What comic books, movies, and TV shows are blatantly copycats or rip-offs of previous comics, movies, or shows, but despite being a copycat or rip-off, are still pretty good?
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine being strongly influenced by the original pitch for Babylon 5 is a pretty famous, if variously disputed, example.
You know what makes me happy? They settled out of court because the fans said, “We love them both!”
That said, B5 will always have a very soft spot in my heart.
The Punisher is just The Executioner with the serial numbers filed off. Any given person is much more likely to have heard of The Punisher.
Warcraft 1-3
For anyone wanting more details on this: https://kotaku.com/how-warcraft-was-almost-a-warhammer-game-and-how-that-5929161
Warcraft was originally supposed to be a Warhammer 40K game, but Blizzard ended up not getting the license, so they created their own universe instead.
Twilight zone! There are different run of the series. Many reimagined stories from the first run, some better than others, as is such with the first run. There are stale episodes by today’s standards.
All of them.
There are only a couple dozen or so quality stories.
Everything is a ripoff or mashup of those.Some have narrowed it down to only 7 stories.
- Overcoming the Monster
- Rags to Riches
- The Quest
- Rebirth
- Comedy
- Tragedy
- Voyage and Return
Super silly take. Those aren’t stories, they’re themes. Very vague, general themes.
Watchmen
That’s an adaptation.
The TV show on HBO wasn’t, which may be what they’re referring to here.
The Lion King is basically Hamlet with animals.
The Lion King is a rip-off of Japan’s Kimba the White Lion.
That’s been debunked, afaik. There are only surface similarities.
Now, if someone watches the restoration of the original unfinished 1960s ‘The Thief and the Cobbler’, they might notice some glaring parallels to another Disney cartoon. Not in the story, though.
In case anyone is interested in watching a lengthy video essay about how that not the case here: YMS: Kimba the white lion
Lion King is as much Hamlet as Frozen is The Snow Queen, which is to say, it really isn’t.
Lion King is loosely inspired by, but doesn’t actually follow the same story structure or present the same conflicts/tension or explore the same themes as Hamlet.
The Orville is clearly a copy cat of Star Trek and is too tier.
See also: Galaxy Quest, which is like the third or fourth best Star Trek movie.
Seth MacFarlane is a huge Trekkie and The Orville is him paying homage
It’s 100% meant to be a Star Trek show for someone that grew up on TNG.
I think it’s just tier enough.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a Daredevil parody/love letter.
They get their powers from the same accident that gives Matt his.
Mentor? Splinter / Stick. Enemy? The Foot / The Hand.
Except it’s not.
You’ve spotted some surface similarities, but they’re most likely coincidental or unconscious influences at best. To my knowledge the creators never said Daredevil was a major influence.
We talking, like, O Brother, Where Art Thou? being based on Homer’s Odyssey?
I still go back to listen to the music from that sometimes.
🎵I-----aye am a maan, of constant sorROWS🎵
Jaws is basically “An Enemy of the People” (by Henrik Ibsen) in a modern wrapping.
And Avatar is pretty much space-Pocahontas
Ad Astra (2019) is Apocalypse Now (1979) but in space.
Avatar (2009) is Dances with Wolves (1990) but in space.
Back when Avatar came out, I heard someone call it “Fern Gully with better graphics.”
There was a YouTube trend of making Avatar trailers with the audio but then using the graphics for movies like Fern Gully and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001). Turns out there are a lot of ‘going native’ movies.
‘Apocalypse Now’ is based on Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella ‘Heart of Darkness’, in which the events happen on the Congo river.
The video game Spec Ops: The Line is essentially both stories, but set in Dubai after a cataclysmic sandstorm.
I remember reading that one of military story shooter games had a particularly great mission where the player descends on a city from the surrounding elevation or somesuch. And I’ve heard multiple times recently that ‘The Line’ is quite outstanding with its story and gameplay. Is it the same game, by any chance? I don’t think there’s any elevation near Dubai, so probably not, but just to make sure.
I don’t remember of any particularly great mission descending onto a city, there are some segments that could fot the description, but honestly Spec Ops: The Line is not memorable for its gameplay, it’s just average and it’s meant to be, the point of the game is in the story. Although I think that playing it now might not be as impactful as when it first released and every other game was a third-person shooter, but it still I strongly recommend it.
Avatar is absolutely not Dances with Wolves. It is Pocahontas. Throw in a couple musical numbers and it’s real close to being a shot-for-shot remake of the Disney movie.
Another example of the ‘gone native’ plot line in the wake of Dances With Wolves. Pocahontas had the advantage of Dances With Wolves coming out first. So it smoothed some of those edges.
Apocalypse Now is basically Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
But in Vietnam.
Battle Beyond the Stars is just The Magnificent Seven in space, which was The Seven Samurai in the west.
Romeo & Juliet was based on Tristan & Isolde
10 Things I Hate About You was based on The Taming of the Shrew
Clueless was based on Emma
“Immature artists imitate, mature artists steal.”
Afaik more than a few of Shakespeare’s stories come from contemporary plays, he just retold them in his own manner.
I mean the Title of 10 things even rhymes with its source material’s name.
