Surely Dopers can come up with more of these?
A crazy but compelling woman destroys both the professional and romantic life of a scientist, and ends up in his arms. Bringing Up Baby (Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and What’s Up, Doc? (Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal).
ETA: Wait, do they have to be the same year? Because there’s quite a gap between these two.
Armageddon and Deep Impact. Both came out the same year.
A young man excited about a new job becomes a reluctant enviromentalist when he meets a woman who is part of a clan who worships sacred trees. When push comes to shove, the young man sides with the woman’s people and stands up against his employer when the evil corporation decides to cut down the scared trees.
Ferngully, of course. And Avatar.
12:01 and Groundhog Day were both about a man reliving the same day over and over.
Honeymoon In Vegas and Indecent Proposal were both about a rich guy buying sex from another guy’s wife because the other couple is desperate for cash.
Taylor of Panama is Our Man in Havana
Made of Honor is My Best Friend’s Wedding
Of course there are the countless Akira Kurosawa knock-offs which are too numerous to list…
A feisty redheaded young woman wants to escape marriage to a man she doesn’t love. Her mother, played by Frances Fisher, is forcing her into the marriage to restore the family fortune. She also makes her wear tight, restricting clothing. The girl joins up with a young man from a nothing family who doesn’t have a dime to his name, and they travel by boat to America. He teaches her some working-class skill that she later uses to her advantage. She also takes at least some of her clothes off. And dances and drinks with working-class people. The whole thing is based around a real-life event, and he almost dies at the end. Oops: in Titanic he does die. In Far and Away he was just unconscious.
Escape From New York and Escape From L.A.
Don’t forget Pocahontas!
Sam Neil goes on a mysterious journey and then gets eaten by be-tentacled monsters is the plot for both Event Horizon and From the Mouth of Madness.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and *To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar *
Philadelphia Story and High Society
Stalag 17 and Chicken Run
Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan and Moby Dick - “From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee…”
Also Dances with Wolves.
Apparently Avatar ripped off every movie ever made.
I’ll see your Dances With Wolves and raise you one Last Samurai.
James Bond must solve the problem of the disappearing American and Soviet craft before nuclear war breaks out. He joins forces with the beautiful female spy from a foreign country and learns that an evil genius heading a huge criminal organization is using a bizarre craft that envelops the American and Russian craft and abducts them. Bond infiltrates the Bad Guy’s lair, frees the American and Russian captives, and together they fight against the Bad Guy’s minions, utteerly destroying the headquarters.
You Only Live Twice (1967) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). In the original script, the Bad Guy in TSWLM was even identified as Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the Bad Guy in FYEO, but they couldn’t legally use the character.
Thunderball and Never Say Never Again have the same plot, and many of the same names, but that really is pretty much a remake. There are lots of similarities between Goldfinger and A View to a Kill, too.
High Society was a musical remake. That shouldn’t count; any remake is going to have the same plot.
Harlow and Harlow. Both came out in 1965, about a month apart.
The Magnificent Seven and Battle Beyond the Stars
We’ve done this before:
The example I gave back then are two mid-1980’s films about a young housewife who has a businessman husband who ignores her and who is fascinated by the adventures of a free-spirited young woman. When she falls and hits her head, she gets amnesia and imagines that she is the young woman she has been fantasizing about. She gets into real adventures where her life is in danger and begins an affair with a much more exciting man than her husband. Since she has amnesia, neither she nor this man realize that she is married. The adventures end happily with the crooks being caught, but then the woman recovers her memories. Her boring husband wants her to come back home with him and the man she has been having an affair with is willing to give her up, but she realizes that she actually loves this new man, so she chooses to leave her husband for him.
The two films are American Dreamer (1984) and Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
Pretty clearly both consciously taken from the Seven Samurai (which was originally called “The Magnificent Seven” when it premiered in the US). Not to mention a Bug’s Life. I don’t think these ought to count, either. We ought to be going after coincidentally similarly plotted films, or those that indicate sheer laziness (like the Bond examples), according to perfectly sound principles I just made up.
From the parody show Forbidden Hollywood’s "Gump the Magic Movie:
Everyone loves Forrest so why does no one care
That this same plot was used before in a film called Being There?