Most brazenly ripoff in movie history
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Elysium
wanjajordan — 9 years ago(April 29, 2016 02:45 AM)
Im not suprised to see hollywood ripping off great computer games without giving any credit to them. Monkey Island - Pirates of the Caribbean. There they were "clever" enough to change names and the story to some extend. Fair enough.
But this is just WOW
There is a german adventure named "Deponia", there are 4 games of it. Guess what. Its the EXACT SAME story. The "rich guys planet" is even named Elysium in the game!
The adventure is great, hollywood butchered the story for ever. What makes me really mad is that they didnt even change the name, maybe because they thought no one is going to know this german adventure gem. They were right. While seeing this, every minute i thought "no this cant be happening, they should at least change SOMETHING, bring something new to the story". No they did not.
Anyways, 1 star vote for worst brazenly ripoff in movie history.
Edit: actually they only ripped off the first game, when in the adventure the story starts kicking in, not even getting close to the potential of the original story. -
vortexrider — 9 years ago(May 01, 2016 02:26 PM)
You must be a little kid who thinks he discovered something but ironically you are not aware that Deponia and nearly every video game with an impressive plot is borrowed from decades of science fiction and general fiction books going back into the 1930s and further back to HG Wells and Mary Shelley writings. Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Gene Rodenberry. Phillip K Dick. People who make video games have read all those books and saw the older movies made from them. They were inspired by them and in some cases directly used the stories giving credit to themselves.
In your case you are simply being arrogant thinking that video games somehow showed some original ideas that noooobody heard about. Nothing could be further from the truth. -
wanjajordan — 9 years ago(May 02, 2016 01:54 PM)
You must be very old or have little knowledge of video games to think "nearly every Video game with an impressive plot is borrowed".
Anyways, care to enlighten me which book Deponias plot is borrowed from?
In the Adventure section alone (but they are to be found in all genres) I could Name you lots of Video games that actually had original ideas that "noooobody" heard about before, why wouldnt there be any?
The book holds no monopol of great ideas in media you know? Movies have original ideas, so do books but so do Video games!
Being INSPIRED by something is one thing, thats why I mentioned Monkey Island - PotC. Just doing the excat same, not even change names, another.
But that was not at all my point. This board is full of Statements like "great idea, bad movie", "credit to the director for unique idea" giving the movie credit for its idea.
I agree, the (ripped-off) idea is good, the movie bad. So the movie does not deserve credit at all since its only good thing is basically the idea of Deponia.
Even if Deponia also stole that, they at least did a good Job in execute the idea instead of butchering it.
Video games are considered art now, you should try to get off your high horse some time, you might learn something. -
vortexrider — 9 years ago(May 02, 2016 08:11 PM)
To answer your first question, nearly half of classic dystopian novels are centered around the concept of a society of the future where some kind of elite exploits the poor people for labor or resources. To give a few examples, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep in which earth is irradiated from war and the rich people are able to live on expensive colonies away from earth. Orwell's 1984, Brave New World, Foundation series, and even Herbert Welle's Time Machine.
As for games being considered art. Yes they are. That was never disputed. But the fact that something is art , whether good or bad, doesn't mean it represents original ideas or that it isn't based on recycled ideas. In fact I am very familiar with video and PC gaming. I've played them as long as I remember and worked in the gaming industry. I have no problem with Deponia series. Great games. -
stuartwhyte300 — 9 years ago(October 03, 2016 04:44 PM)
Apologies to jump into your thread but I would suggest that Elysium, whether the plot/story is either generic or a rip off of something very specific, has an issue of execution via the 'lifting' of scenes, art direction from other (Sci-fi) films.
I noted Total Recall, Aliens and The Matrix had obvious homages in multiple scenes in Elysium.
It is as if in storyboarding they had used some memorable 'off the peg' camera angles/backdrop designs/cast interactions to fill in the basic plot direction (perhaps whilst not fully formed) and they forgot to develop these anything further into a fresh and coherent, camera technique, fight choreography, set design or scene climax.
So to return to your mention of Shelley, a veritable Frankenstein's movie.
My God it's full of stars -
vortexrider — 9 years ago(October 04, 2016 06:28 PM)
I agree with you. Movies like Elysium and the trailer of upcoming movie Passengers use and reuse scenes from most popular science fiction movies in history. They use same imagery and often directly copying scenes.
I think they do it to satisfy the movie nerds who'll see something like cryogenic beds or a ring shaped space station in space and they'll feel immediately want to point out "oh! It's an Easter eggs that pays homage to alien, 2001, so and so whatever". In that passengers trailer you can see they have that robot bartender and a red color schemes bar table just like the bar that the evil ghosts in Shining invite Jack to and get him drunk. The bartender is evil in the shining. I don't know what the role of the robot in Passengers is but the scene is visually identical. And of course you see the same flower shaped set of see through suspended sleep beds like in Alien. -
NomadNomadovic — 9 years ago(October 29, 2016 01:40 PM)
There is a german adventure named "Deponia", there are 4 games of it. Guess what. Its the EXACT SAME story. The "rich guys planet" is even named Elysium in the game!
I can forgive even that but at least make something entertaining, the movie was loud, obnoxious and unfunny. Director has some good skills but he shouldn't be allowed to write anything, because he cannot.
I hate it when film makers try to lecture instead of providing entertainment. It was a waste that Syd Mead was involved in this project. -
zorenathres-417-709482 — 9 years ago(November 08, 2016 07:57 PM)
there IS an original story out there called GUNNM (or Battle Angel Alita in the US), of which this IS a direct ripoff of Hugo's story: the boy who grew up under the shadow of Tiphares (ahem: Elysium) & had an all-consuming obsession with getting there, no matter what.
I posted that earlier on before the original user deleted his post. This movie ripped off a lot of good source material, which in & of itself is not entirely frowned upon in this day & age, but to give no homage or reference to the original artists does come off as a bit crass.
Epic cash grabs made for the lowest common denominator, the rest need not apply
