10 Times Disney Stole From Other Movies and Nobody Noticed
Intro: Disney seems like its been around since the dawn of time.
Its always been a company known for adapting fairy tales, but because of these thin laws
were able to get away with borrowing and sometimes outright stealing elements from other movies
and stories, and it’s something they still do today.
Here are 10 Disney products you didn’t know were rip offs… kind of.
Finding Nemo – Peirrot Le Poisson Clown The great Pixar classic about parenthood and
adventure caused controversy when author Franck Le Calvez sued Disney for plagiarism.
The story of a little clownfish who’s parent is killed and goes on an epic quest rings
a lot of bells.
Calvez initially tried to get his story made into a movie but after multiple studio rejections
he released it instead as a children’s book.
According to Calvez the popularity of Finding Nemo actually caused bookstores to reject
selling Peirrot thinking that the lesser known fish was a rip off of the Disney movie.
Calvez’ lawsuit failed and as a result had to pay thousands of Euro to Disney, who made
the claim that Calvez had in fact ripped off their idea because of the close time frame
in which they came out.
Monsters, Inc.
– Little Monsters While Monsters, Inc. is seemingly an original
idea featuring monsters scaring children as part of a day job it’s premise was lifted
from another movie.
Little Monsters is a 1989 comedy, starring Howie Mandell as a Monster who comes from
under a world full of them.
How does he get to the human world?
Well rather than a closet, he gets there from under a child’s bed.
Not only does the Mandell Monster have a similar design to Sully, but he also undergoes the
same character arc, having to learn if its right or wrong to scare children.
While Monsters, Inc. added a business aspect to the movie and is still an imaginative film,
the influence from Little Monsters is undeniable.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl – The Secret of Monkey Island
The video game The Secret of Monkey Island which was inspired by the Disney ride and
novel “On Stranger Tides” had a huge part in influencing The Curse of the Black Pearl.
Everything from the main character, his love interest, the antagonist and even the voodoo
priestess all come from this video game.
While there is a clear lack of Captain Jack Sparrow we do know that the video game was
originally slated to be adapted to film by Ted Elliot.
The project was ultimately shelved and it seems that Ted Elliot just decided to use
all the same material when making the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
It's certainly a nice sphere of influence that a video game, inspired by a ride would
later be brutally ripped off by a movie based on the aforementioned ride.
Everything comes full circle.
The Incredibles – Fantastic Four Let’s be clear.
The Incredibles did well to be a successful superhero movie without a background in comic
books, but while the story and characters are completely unique the abilities of four
of those characters were practically lifted from The Fantastic Four
Violet has the same powers as the Invisible Woman, Bob has the same powers as the Thing
– aside from being a rock man, Helen’s powers are identical to Mr. Fantastic and
Syndrome is a scientific and technological genius like Doctor Doom.
While the plot is original, it would have been nice to see the writers attempt to come
up with some more original powers, because despite there being a lot of super powered
characters out there, there is still a lot of untapped potential.
It’s even become somewhat of a meme that the best Fantastic Four movie is The Incredibles…
which we’re not going to argue with.
Beauty and the Beast - La Belle et la Bête While these two films might be based on the
same fairy tale, there is no denying that the Disney classic borrowed heavily from the
1946 french version.
La Belle et la Bête had plenty of original ideas and characters including the arrogant
villain who wants the beauty who is also named Belle for himself.
While similarities are to be expected seeing as they share source material, Disney did
not claim the movie to be a remake of the 1940s classic but borrowed numerous elements
from the movie anyway.
Other things lifted include enchanted objects that were present in both film versions but
not the original story.
Regardless, both are classic films that are worth watching, but one did borrow heavily
from the other and Disney continues the tradition with the live action remake starring Emma
Watson.
Star Wars – The Hidden Fortress We’re technically cheating, because this
Star Wars film wasn’t made under the Disney banner… but Star Wars is now under the Disney
Banner now so it counts.
It’s no secret that Star Wars borrows from a multitude of genres including science fiction,
fantasy, old school fairy tales, westerns and samurai films.
One particular film that was a huge influence on Star Wars was Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden
Fortress.
George Lucas was hugely inspired by the film and lifted much of the movies plot, including
it being told from the perspective of the least powerful characters in the movie.
Even the editing and cinematography style greatly influenced how Lucas realised his
galaxy on screen and asking Toshiro Mifune to play both Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader.
While it’s not abject plagiarism, so much was taken from the Hidden Fortress that had
this movie never been made, we wouldn’t have seen Star Wars at all, much less in the
form that we now know it today.
A Bug’s Life – Seven Samurai Coming back to Kurosawa we have Bug’s Life.
A movie that much like a Fistfull of Dollars is not an official remake in any capacity,
but takes hugely from Kurosawa’s work.
A Bug’s Life is about a weak and lowly ant who wants to protect his village from a gang
of bandits.
He sets out to find warriors, only this time the twist is that he actually gathered a team
of circus performers as opposed to actual badass warriors like in the original.
While the concept of conflict over food between ants and grasshoppers comes from the Aesop
fable, the plot of A Bug’s Life is pretty much entirely lifted from Seven Samurai, being
one of numerous films to do so including the famous western, The Magnificent Seven, but
one of the only movies to put a genuinely unique twist on the plot.
Toy Story – A Christmas Toy So there’s this toy, and he’s his owners
favourite but he comes into conflict with a new toy that arrives in the bedroom.
This toy is a cool outer-space themed toy who doesn’t realise that they’re not really
an intergalactic queen of the asteroids.
That’s right, we weren’t describing Toy Story, we were describing the 1986 Christmas
special, A Christmas Toy.
Pixar borrowed quite a lot from this short special.
Its premise and its old stuffed bear mentor are all elements that would make it into the
three Toy Story movies.
In spite of this though, Toy Story does have a lot more to it than the Christmas special
and the short TV series that followed it and certainly plays on the emotions of the watcher
a lot more.
Toy Story is undoubtedly one of the greatest movie series of all time, but every now and
again we should take a look back at the silly but charming little Christmas special that
started it all.
Frozen – The Snowman By far the most successful animated Disney
film, Frozen was not immune to allegations of plagiarism.
Animator Kelly Wilson, sued Disney in 2014 as she felt that Disney had heavily ripped
off her short in the first trailer for Frozen.
Her claim was pretty solid.
Her argument being that the plot was exactly the same, with the snowman and animals fighting
over a carrot before the snowman eventually gives the carrot as a nose to the snowman.
While the concept of animals and snowmen on ice could have been dismissed as just a mere
similarity like with Finding Nemo, the plot is identical.
In 2015 Disney attempted to prove that the creators of Frozen had no access to Wilson’s
short.
The judge rejected Disney however, when a trial looked imminent, Disney and Wilson settled
the dispute out of court.
Mickey Mouse – Oswald the Rabbit This list has the potential to ruffle a few
feathers so we decided to finish on Walt Disney, the man, ripping himself off.
Everyone knows Mickey Mouse.
He is the iconic mascot of Disney, children in the most remote regions of the planet know
who Mickey Mouse is.
Yet what few know is that Mickey Mouse himself came from Walt Disney ripping himself off.
Walt Disney originally created the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit for Universal Studios,
however when Universal took control of the character, Walt Disney lacked the legal right
to do anything about it.
As a result, he created Mickey Mouse, a new character who intentionally designed after
Oswald who was uniquely Disney’s property.
History was made and to this day Mickey Mouse is the most famous cartoon character of all.
Now Disney owns the rights to Oswald again and he’s been slowly but surely making a
comeback into Disney cartoons.
We’re sure Walt wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
That’s all we have time for today.
If there’s any examples we missed then tell us about them in the comments below.
Until then rate, comment and subscribe for more updates whenever we upload.
Thanks for watching.