Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is a 2009 sequel to Night at the Museum starring Ben Stiller. The story follows a security guard at a museum where the exhibits come to life at night.

One such exhibit is Oscar the Grouch (played as usual by Caroll Spinney), a puppet on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Other characters featured in the film include Darth Vader, Albert Einstein bobbleheads, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Earlier in the film, an image of Cookie Monster is shown on a computer screen that displays various exhibits in the museum Nicky was looking up.

Oscar and Vader are found by the main villain's minions in the pop culture exhibit. They each intend on joining the team of bad guys in taking over the world. Both of them fail, however, as Kahmunrah finds Vader's theatrics comical and Oscar can't seem to prove himself to be evil, just "vaguely grouchy."

"That was something that Tom [Lennon] and Ben [Garand] wrote in the very first draft of the script," Levy said in a news conference at the Smithsonian last weekend in Washington. "Honestly, I read it, and I was like, 'This is awesome, but there is no possible way you are going to get Oscar the Grouch and Darth Vader in our movie.' I thought it was a complete fantasy. I still can't believe it."
—Director, Shawn Levy^[1]

ReferencesEdit

In a deleted scene from The Muppets, Ricky Gervais tells someone on the phone that he's receiving an Oscar. Although he doesn't know what it's for, he says "I wouldn't have thought it would be for Night at the Museum. They don't usually hand out Oscars for two-minute cameos in kids films that you're only doing as a favor." (Gervais then looks sarcastically at the camera, breaking the fourth wall).