Do you think Tim Burton stole Apes ending from Kevin Smith? (Contains spoilers)

Well, this obviously contains massive Apes spoilers as it will reveal the ending. Kevin Smith(Clerks, Dogma) claims that Tim Burton has stolen at least part of the ending to Planet of the Apes from a comic book Smith wrote. Here is the story off Sci-Fi wire.

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2001-08/07/11.50.film

Here is the image from Smith’s comic that is causing the controversy.

http://www.viewaskew.com/newboard/messages289/113.html

I tend to think it is a coincidence. It’s not that hard an idea to think up, really. Do you think Smith has a case? I doubt he’ll act on it anyway.

The question really is, who did Smith steal the idea from first?

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IMHO, there are enough differences between the final scene of the movie and the comic such that Smith ain’t got no case. The movie ape cops were clothed like modern police officers and drove modern looking cars, while the monkeys in Smith’s cartoon are just monkeys.

Moderator’s note:

Hope you don’t mind, Maholoth, but I added a spoiler warning to the thread title.

TVeblen,
for IMHO

No prob, TV, I thought putting the spoiler comment in the first line would be good enough since we aren’t actually discussing the ending directly.

By the way, it’s MahAloth with two A’s, not two O’s. No biggie, though.

AAARRUGH!
Honestly, I do know what your name is, Mahaloth.
Well, about time to go back to work at the ol’ nuclear power plant. Gonna try to figure out what the “scram” thingy does.

Veb

If I were Burton, I’d be jumping at the chance to pin the blame for the ending on someone else. And what’s with that “certainly would read anything Kevin Smith wrote” comment? He might want to give it shot, considering the quality of the dialogue in Planet.

Oh, FTR, I doubt Burton stole it. The images are similar, but Burton is one of the most creative directors in Hollywood. I don’t think he needs to steal anyone else’s material.

Argh! That should be “wouldn’t” in my first post. I’ll go away now.

Did you SEE Planet of the Apes? I wish he had stolen something.

Slight hijack.

Here I go again! Why the “F” are we talking of suing the director? He directed the thing, he did not wite the thing. This always galls me to no end. Sue the writer(s)–I’ve not seen the film, don’t know if it’s one or more writers. Actually, I don’t know, perhaps Burton has a writing credit and I will have to eat my words, but to my knowledge he may have had some story credits on his films, but I don’t recall him actually writing a full screenplay. I also understand that they shot at least five “statue” scenes, or conceived of five “statue” scenes, before going with “Aperaham” (to rip off a poster who first posted that name, whose handle I’ve forgotten).

As CalMeacham and RealityChuck (just to name the two posters I most recognize and respect concerning Science Fiction) can tell you, if you have done any fair amount of reading in the SF field, or have seen SF movies made before about 1977, then any and every film made today could be fodder for lawsuits. The Matrix, The Truman Show, and any given number of Star Trek episodes always put me in mind of Philip K. Dick. Do I say they stole, no, not really, “borrowed” is a better term.

The SF field is an incestuous one, lawsuits are hard to prove, it seems to me. Hell, I still think Ellison had a flimsy case in his and Bova’s “Brillo vs FutureCop” suit. They won though. That’s the ony successful suit that srings t mind, btw, though I’m sure the studios pay out to people every day.

Sir Rhosis

I just got back from the movie, the battle scenes are heavily plagiarized from Kurosawa epics at one moment, Spartacus the next. Some scenes are almost a precise copy of the original film. You’re talking about originality when the whole movie is a remake of an old SF classic? You’re pulling my leg, right?

Re-reading my post, it occurs to me that those of you who refer to “suing Tim Burton,” etc. could easily take offense at my words. This is IMHO, and I am aware that (unfortunately) the trend is to assign the possessory credit to the director, especially in casual coversation.

It was not my intenton to slam anyone individually, just to state that the custom in general galls me.

Sir Rhosis

FWIW, I think that the Smith quote that’s been flying around has been taken out of context, somewhat. Whereas Smith contemplated legal actions, he no longer is, and I think it was more of a jab at Burton. Why would he do that? Well, it’s related to Burton’s comment, too…

Okay, a while back Kevin Smith was hired to write a script for the then planned Superman Lives. He wrote it, and everyone thought it was a wonderful script (it’s since leaked out on the web, and it is pretty dang good, IMHO). That’s how Kevin Smith made the cash to make Chasing Amy.

Skip ahead a little while, and the studio hires a prominent director to helm the picture. The director in question was Tim Burton. So, everyone thought this would be an amazing movie, combining Smith’s script with Burton’s visual style. The only problem: Burton didn’t like the script. So the studio basically said, “All right, come up with something better.” Burton, and the writers he worked with, couldn’t come up with anything that satisfied everyone as much as Smith’s script. By that time Smith’s script had leaked out, so it was dead. Then Burton dropped out of the project, killing the movie all together.

So I think the comments from both directors are meant as jabs because of some hard feelings over projects past.

Well, Smith has said that he was indeed joking when he made the comment about suing. So I guess it doesn’t matter one way or the other.

With any luck Burton and Smith will destroy each other in the ensuing conflict…

Ellison also successfully sued Cameron over “The Terminator” series. At least according to another thread here on the board, but I do note that at the end of “The Terminator” movie there is an acknowledgement to the works of Harlan Ellison. There have been others, but I can’t think of them at the moment.

Of course, no one knows about the lawsuits where the studio has simply cried, “mea culpa” and settled out of court. I know that for the Star Trek TOS episode “The Trouble with Tribbles” they called up Heinlein and asked him not to sue since the tribbles in the script were almost identical to Heinlein’s Martian flat cats in “The Rolling Stones.” Heinlein reached some kind of agreement with them over the matter and the whole issue was dropped until some flaming geekboy like me remembers it and brings it up.

Did YOU see my first post? I made exactly the same joke.

Chas E.: Beetlejuice. Edward Scissorhands. Batman. The Nightmare Before Christmas. PeeWee’s Big Adventure. Mars Attacks. To name a few. Like I said, Burton is one of the most creative and original directors in Hollywood. Planet of the Apes is arguably his worst movie, but that does not detract from his over-all talent.

Silnet Rob: Not sure on this one, but I believe that Burton lost studio backing for Superman, even though he had already started pre-production. He still wanted to do it, but couldn’t.

Turckerfan: I think the case Sir Rhosis was refering to was the one over Terminator. The credit at the end was added as a direct result of Ellison’s victory.

Miller,

I had forgotten about the Ellison/Cameron suit. My reference was to a short story authored by Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova entitled Brillo (a robot cop, metal fuzz, get it?). A few years later there appeared a short-lived TV series entitled, IIRC, "FutureCop, about an android cop. That’s about all the connection I saw beween the two pieces, yet Ellison and Bova emerged victorious in a lawsuit against the studio that produced the show.

I agree that normally Tim Burton’s visual style is original and without peer in it’s own twisted way.

Sir Rhosis

I stand corrected. I couldn’t remember the name of the story Ellison claimed Cameron had stolen from (still can’t, dammit). Hadn’t heard about the other lawsuit. Also, apologies for what I did to Tuckerfan’s name.

And Silent Rob’s. (Kee-rist!)