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?
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.
The Orville is clearly a copy cat of Star Trek and is too tier.
I think it’s just tier enough.
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
Which I think is genuinely incredible. Watching the show evolve from a Star Trek Spoof to a Star Trek Comedy all the way to Just Star Trek was breathtaking.
And to think, one of the most crucial plot points of the show–and how it evolved to encompass bigger and more profound issues–came from a gay joke.
The Orville is Star Trek from a different brand
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a Daredevil parody/love letter.
They get their powers from the same accident that gives Matt Murdoch 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.
From what I’ve heard, ‘TMNT’ is basically a wide-reaching parody of the comic genre at the time. ‘Daredevil’ was one of the influences, just like noted in the Wikipedia article:
The concept parodied several elements popular in superhero comics of the time — the teenagers of New Teen Titans, the mutants of Uncanny X-Men and the ninja skills of Daredevil — combined with the comic tradition of funny animals such as Howard the Duck.
They developed a backstory referencing further elements of Daredevil: like Daredevil, the Turtles are altered by radioactive material, and their sensei, Splinter, is a play on Daredevil’s sensei, Stick.
Idk how you read that article to have missed that. It’s also been noted more than once before that the ‘radioactive spill’ or whatever by which the turtles are affected is supposedly the exact same incident that is Daredevil’s origin story.
Eastman and Laird were taking potshots at everyone because they had nothing to lose, and were both having fun and working hard. It’s a specific kind of indie spirit that I’m glad to see all over the place in webtoons and webcomics these days.
F. W. Murnau wanted to make a cinema adaptation of ‘Dracula’, but didn’t get the permission. So he shrugged, changed some details, and made the 1922 ‘Nosferatu’.
Guess what, the original Dracula wasn’t affected by sunlight. That whole trope of the vampire genre comes from ‘Nosferatu’.
The Magnificent 7 and A Fistful of Dollars are just Seven Samurai and Yojimbo but westerns.
Speaking of Kurosawa, ‘Ran’ is based on ‘King Lear’, and also “includes segments based on legends of the daimyō Mōri Motonari”.
Ad Astra (2019) is Apocalypse Now (1979) but in space.
Avatar (2009) is Dances with Wolves (1990) but in space.
‘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.
Yeah it’s hard to get the same feeling now compared to back in the day when everything was a beige military shooter.
The story is still good but I think that meta layer of “I do this constantly in games and don’t think about it” won’t hit the same way for people that didn’t grow up at the time. A bit sad.
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.
Sure, same general premise, but the structure is very different between them. In Dances with Wolves, Dunbar is basically abandoned by his people and slowly assimilates into the local village. By the time Dunbar’s people return in the third act, they’re no longer his people at all. In Pocahontas and Avatar, Smith and Sully are part of an active and present colonial force, wind up on generally friendly terms with the locals, start dating the chief’s daughter, and wind up with a strong case of conflicting loyalties, having to pick between their people and their lover’s people when the fighting starts.
Where does Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai fit into this?
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.
That was the only one I knew offhand, but yeah, his schtick was writing rhyming dialogue for existing stories.
Jaws is basically “An Enemy of the People” (by Henrik Ibsen) in a modern wrapping.
And Avatar is pretty much space-Pocahontas
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.
Apocalypse Now is basically Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
But in Vietnam.
After Michael Crichton’s Westworld bombed, one of his friends recommend he explore the same themes with dinosaurs instead, so he wrote Jurassic Park.
Willy’s Wonderland is a way better Five Nights at Freddie’s than the actual Five Nights at Freddie’s.
Not quite the same, but: more than a few classic films are remakes. The 1959 ‘Ben-Hur’ is a remake of the 1925 film, which itself was the second cinema adaptation of the novel, after the 1907 film.
You’re going to get into the blurry distinction between a ripoff and a tribute or an homage.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier has a lot of Three Days of the Condor, but is that a ripoff, or an homage?
Ditto Star Wars and Hidden Fortress.
Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More were uncredited remakes of Yojimbo and Sanjuro, and as I recall Kurosawa was pretty annoyed, so that probably counts as a ripoff.
Oreo cookies came out four years after Hydrox cookies, and I’d say they surpassed the original.
Deep Space Nine ripped off Babylon 5. Fans love them both, because instead of one sci-fi political drama on a space station, we got two!
