.
  • In the opening scene of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), a film written and directed by the Coen Brothers.

Print

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Television

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  • The rugged desert scenery for the Coyote and Road Runner (1949-) cartoons takes much of its inspiration from Monument Valley.
  • In the 1978 Super Friends episode "The Pied Piper from Space", alien space ships abduct children, including the Wonder Twins, and they board the spaceships at Monument Valley.
  • In the 1980s American action/espionage television series Airwolf, a hollowed butte is portrayed as the secret hiding place ("The Lair") of the eponymous high-tech military helicopter. Monument Valley is renamed the "Valley of the Gods" in this series. The actual Valley of the Gods is a few miles north in Utah. The shots of The Lair were actually a mix of matte paintings and shots from three locations within close proximity of each other.
  • The MacGyver episode "Eagles" (Season 2, Episode 8) has shots in the Valley. MacGyver is gathering eggs from an eagle's nest on top of a butte.
  • In their final television series De Reis vol Verrassingen, the Dutch duo Bassie en Adriaan spend an entire episode in Monument Valley. Among other things, clown Bassie performs a rain dance in front of The Three Sisters.
  • In the made-for-TV movie 10.5: Apocalypse, Monument Valley is flooded from seismic activity.
  • The 2011 Doctor Who episodes "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon" contain sequences shot in Monument Valley (although not in the exact location given in the episode). This was the first time Doctor Who has filmed principal photography on location in America. Past episodes that take place in America were never shot in the US, including the 1996 TV film which takes place in San Francisco but was shot in Vancouver.
  • In a 2014 Adult Swim bump Monument Valley was shown with lights going through the trails.
  • Numerous scenes from the HBO series Westworld were filmed in Monument Valley.
  • Monument Valley appears in the third-season premiere of the television adaptation of The Man in the High Castle, titled "Now More Than Ever, We Care About You." In this alternate history, the Empire of Japan tests an atomic bomb there.

Advertising

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  • The implied association with John Wayne's tough, macho character made the buttes a natural choice as the background for the Marlboro Man in the marketing of Marlboro-brand cigarettes from the 1950s.[citation needed]

Photography

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  • A Monument Valley photo was used in Windows Vista Beta 2 as wallpaper.[citation needed]
  • Fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar used Monument Valley as a backdrop for a fashion editorial shot by Yasuhiro Wakabayashi for the January 1969 issue.

Games

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Music

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References

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  1. ^ Paramount Pictures (March 2, 2014). "Monument Valley in the movies". CBS News. CBS Interactive Inc. p. 5. Retrieved February 11, 2019.
  2. ^ Phipps, Keith (November 17, 2009). "The Easy Rider Road Trip". Slate. Retrieved December 16, 2012.
  3. ^ Howze, William (September 2, 2011). "Ford's consistent use of popular imagery in Western and Non-Western films". The Influence of Western Painting and Genre Painting on the Films of John Ford (Revised ed.).
  4. ^ Punch, David A. (September 2, 2018). "Stagecoach: Defining the Western How John Ford's 1939 western classic transformed the dying genre into the epitome of American cinema". Medium.
  5. ^ Movshovitz, Howard (1984). "The Still Point: Women in the Westerns of John Ford". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 7 (3, Women on the Western Frontier). University of Nebraska Press: 68–72. doi:10.2307/3346245. JSTOR 3346245.
  6. ^ Darby, Ken. Hollywood Holyland The Filming and Scoring of The Greatest Story Ever Told. Rowman and Littlefield. The late Ken Darby, a three-time winner for musical adaptation, presents a behind- the-camera portrait of the late George Stevens' 1965 "Holyland", which he built in Utah's Monument Valley in order to film The Greatest Story Ever Told: 160 prefab aluminum bungalows housed over 400 artisans, actors, and technicians
  7. ^ "Once Upon a Time in the West ( filming location video ) Ennio Morricone Leone Fonda Bronson". YouTube. February 25, 2013.
  8. ^ "Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider » BAMF Style". May 17, 2022.
  9. ^ "Kim Morgan on Easy Rider".