Big Budget Hollywood Ripoffs/"Homages" - No one will know if ripoff something obscure

[FatMebius]

A thread for discussing big-budget Hollywood movies that take some heavy amounts of inspiration from more obscure material. Hollywood is notoriously bereft of creativity, and has been for some time. Do note that this is not a thread for discussing remakes, but more about instances of plagiarism, idea theft and outright hackery. I'll start with big-budget flop.

Stealth
A 2005 action movie about an experimental plane being developed by the US Navy. It's not a bad movie. Super generic cast, but it's got some stuff to like if you're into planes. What's more noticeable is the fact that there's a bit of an alleged conspiracy about the film's creation.

The creators will never admit but, but the first thing I noticed about the movie when I first saw it was "Wow, someone here liked Macross Plus".

An Interview with the creator of Macross about Hollywood

It's not a 1:1 copy, but it takes some very clear inspiration from Macross Plus. The film's sci-fi superplane (The F/A-37 Talon) also looks like it took some very heavy inspiration from the OVA Yukikaze. It comes off looking a bit like simplified version of the FFR-41MR Maeve.

Black Swan
It's Perfect Blue. And Aronofsky had the gall to say he'd never seen the movie nor head of it. Satoshi Kon, the director of Perfect Blue, later said he'd actually met Aronofsky and he'd gushed about the film before Black Swan was released.

 

[Character from a movie]

What about The Lion King and Kimba? Disney basically plagiarized Tezuka's work.

 

[FatMebius]

What about The Lion King and Kimba? Disney basically plagiarized Tezuka's work.

That's a good example too. Another Disney movie that counts is Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Now, a lotta people will say it's a rip-off of the anime Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. And while there are a ton of similarities (Dorky-brown haired lead with glasses. Jules Verne-inspired aesthetic. Brown girl from Atlantis. Magic blue rock Mcguffin) . It's another one where the staff were straight-up asked about it and claimed to have never heard of Nadia. Which I find to be a very dubious claim. However, it's not really a copy of that anime. It is a rip off of another movie though.

It 's beat-for-beat the plot of Stargate.

 

[Super-Chevy454]

The 1960 classic "The Magnificient Seven" was an adaptation of The Seven Samurai.

Interesting trivia, Charles Bronson (The Magnificient Seven) and Toshiro Mifune (The Seven Samurai) was the main stars of the movie Red Sun.

 

[FatMebius]

That's more of an outright remake though. An authorized one at that.

The Island
A shitty, forgettable Michael Bay movie about clones being harvested by celebs for their organs. It's a rip off of an old SF flick called The Clonus Horror. The creators of which sued Dreamworks over. And Dreamworks settled out of court and gave the dude a shitload of money.

 

[Idiotron]

What about The Lion King and Kimba? Disney basically plagiarized Tezuka's work.

That is actually bullshit.
The people who said this crap never seen Kimba, they seen clips.
I know people hate YMS here but his best video he ever made is debunking this crap and he did an amazing job.
The level of autistic research he did is admirable.

 

[Nicholas II of Russia]

Remember when Disney tried to rip-off fucking Dreamworks with their own Madagascar?

One of the reasons I remember this movie is because the squirrel wanted to fuck the giraffe.

 

[Salubrious]

Aronofsky denying that he saw Perfect Blue was just bizarre considering he literally copied a scene of it in Requiem for a Dream 10 years earlier than Black Swan.

Hell, sticking with Satoshi Kon, Paprika (2006) has a lot in common with Inception (2010). At least Nolan admitted he loved Paprika.

 

[LifeAlert]

What about The Lion King and Kimba? Disney basically plagiarized Tezuka's work.

Apparently that's not the case. Huffpo interviewed Tom Sito, an artist who worked on The Lion King, and according to him they took 0 inspiration from Kimba. While it's easy to dismiss him because he used to work for Disney, I think he is telling the truth because the screenshots people use when making these accusations are from the 1997 version of Kimba, which came 3 years after The Lion King. You won't find many comparison images from the manga or the 1965 and 1989 anime adaptations and from what I've seen there's no shots in The Lion King that copied shots from those. Also, someone involved with the film's production brought in the Kimba manga and pointed out similarities between their work and Kimba, but they were already in the middle of production at that time. I do believe Disney lifts a lot of things from the japs but I think the Kimba accusations are overblown.

Spoiler: japs ripping off americans

Also Blade Runner 2049 copied Cowboy Bebop:

Spoiler: ending spoilers for blade runner 2049 and cowboy bebop

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

I've glanced at Jungle Emperor stuff here and there, and yeah there's some basic similarities in the character designs, but that's also in no small part because Tezuka aped the Disney style to a degree, so Disney 90s drawing a lion is going to be derived from a similar aesthetic vocabulary as Tezuka was

but the story of Lion King is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more Hamlet, Dad killed by usurper brother, son encouraged to avenge by dad's ghost, goes dicking around elsewhere with wacky duo, only it doesn't end with being informed that Timon and Pumbaa are dead
iirc Kimba's dad gets killed by hunters and there's no usurping to fight?

I was gonna throw in The Island -> Parts, but that's already been handled.
What was REALLY funny was this wasn't even ten years after Parts had been on MST3k, and well into the era of youtube circulation of tapes, so Parts was basically the most famous it's ever been at the point Bay decided to rip it off

 

[millais]

"Sorcerer" (1977) is now better known than the original French film "Le salaire de la peur", from 1953.

 

[Coo Coo Bird]

The 1960 classic "The Magnificient Seven" was an adaptation of The Seven Samurai.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=nlXBaP7l5n4https://youtube.com/watch?v=1XMJY0hYJEw
Interesting trivia, Charles Bronson (The Magnificient Seven) and Toshiro Mifune (The Seven Samurai) was the main stars of the movie Red Sun.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=MdtyruRMlns

But it was an official remake:

Is this thread for when big Hollywood producers rip off an obscure movie figuring they won't be called out on it, or is it for remakes in general?

 

[mister fireworks]

Isn't this most movies, even the good ones? I mean the Oscars even have a category for adapted screenplay. Also, is Stealth the one where they join forces with some of the planes to felt the other planes at the end?

Someone told me they are remaking American Psycho, so thats what I'm seething about at the moment. That movie is so memetic that even retarded zoomers have familiarity with the original, which I think is the biggest issue with adapting from other works.

 

[TheHarbinger]

Star Wars copied enormous amounts from Dune and continued right into the prequel movies. Even the names of characters are often similar. Lucas was also accused of stealing the Falcon ship design from some obscure sci-fi story. Lucas would sue tons of people in the future for ripping off Star Wars from movies, television shows, comics, and more.

Inception lifted everything from an anime film called Paprika including a few scenes that are shot for shot identical. The creator of that film denied having even seen the movie which is a bizarre lie. The makers of South Park made an episode about the film Inception, but hadn't seen the movie yet, so they copied a parody from the website College Humor and stole every single joke to make their episode and were caught but nothing happened to them even after they admitted that they just stole the entire episode.

Memento stole its plot from video game Planescape Torment. But moved the story to modern times. And had the character be an amnesia suffering criminal and not an immortal being. But the similarities beyond that are pretty pronounced.

The small movie Night Moves about eco-terrorism was supposed to be licensed from a book called the Monkey Wrench Gang. They made the movie anyways and changed the names around. But then had to settle out of court when it was obvious that they just made the same movie without a license.

The Alien franchise was ripped off from a book called The Black Destroyer. Fox lost a lawsuit but was allowed to keep the Alien property and Dan O'Bannon could keep his 'creator' status of the franchise. Lots of stuff from the franchise is stolen from other obscure books and movies but the fandom carefully edits this out of their wikis.

The Matrix has been accused of being a ripoff of a bunch of stuff. One guy named Thomas Althouse is making a documentary about how one of his scripts was stolen to make the trilogy of films. But it's hard to tell how truthful he is and he's lost a few lawsuits in his fight.

M Night stole the plot of The Village from the book Running Out of Time and reused a lot of its imagery. A lot of M Night films are clearly remakes or stolen ideas from more obscure films. He's also been accused to stealing scrips and rushing movies to theaters to beat them to the punch.

John Carpenter sued the makers of the film Lockout for copying Escape from New York and won in court for a modest sum. Lockout is basically a remake of Escape from New York but set in space. A well done film which is probably why Carpenter didn't sue for millions because he secretly liked the film.

The Island is clearly a ripoff of Logan's Run.

The Hunger Games is clearly a remake of Battle Royale.

Transformers the cartoon movie is a remake of the first Star Wars trilogy but done well enough that Lucas didn't sue.

The whole Nosferatu and Dracula controversy.

 

[FatMebius]

But it was an official remake:
Ver archivo adjunto 6660680
Is this thread for when big Hollywood producers rip off an obscure movie figuring they won't be called out on it, or is it for remakes in general?

Ripoffs or unlicensed remakes at best. Saying an offical remake is a ripoff would be like saying a film adaptation of a novel is a ripoff.

 

[Character from a movie]

and pointed out similarities between their work and Kimba

So it was Kimba who plagiarized The Lion King all this time? I've lived a lie. That's what I get for believing everything I read on Tumblr.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Lucas was also accused of stealing the Falcon ship design from some obscure sci-fi story.

There's a lot of visuals that closely resemble stuff from Valerian (the comic that inspired the live action and the jp/eu animated thing), but really Star Wars is a lot of things thrown in a blender and set to "cool" like how Gainax rolled a lot

Also of Star Wars iirc the pod race allegedly lifts heavily from some Scandinavia wacky races sort of thing

 

[Cat tit bingo]

annihilation is just a dumbed down Hollywood version of stalker replacing the soviet era depression with lady angst

 

[FatMebius]

There's a lot of visuals that closely resemble stuff from Valerian (the comic that inspired the live action and the jp/eu animated thing), but really Star Wars is a lot of things thrown in a blender and set to "cool" like how Gainax rolled a lot

Also of Star Wars iirc the pod race allegedly lifts heavily from some Scandinavia wacky races sort of thing

Yeah, the Falcon is very inspired by the ship from Valerian. Pretty much every big SF writer at the time bitched about Lucas.

 

[Trump's Chosen]

Memento stole its plot from video game Planescape Torment. But moved the story to modern times. And had the character be an amnesia suffering criminal and not an immortal being. But the similarities beyond that are pretty pronounced

Planescape torment came out december 1999. Memento screenplay was sold in 1997. It's true that the film released later than the game, but shooting had already begun in september 1999.

Also they have very little resemblance beyond an amnesiac main character. Planescape torment however stole quite a bit from the book pages of pain from Troy Denning, as this was a book released in 1996 about an amnesiac hero in the planescape universe (but in this case because he had drunk from a river that makes you lose your memory, because like shutter island, he wanted to forget his role in the death of his wife and children).