Name: Understand Real English: Movie References (That You’ll Hear ALL the Time!)
Uploaded: 2026-01-01T18:22:25.000Z
Duration: 13 min 4 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

In today's video, I want to talk to you a little bit more about cultural English.

Now, if you come to an English speaking country, you will notice that a lot of the things people say are in reference to something from culture, especially movies or music or things like that.

And if you're not familiar with these cultural things, it may be very difficult to understand what they're trying to say.

So today I'm going to give you a few of these examples to show you how people refer to movie situations when they're talking about real life situations.

Okay, so we're going to start with these three, and

I'm using all three because they all come from the same movie, the wizard of Oz.

Now, actually, I should write the Wizard.

Now, this is a very famous movie from, I think, 1940s maybe.

It's a very old movie, but even kids today watch this movie.

I personally don't know anybody who hasn't seen this movie.

So it's a story of Dorothy who gets a tornado, takes her house to basically, Oz, the land of Oz, and

she has to find the wizard so he can help her go home, back to Kansas.

Okay, so a few of the things that happen here.

At the end of the movie, Dorothy finally reaches the Emerald City where the wizard lives, and

she goes to the wizard's office, I guess you could say, or his studio.

And there's a big, like, face and it's like all lights and smoke and shadows and stuff.

And then Dorothy's dog Toto goes to a curtain and pulls the curtain, and

you can see a little old man pressing all the buttons to make the wizard look big and powerful.

So when you say to see behind the curtain means to see the truth of how something works.

And it's generally a little disappointing.

So a lot of people believe that the government is made up of very strong, very smart, very capable people.

But if you actually look very closely, if you look behind the curtain, you'll see that they're just regular everyday people who are greedy and who want power and who are taking advantage of their situation.

So you see the truth of a situation, and that comes from the movie very clearly.

Also in the movie, one of the characters is the Tin Man.

He's made of tin and he's always getting rusty, so they always have to give him oil.

But he goes with Dorothy to see the wizard of Oz because he wants to have a heart, because he's just made of tin, right?

So sometimes if we refer to someone as the Tin man, basically what we're saying is he has no heart, right?

If somebody is very cold or very unemotional, or like, for example, if you see a dog, somebody kicking a dog, and

it happens like you don't care, you don't get emotionally moved, then people will call you Tin Man.

But very commonly referred to in that particular situation and the yellow brick road.

So for Dorothy to get to the Emerald City where the wizard is, she has to follow the yellow brick road.

it's the only road that goes all the way to the Emerald City.

But at the end of the yellow brick road is all her wishes come true, right?

So follow the yellow brick road means go on and try to get your dreams.

There's something good at the end of the process of something, right?

Let's say you get a job and you say you're starting at the bottom level and you're getting a little bit discouraged, and

somebody will say, don't worry, this is just the yellow brick road.

At the end, you'll get everything you want.

So these things, these three situations are part of everyday English, part of everyday dialogue, and

Now, there are actually a lot of movies that are often referenced, but

I'm just going to give you a few examples and you can start paying attention to other movies.

The more popular the movie, the more likely there's something from the movie that will stand out and people will repeat.

Next we're going to look at the movie the Matrix with Keanu Reeves and Neo and Trinity and all that.

And we talk about red, red pill, blue pill.

So if, if you watch the movie, you know what I'm talking about.

If you haven't seen the movie, there's a point where one of the characters offers another character a choice.

If you take the red pill, you will see the truth of reality.

All the, all the fake stuff will disappear and you will wake up in the truth.

And the problem is the truth is often ugly.

Whereas the blue pill, you can go on living in your fantasy.

We have an expression in English, it's ignorance is bliss.

And in fact, this expression is used in the movie, but it's a very common expression.

Ignorance is peaceful because you don't have anything to worry about.

So if somebody refuses to see the truth, we can say, oh, this guy took the blue pill, right?

Means he's ready to be an activist or he's ready to make some change.

Let's say you're watching a particular news channel, and

most people realize that this channel is feeding the public a lot of lies.

But you continue to watch it, and you continue to believe everything they say.

People might say that you took the blue pill and don't want to face reality, the truth.

Next, Karate Kid, also a very famous movie.

It's about a young boy who moves to California, and

he goes to school, and some kids are bullying him.

They know how to do karate, and they beat him up.

The person who takes care of the building where he lives is a Japanese man, Mr. Miyagi.

And he teaches him karate, but he teaches him in a very unusual way.

He doesn't teach him actual karate moves.

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Understand Real English: Movie References (That You’ll Hear ALL the Time!)

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