Ah, this is reputedly the script right here. (Page images.)
The first page looks somewhat more literate that the attributed quotes above. Maybe I was being too credulous?
Pardon me… the story.
continues reading
Aw, crap, it’s just a couple of pages. What are shown look to be from a fairly pedestrian dystopian second-coming hack, with no similarities to The Matrix. Why post stuff that’s obviously unrelated. “Oooh! A baby with mysterious origins! Stalked by ‘Morning Star (Lucifer).’ Fated to bring peace on earth.” Exactly like The Matrix!. No, wait. It’s more like A Canticle for Leibowitz. Of course, it’s not much like A Canticle for Leibowitz, but it’s more like A Canticle for Leibowitz.
What media is covering this story? I searched Yahoo News and Google News for “Sophia Stewart” and found only a couple of mentions of the case, none from anything at all mainstream.
This isn’t going to go anywhere. Consider:
No it isn’t. “one” backward is “Eno” Is she planning to sue Brian Eno, too?
Unless they’re both called “Oracle,” they’re not.
So any time you have three agents, you’re infringing? :rolleyes:
If they have different names, they’re different characters.
How on Earth is this a similarity? Can George Lucas sue her because his space ship is the “Millenneum Falcon” and hers is “Space Star.” :rolleyes:
It appears the only reason this is proceeding is that the defendants used statute of limitations to dismiss, which is the easiest way. However, I’m sure she will be unable to prove they even saw the script, let alone stole from it.
This is just a joke. You’ll never hear from it again, other than a one paragraph announcing the suit was dismissed.
Apparently this woman has never heard of archtypes when it comes to fictional characters. If Oracle is a rip off of her Grey old hag, then, by her definition, the “Hag” character is a rip off of Obi-Wan.
And by golly, nobody has ever thought of having things come in groups of three before her, or using Christian symbolism.
Well, if you pronounce Nebuchadnezzar wrong, they sorta rhyme, you see.
Funny, I always thought the Matrix was a ripoff of Neuromancer and the collected works of Philip K. Dick. Those are certainly more believable as source material than a hackish manuscript that was never even published. Besides, as RealityChuck pointed out, all those similarities are really archetypes. The number three has religious and philosophical connotations and is used a lot in fiction. All the characters in the Matrix are archetypal–Neo is the hero, the Oracle is the mentor/herald. The idea of a hero accessing a true reality beyond this one is nothing new–it predates not just Sophia Stewart but also Gibson and Dick.
Also, that excerpt from her book was terrible. Nobody would slog through all that poorly written exposition at the beginning of a book. Tiger Woods of science fiction my ass.
It’s a fair comparison, if we were discussing Woods’ ability as a pole-vaulter.
Did anyone think the Matrix was original? Fresh maybe but original?
I didn’t. It was a lot of old ideas done in a very cool way.
There is nothing new under the sun…but execution means a hell of a lot.
I thought this was going to be about Grant Morrisson’s The Invisibles. There are so many similarities between the first “Matrix” film and The Invisibles that entire 5+ page sections of the book read like storyboards for it.
I don’t think anyone is covering it, except one college newspaper which got the story wrong. Unfortunately, this one wildly incorrect story is spreading to every corner of the internet.
General rule, I think – if a story in a college paper sounds to impossible to be true, check the New York Times before you believe it.
–Cliffy
I hope I might be forgiven for speaking in a non-technical way to a lay audience, Kel.
–Cliffy
Heh heh heh heh!
What about the guys who wrote Ghost in the Shell? Theres plenty of similarity in there too. There was a website I saw once comparing it step by step but I can’t find it through google.
Whats her claim on the Terminator movies?
What about Overdrawn at the Memory Bank snicker Guy’s stuck in a computer, can stop it at will, etc. Admittedly, though, I haven’t seen any of The Matrix movies, so I don’t know how similiar they are.
I would say the second and third Matrix movies are probably inferior to Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.
That would be awesome, because Brian Eno did the music for the Lynch version of Dune, and in the book Paul Atreides is blinded, yet can still “see” perfectly well because of his powers.
It’s all coming clear now.
Dystopian, mechanized future. Quasi-mystical hero leads rebellion. Bad guys want to stop him.
I’m not sure how that’ll play in court. I mean, Harlan Ellison already successfully sued because The Terminator was supposedly a pastiche of stories he wrote in the seventies.
It’s ridiculous to sue over basic sci-fi concepts that have already been thoroughly explored.
You might as well say that The Matrix is cribbed from E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops, which was written in 1909.
After all, its theme is people living in an artificial, mechanical world, isolated and alienated from authentic reality.
The Wachowski’s were obviously copying The Machine Stops. Or maybe THX-1138. Or The Truman Show. Or Dark City. Or Watership Down, perhaps.