It's all but impossible to tell a truly original story.
After over a century of cinema, it's safe to say that virtually every possible premise
has already been covered.
But some movies don't even attempt to be even a little original, stealing their plots almost
wholesale from films that came before.
Here are some classic movies that are all but carbon copies of other films.
Alien
No one's claiming Alien was the first movie ever about evil aliens, but it's amazing just
how much it has in common with the 1958 B-movie It!
The Terror From Beyond Space.
Both movies have the exact same setup—a ship lands on an alien planet and is invaded
by a hungry, violent monster that hides in an air shaft.
Both movies also end with the alien getting defeated by the vacuum of space.
Not that the people behind Alien will admit to the inspiration: producer David Giler denied
his film was a ripoff, only saying that Alien's hook of the creature hunting inside the ship
was "pretty much a classic premise with science fiction writers, like the gunfight in the
Western."
At the same time, he threw writer Dan O'Bannon under the bus, saying his original draft was
terrible and nothing but a ripoff of 1950s sci-fi.
As Giler put it,
"It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that Dan O'Bannon stole the idea."
Star Wars
It's no secret that George Lucas didn't create Star Wars out of thin air.
As the BBC reports, Star Wars almost certainly wouldn't have existed without Akira Kurosawa's
1958 samurai epic The Hidden Fortress.
Even Lucas himself admits as much—kind of.
"The one thing that really struck me about Hidden Fortress and what I was really intrigued
by was the fact that the story was told from the two lowest characters."
For Fortress, that was two argumentative peasants, while in Star Wars, it was the droids C-3PO
and R2-D2.
Even the post-Lucas Star Wars owe a hand to Fortress: Rey's staff looks a lot like the
ones used by Fortress's generals.
That, however, seems more like a tribute than "suspiciously heavy lifting."
A Fistful of Dollars
George Lucas isn't the only filmmaker to borrow from Akira Kurosawa, but he can thank his
lucky stars that he wasn't one of the people Kurosawa sued for theft.
Sergio Leone, director of A Fistful of Dollars, wasn't quite so fortunate.
As explained by LA Weekly, the spaghetti Western was almost a total remake of Kurosawa's 1961
samurai classic Yojimbo.
Both featured the exact same story: a quiet loner comes to a small town where two gangs
are fighting for control, he casts himself as a double agent working for both sides,
and then he rides off with a fabulous cash reward.
Both also took the same approach to the Western genre—making it gritty and dark, turning
the good guys into slightly nicer bad guys, and utilizing multiple close-ups of the characters'
faces to up the intensity.
The quiet loner goes without a name in both, too.
So you can see why Kurosawa saw red when he saw Dollars, saying:
"It is a very fine film, but it is my film."
According to Side B Magazine, he sued Leone for plagiarism, and Leone wound up paying
Kurosawa 15 percent of his film's royalties, plus a cool $100,000.
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games is a legitimate cultural phenomenon, but it only got that way by lifting
its central premise from another film.
As the New Yorker points out, Hunger Games is based on the same premise as the 2000 Japanese
movie Battle Royale — both feature a dystopian society that requires children to battle each
other.
They're taken to a special arena, given weapons, and forced to fight until only one person
is left.
Plenty of people have pointed out the similarities between the two films — and the books they
were based on.
But for her part, Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins claims that she didn't rip off anyone.
When asked about Battle Royale in a New York Times article, Collins replied:
"I had never heard of that book or that author until my book was turned in.
At that point, it was mentioned to me, and I asked my editor if I should read it.
He said: 'No, I don't want that world in your head.
Just continue with what you're doing."
If anything, the movie that The Hunger Games borrowed the most from was Spartacus.
In the same interview, Collins claimed:
"I was also heavily influenced by the historical figure Spartacus.
Katniss follows the same arc from slave to gladiator to rebel to face of a war."
Cars
Pixar movies are famous for their quality.
Even their weaker offerings, like Cars, are fun and watchable.
But there's a major flaw with Cars, and for once, it's not Larry the Cable Guy.
"I'm a precisional instrument of speed and aeromatics."
See, Cars is the story of an arrogant race car who crashes in a small town, is sentenced
to community service, and eventually has a change of heart and decides to live there
permanently.
"Just passing through?"
"Actually, I thought I'd stay awhile."
As the Guardian mentions, this is almost exactly the story of Doc Hollywood, a 1991 movie where
Michael J. Fox plays an arrogant city doctor who crashes in a small town, is sentenced
to community service, and eventually has a change of heart and decides to live there
permanently.
"Go back to Los Angeles."
"I don't want Los Angeles.
I want you."
The makers of Doc never bothered to sue Pixar, which would have been totally unnecessary
anyway.
The humiliation of Cars 2 was punishment enough.
Disturbia
2007's Disturbia is about a kid stuck in his room, who passes the time by watching his
neighbors from afar.
He begins to suspect one is a murderer, and it turns out he's right.
Meanwhile, 1954's Rear Window is about a grown man stuck in his room, who passes the time
by watching his neighbors from afar.
He begins to suspect one is a murderer, and it turns out he's right.
It turns out, those similarities were enough to bring a lawsuit into the picture.
In 2008 the trust that owns the rights to the 1942 short story Rear Window sued the
makers of Disturbia, claiming they remade the story without clearing it.
Whereas Alfred Hitchcock had received permission to make his movie version, Disturbia had not,
despite clearly making almost the exact same movie.
And yet the court disagreed, ruling that Disturbia was an original film.
As the presiding judge explained:
"The setting and mood of the short story are static and tense, whereas the setting and
mood of Disturbia are more dynamic and peppered with humor and teen romance."
Sounds like Dreamworks got the last laugh.
"Wahhhhh!"
"Hahahhah!"
Lockout
Usually, when a filmmaker steals from another movie, they pick something relatively obscure,
so the theft isn't immediately obvious.
Luc Besson went the opposite route when filming 2012's Lockout, targeting the 1981 classic
Escape From New York.
In Escape, Kurt Russell plays a convict who enters a post-apocalyptic New York City, now
a giant prison controlled by the inmates, to rescue the president.
In Lockout, Guy Pearce plays a convict who travels to a space station, now a giant prison
controlled by the inmates, to free the president's daughter.
"About my father."
"Oh yeah, I made that other bit up."
"Did he have a message for me?"
"Yes, you are adopted."
You can see why Escape's director, John Carpenter, decided to sue Besson for $2.4 million.
Plagiarism can be a mighty expensive hobby.
As The Guardian reports, the judge initially awarded Carpenter 85,000 Euros.
Besson appealed, and the appeals court increased the ruling to 450,000 Euros.
They decided Besson stole tons of details from Carpenter, writing in their judgment:
"[The heroes both] got into the prison by flying in a glider/space shuttle, had to confront
inmates led by a chief with a strange right arm, found hugely important briefcases and
meet a former sidekick who then dies […] And at the end [both heroes] keep secret documents
recovered during their mission."
Reservoir Dogs
Some ripoffs are just bad copies of the movie they stole from, but others actually improve
on the original.
Best example: Quentin Tarantino's 1992 breakthrough Reservoir Dogs, which, according to critics,
swipes several scenes from Ringo Lam's 1987 film City on Fire.
Tarantino didn't steal City note-for-note, but rather copied the basic plot plus several
scenes.
Both films are about criminals blowing a major heist, and one of them winds up being an undercover
cop.
As the Baltimore Sun pointed out, Tarantino took several scenes, including the famous
"Mexican standoff" where two criminals and the officer form a triangle and point guns
at each other.
Other scenes include a man with two guns shooting cops through a windshield, men in black suits
walking through a city, and the robber learning the undercover cop's identity.
What's more, Tarantino admits this lifting outright, telling the Sun:
"[City's] a really cool movie.
It influenced me a lot.
I got some stuff from it."
Hey, at least he's honest.
As IndieWire points out, the rest of Reservoir Dogs is pure Tarantino.
Visually, the two are nothing alike, and both take extremely different cultural tones.
The Lion King
Initially, The Lion King seemed as original as anything could hope to be.
But as it turns out, Disney has been accused of swiping a lot of it from a Japanese cartoon
called Kimba the White Lion.
As the Los Angeles Times reported, Lion King shares almost too much with Kimba to be a
coincidence.
Both include supporting characters like a wise old baboon and crazy hyenas.
Oh, and two goofy sidekicks.
"Lions eat guys like us!"
The films' main plots differ enough, but certain scenes appear in both.
Remember when Mufasa's ghost appears in the clouds to give Simba life advice?
Kimba did that too.
"But we're supposed to help each other, aren't we?"
"To be king is your destiny, Kimba.
Just as it was for your father."
Also, at one point in Kimba an evil lion named Claw assumes the throne when Kimba's away.
Claw also has a scar around his eye.
"I have come home to take over my father's jungle."
"Hahah!
You've got a problem."
Sound familiar?
Then there are the opening scenes in both, when Simba and Kimba both stand on rocks,
overseeing their future kingdoms.
The makers of Kimba have declined to take action, and instead have praised Disney, saying:
"Our company's general opinion is The Lion King is a totally different piece from [Kimba]
and is an original work completed by [Disney's] long-lasting excellent production technique."
The Island
Michael Bay's 2005 sci-fi action thriller The Island attracted the wrong kind of attention:
namely, from the people behind 1979's Parts: The Clonus Horror, who sued him for stealing
their movie.
Both movies concerned a secret colony of human clones, secretly harvested for body parts.
What's more, both have hero clones discovering what's happening and invading southern California
to shut down the program and expose the people behind it.
Neither lit the box office on fire, but Clonus had the excuse of being an indie flick bad
enough to get roasted on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
"Malibu Barbie is down."
The Island, meanwhile, was a $120 million Michael Bay epic.
One person who did see it, however, was Robert Fiveson, producer of Clonus.
He noticed The Island's trailer made it seem an awful lot like his movie, so he went to
check it out and found over 90 cases of overlap, which he detailed in a lawsuit.
As he told Variety:
"It's beyond the premise.
It's specific characterizations, it's specific lines, shot compositions and sequencing."
Suing was apparently the right idea, as Bay settled out of court, reportedly for seven
figures.
Though compared to the eight figures The Island lost at the box office, seven's not so bad.
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