I read Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix last week and it hits the exact same beats - isolated community, fake historical era, leader controlling people through medical lies. How did Shyamalan get away with this?
I watched it last night and they cut out like half the philosophical arguments that made the book famous, so was it really inspired by the source material or just a shallow copy using the same characters?
Watched the original Japanese Battle Royale last week and now I can't unsee how much Hunger Games copied it down to the forced fights and government control, but does changing the setting from an island to a dome really make it original?
So I was convinced for years that Neil Gaiman's Coraline was just a polished version of Dave McKean's MirrorMask from 2005. Both have a girl in a dreary home who goes through a portal into a bizarre alternate world with button-eyed versions of her parents. But I finally sat down and read the Coraline book from 2002 last month and realized it came out 3 years before MirrorMask even hit theaters. Turns out Gaiman wrote the book first and Dave McKean actually illustrated the original edition. Now I'm just curious if MirrorMask borrowed from some other older story or if they both just tapped into the same creepy fairy tale vibe. Has anyone else mixed up release dates on these two?
I was at the Oak Park library last Tuesday and the moderator literally said 'we don't do conspiracy theories here' when I showed the copyright dates. Has anyone else been shut down for calling out obvious ripoffs at book clubs?
Was watching 'The Forgotten Planet' on streaming last night. Realized the opening scene is almost identical to a 1987 BBC doc called 'Alien Worlds.' Same camera angle, same pan across the same desert rock formation. Anyone else notice this with sci-fi films?
I was watching Hamlet in English class last week and caught the exact same plot beats - murdered king, scheming uncle, exiled prince who comes back for revenge. Disney changed the ending but the skeleton is identical. Anyone else notice this or am I reaching?
I was at the coffee shop last week and overheard my neighbor bragging about never paying for internet. Checked my router logs and sure enough, their devices were connected to my network since February. Has anyone else dealt with someone stealing their wifi and how did you handle it?
I was browsing a used bookstore last Saturday and picked up a paperback called 'Carnosaur' from 1984. I figured it was just some random dino pulp, but the plot is almost identical to Jurassic Park - dinosaur DNA from blood in prehistoric insects, a theme park, the whole deal. It came out 6 years before Crichton's book. Has anyone else stumbled on an old novel that made you side-eye a huge movie franchise?
I started keeping a list of movies I think straight ripped off ideas from older ones back in March, just for fun. This morning I was adding The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its obvious copy from some 70s Swedish TV show, and I noticed I hit exactly 100 entries. That number surprised me because I started with just a few obvious ones like The Lion King and Kimba the White Lion. I thought maybe I'd get to 30 or 40 tops, but once you start digging into horror movies especially, it's like every other film is a carbon copy of something from the 80s. What really got me was noticing how many big budget action movies from the last 5 years basically redid Die Hard but with different city names. Does anyone else keep a running tally, or am I just the weirdo with the spreadsheet?
I saw Fern Gully again last weekend at a friend's house and it hit me how similar the plot beats are to Avatar. Both have a forest spirit, a corporate bad guy, and a protagonist who switches sides after falling for a native. I brought this up at a movie night and got laughed at, but I swear the structure is nearly identical. Has anyone actually sat through both back to back and compared scene for scene?
I was rewatching both movies last weekend and it hit me around minute 40 of Fast 1. Undercover cop gets close to the crew, falls for the lifestyle, lets the villain go at the end. Same skeleton, different paint job. Has anyone else noticed other action movies that just swapped the setting?
I was reading a random blog about old sci-fi and the author pointed out how the plot beats match up almost beat for beat, has anyone else noticed this or am I just late to the party?
I was scrolling through my blog stats last night and saw I've been posting for 5000 days straight. That's like 13 and a half years of writing about weird old scifi movies nobody remembers. Then I realized half my posts are just pointing out how every space movie from the 80s stole from some obscure 50s serial. I asked my wife if that was impressive and she just shrugged. Anybody else hit a random milestone that felt huge to you but meant nothing to anyone else?