Ah, found it. Took a bit of Googling, but…
Lost Flight (From 1969, btw)
I also found this one, which I thought was interesting too. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Danger Island (1992)
Someone suggested to me that Pirates of the Caribbean is an adaptation of the computer game series Monkey Island. I don’t really see it, though (and the game is so much better/funnier/shorter)
Exactly. I mean, the first story about people on board an aircraft crash-landing on a mysterious island filled with strange things and struggling to survive is of course, Jules Verne’s “Mysterious Island.” I don’t think this gives Verne the rights to any story involving crash-landing on a desert island.
Or for that matter, there’s also 1939’s Five Came Back which is essentially the same story.
Umm…like that “Bible” thing? I wonder if Tolkein’s estate can sue.
-Joe
Same theme with a '60s Love Generation twist:
From “Forbidden Hollywood’s” Gump, the Magic Movie:
Everyone loves Forrest, but why does no one care
That this same plot was used before in a film called “Being There”?
It’s more the setting and a few characters, like Barbossa(LeChuck).
It’s not a adaptation, but Monkey Island did inspire parts of Pirates.
and
**Flight of the Phoenix ** (both version)
Lost Horizon
Monkey Island came out in 1990. The Disney ride has been around since the 60s. For the most part, much of the pirate mythology seen in PotC has more or less been around as long as I can remember.
I’m supprised no one mentioned Independence Day is essentially a remake of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, with a computer virus instead of an actual virus.
We’ve been over this many a time on the SDMB. I think TNaIS is a bit confused – Alien doesn’t rip off The Thing – it rips off Jerome Bixby’s 1950s cheapie It!The Terror from Beyond Space. In a MAJOR way.
Bixby can’t have been unaware of E.E. vam Vogt’s dshort story “Black Destroyer”, the first story I know of that features an alien onster loose aboard a starship, but his story is different enough that it’s no more than the basic situation. Whereas Alien really follows the same plot as It!
(Van Vogt later wrote another short story, “Discord in Scarlet”, that featured another alien monster loose aboard a starship, that planted eggs in the bodies of crewmen. Both Black Destroyer and Discord in Crimson were later pasted together with other short stories – a practice Van Vogt called a “fix-up” – to make the aforementioned novel The Voyage of the Space Beagle.)
It! didn’t feature eggs being planted by the alien in crewmembers, but I suspect that Dan O’Bannon lifted the idea from another 1950s cheapie, Night of the Blood Beast. I know it could’ve been one of the (many) other screenwriters for Alien, and that they could’ve gotten the idea from Van Vogt, but I get the strong impression that O’Bannon was the guiding force, and that he was more influenced by movies than literature.
I think that the most Philip K. Dick-like movie ever made is They Live, which is not based on any of Dick’s works.
I’d have said Eternal Sunshine… was the best non-Dick Dick.
The filmmakers have actually acknowledged that and admitted that they realize how unrealisitic the virus scene is, but it was required for the War of the Worlds tone.
Tolkein got his stuff from the Bible, which is public domain, so he’s safe, dude. (Good thing the Bible IS public domain because the authorship thing is a real can o’ worms.)
No, what PotC is, is an adaptation of is Tim Powers’ novel “On Stranger Tides.” Consider:
Both stories have a protagonist whose life is altered powerfully by the absence of their father. In PotC, the protagonist believes his father was murdered by pirates and has become a blacksmith specializing in swords with a fixation on killing pirates. In Stranger Tides, the protagonist is a puppeteer who travels to the Caribbean to collect on an inheritance after his puppeteer father is robbed and murdered.
In both stories, the female love interest is a beautiful woman with a weak father who does not protect her.
Each female love interest unknowingly carries powerful magic (in PotC, she has one of the coins from Davy Jones’ locker, in Stranger Tides, she’s been raised for years on a special diet so she can serve as a guide to The Fountain of Youth).
In each story, the plot is driven by the actions of the bad guy, who is a pirate seeking to remove magical afflictions. In PotC it’s the captain and crew of the Black Pearl, seeking to remove the curse of Davy Jones’ locker. In Stranger Tides it’s Blackbeard seeking to remove an affliction of spirits gained by an earlier attempt on the Fountain of Youth.
In each story, magic of the voodoo variety is central to the plot, and is casually used and referenced by pirates.
PotC is not a plagiarism of Stranger Tides, but I’m pretty sure that whoever wrote the script read “Stranger Tides” quite carefully and took notes.
I agree with Eternal Sunshine as the best non-Dick Dick. They Live definitely has Dickish influences, but it’s too fun and upbeat to really be Dick.
I wrote:
> I think that the most Philip K. Dick-like movie ever made is They Live, which is
> not based on any of Dick’s works.
MrDibble wrote:
> I’d have said Eternal Sunshine… was the best non-Dick Dick.
Note that these are two different claims. I said that the movie which was most Dick-like was They Live (which was not adapted from a Dick work). MrDibble said that the best Dick-like film not adapted from a Dick work was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Well, I think years after the fact, George Romero admitted that the original “Night of the Living Dead” was largely inspired by Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend.” Romero changed just enough things around to avoid possible lawsuits.
Not that Romero had enough money at the time to make a lawsuit worthwhile, from Matheson’s standpoint.
Evil Captor writes:
> They Live definitely has Dickish influences, but it’s too fun and upbeat to really
> be Dick.
Hmm. I consider Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to be more upbeat than They Live. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ends with the couple deciding that, even though their relationship didn’t work the last time, maybe this time they can make it work. They Live ends with the hero dying, although he knows that his actions have helped turn the tide against the enemy. But for an example of a truly non-Dick-like ending, even though it’s from a great movie, there’s Blade Runner, where the hero accomplishes his mission and rides off into the sunset with his new girlfriend, who’s not doomed to die in a few years.
I laways thought that movie was a bit crap. For my money, the movie that best “got” what Lovecraft was all about is Quatermass and the Pit. In that movie:
Earth was the colony of a race of extra-terrestrial grasshoppers, who engineered humans as telepathically controlled slave stock, before disappearing mysteriously some 30 million years ago. In that movie, humans aren’t blessed, or special, or unique. We’re just industrial waste, a meaningless blip on the vast, unending timeline of a cold, uncaring universe. And that, more than tentacle monsters or make-you-go-crazy books, is what Lovecraft was all about.