Blatant rip-offs in TV and Movies

Cafe Society
41

Babylon 5.

A certain great heroic space station captain knows he’s supposed to die if he goes to Z’ha’Dum, a planet filled with dark evil beings (Moria, anyone). Originally, a space angel was supposed to save him or help him, but he had to sacrifice his life and couldn’t manage to be there… mostly. While there, he basically ran off and activated his ship’s engine, which homed in on his position and was filled with nuclear devices. It broke into the planet’s outer crust (a very thin shell in that section) and exploded in the middle of the Shadow’s largest city. The captain flings himself into a bottomless pit, and though its never entirely explained, he is brought back from the mostly dead by a superior being, one of the first living beings ever.

42

This thread could not begin to cover the rip-offs that occur in TV and the movies. Virtually every successful movie breeds scores of cheapo movie pilers-on and TV inspirations. After Alien came out we were burdened with lots of movies with “Alien” in the title, and others (like Biohazard) that had suspiciously Alien-like creatures. And Alien, as has been p[ointed out above (and by me numerous times) is a rip-off of Jerome Bixby’s underappreciated It! The Terror from Beyond Space (with a bit of Planet of Vampires and Night of the Blood Beast tossed in).

And just as Alien begat evil, tough aliens, E.T. begat legions of cute cuddly ones – Mac and Me, the MST3K perennialPod People, etc.

Look at all the Indiana Jones imitators, the Star Wars clones.

Less spectacular films brought on imitators, too. The Hitchcock film To Catch a Thief gave us the TV series It Takes a Thief, its title completing the phrase. The Academy Award-winning A Man for All Seasons was followed by other British history films, notably the forgettable Cromwell (which still snatched an Academy award, IIRC, for music).
Hollywood loves a winner, and hates spending money on an unproven product, so we can count on a lot more slavish imitations in the years to come.

43

yeah, I visited a site once and Disney’s “Lion King” was a definite ripoff of The White Lion. It wasn’t just the plot similarities, some of the cells from White Lion were almost identical to Lion King’s. It’s almost like Disney didn’t give a shit about copyright unless it’s their own copyrights.

44

I missed most of the series when it went to cable, but that’s definitely Babylon 5. IMHO that wasn’t a rip off, it was a homage. A rip off is an inferior copy of the original with no new ideas of its own. Rip offs are just attempts to make money. A homage may borrow elements from an earlier work but contains original ideas and in it. Homages are are genuine attempts at art.

Esprix is the Babylon 5 expert and I’m sure he can defend the show better than I.

45

In the deplorable Johnson Family Vacation, the wife quips that she has no interest in seeing the world’s second biggest ball of twine. Ripped almost word-for-word from a scene in National Lampoon’s Vacation. I don’t know if it’s an homage or a rip-off. YOU be the judge.

I’ve also notice lots of similarities between Star Wars and Harry Potter. Now, I’m not accusing JK Rowling of plagiarism: I know that both series are themselves based on earlier mythology. And, of course, common themes run through almost all myth-based fiction. But (spoilers ahead):

Harry Potter: grew up with Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia because his parents were killed when he was a baby.
Luke Skywalker: grew up with Uncle Owen and Aunt Veru becuase his parents were killed when he was a baby.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia: fearful of Harry’s powers and unsympathetic to his plight.
Uncle Owen and Aunt Veru: fearful of Luke’s powers and unsympathetic to his plight.

Harry: parents were killed by a dark wizard who has designs on him.
Luke: parents were killed (so to speak) by a dark wizard who has designs on him.

Harry: has powers that he can only begin to understand.
Luke: has powers that he can only begin to understand.

Lord Voldemort: Seduced and possessed by the evil side of the same mystical power that Harry has.
Darth Vader: Seduced and possessed by the evil side of the same mystical power that Luke has.

Dumbledore: Watches over Harry from a distance, then helps him begin to unlock his powers.
Obi-wan Kenobi: Watches over Luke from a distance, then helps him begin to unlock his powers.

Hermione Granger: Intelligent, head-strong woman who doesn’t suffer fools, and who has her own beef with the bad guys.
Leia Organa: Intelligent, head-strong woman who doesn’t suffer fools, and who has her own beef with the bad guys.

Ron Weasley: Lovable rascal, the only fool Hermione suffers.
Han Solo: Lobavle rascal, the only fool Leia suffers.

Ron & Hermione: Thick infatiational (is that a word) tension between the two.
Han & Leia: Thick sexual tension between the two.

Hagrid: Furry, lovable oaf who saves the day.
Chewbacca: Furry, lovable oaf who saves the day.

46

DocCathode writes:

> A rip off is an inferior copy of the original with no new ideas of its own. Rip offs
> are just attempts to make money. A homage may borrow elements from an
> earlier work but contains original ideas and in it. Homages are are genuine
> attempts at art.

I think it’s harder to make a distinction here than you think it is. All works of art are attempts to make money. At least all significant works of art are. I suppose it’s possible to imagine a case where someone passes around copies of his novel in photocopies or posts a copy of it on the Internet, but I don’t see that we’re talking about that here. All works of art involve some minimal amount of originality. If not, the creator of the original work should go to court to sue for copyright violation.

The question is whether the new ideas in the new work are good or not. That’s an artistic question, and, like all artistic matters, people will disagree about it. That was the point of my disagreement about the movie The Matrix. I don’t care that it stole ideas from all over the place. I thought that the things that it added to those old ideas were boring, confusing new things. Other people disagreed. (Incidentally, I disagree that all great art involves stealing ideas from all over the place. Some great art does steal from all over the place. Some is suprisingly original in most of what it does.)

47

The Big Green is a blatant rip-off of The Mighty Ducks. Not merely in the basic plot (rag-tag team of underdogs overcomes odds to become champions), which is common enough in sports movies, but the details, like how the last game is decided on the overtime shots.

As if hockey and soccer weren’t similar enough. I don’t even know why they bothered getting different actors…all they needed to do was take the old footage and paint the ice green.

48

So Hermione is Harry’s sister?!? :eek:

49

Guess what? Glen Larson was a producer on that one, too!

50

The thing Alien is really a rip off of is Black Destroyer by A. E. Van Vogt, from 1939. I’ve never seen Bixby’s movie, but he sure knew about Van Vogt’s story.

51

The Invisibles. So much so that, when I first saw the trailer for ‘The Matrix’ at a convention, I immediately thought that someone had picked up the license for the Morrison title and made it into a movie… I was very excited.

(The difference between the two is tech and computer overlords vs. magic and demon / cthulhu overlords, generally, but that’s barely scratching the surface. Still, the general idea is the same, and the main hero-leader is a mysterious bald guy…)

52

Probably not. Rowling is pretty clear about each character’s parentage, whereas Lucas was ambiguous about Luke’s and Leia’s.

53

Kung Fu: The Legend Gets Old and Prunified did a “Holy Grail” search that had the characters pantomiming Indy Jones. At least one character said something like, “This is just what happened to Indiana Jones.”

Michael Sloan, who is almost as evil as Glen A. Larceny (thanks to Harlan for that name), produced this lame follow-up to the original Carradine show, iirc.

Sir Rhosis

54

The Fast and The Furious is essentially a remake of Point Break with Honda Civics instead of surfboards. As for Alien ripping off the A.E. van Vogt story, I think the writer openly admitted that he had adapted the (public-domain?) works of van Vogt that he had loved as a kid.

55

“Memento” was a pretty good (though highly overrated) movie. I liked it. But the people who raved about it kept calling it the most original film they’d ever seen! Apparently, they weren’t aware that the entire plot was lifted directly from an incredibly bad Dana Carvey comedy (not QUITE as bad as “Master of Disguise,” but close) called “Blank Slate.”

Basic plot: A detective has a medical condition whereby he loses his memory every day, and has to surround himself with notes about what he’s learned in the previous days.

Sound familiar?

56

The Star Trek franchise has ripped itself off many times over the past four decades. Even the original was conceived as a Wagon Train to the stars with a Horatio Hornblower type as the lead.

57

Here’s a pretty obvious one: Digimon/Pokemon. Digimon “digivolve”, as opposed to pokemon’s “evolve”. They even showed both shows close within the same time period as eachother, I still can’t believe Digimon got away with that.

58

Because it’s a completely different series in the same genre. The similarities are obvious, the dissimilarities equally so.

Among other things, Digimon has an over-arching storyline in each season, which spans 2 worlds.

59

Oh, I didn’t realize that pokemon and digimon were their own genre now. Next time I’m at Blockbuster i’ll look for the Pokemon Genre rack in between Comedy and Action.

60

Pokemon, Digimon, Monster Rancher, Mon Colle Knights, Dragon Quest Monsters, and I could go on if I wanted to bother searching to find more TV series/games.

‘Monster Collector/Trainer’ is the genre.