Origi-NOT-ity

There’s nothing original in the movie industry anymore. 

Seriously.

Remember a couple years ago, when the movie Thor came out?  (Of course you do.)  Thor, his brother Loki, and his father Odin were dreamed up not by Hollywood, but by drunken Vikings  several millenia ago.  All that stuff about the Bifrost connecting the worlds, yeah, that’s straight outta Norse mythology.  But it wasn’t just that!  When I first saw Thor, I had planned on writing a blog post/review entitled: “Thor: God of Plagiarism” because the damned thing was just so full of stuff from other movies.  (But I did not get around to it.  Moving on.)

Who are Thor’s best friends?  Yeah: Xena, warrior princess, Jackie Chan, Professor Lockhart, and Gimli, son of Gloin.  And Loki, who looks like Professor Snape’s younger brother.  Real original.

Turn to page 394....

So Thor goes on a power trip (of course) and picks a fight with a bunch of kilt-wearing Cardasians from Star Trek and a rancor from Star Wars.   Then Odin gets ticked off and banishes him to earth in a scene from Twister.  Natalie Portman makes an appearance, playing Jodie Foster’s character from Contact.  Toss in a few agents from Men in Black, and wrap it all up with a ro-beast from Voltron.  Bingo.  Blockbuster.  (Cheaters.)

Are ya with me so far?

Saw it again in John Carter.  Story itself wasn’t original, either – they ripped it off Edgar Rice Burroughs.   First scenes are straight out of Dances with Wolves. Or maybe Cowboys and Aliens.  Then we’re on Mars and the Navi from Avatar are back, only now they’re green and riding on naked ton-tons and dewbacks from Star Wars.  Speaking of Star Wars, did you notice all of the pod-racing scenes?  And then John Carter falls in love with the princess....and here we go again, Pocahontas.

Oh, and the Therns?   They’re just a bunch of Imhoteps, from The Mummy.

I saw The Avengers last weekend.  Now don’t get me wrong, I loved the movie, and laughed at all the funny parts, even the controversial “He’s adopted” line.  But there was way, way too much plagiarism in this one too.

We start off with Loki (who’s now looking like a cross between Snape and Gollum), who’s bartering with a bunch of necromongers from The Chronicles of Riddick.  Apparently, he intends to use the army to invade Earth, which he will then rule, and give the Tesseract (a glowing blue cube) to the leader of the army so he can rule the universe.  (Um, Loki?  See, if you’re going to rule the Earth, and somebody else is going to rule the universe, well, they’re going to be ruling you, too.  Just sayin’.)

My Precious.....

Anyway, Loki drops in on earth and using his Necromonger Pimp Cane (a la Lucius Malfoy), proceeds to cause quite a bit of mischief.   Then Iron Man shows up and instantly figures everything out (he must have been channeling Sherlock Holmes?) and hurries back to New York for some more Star Wars pod-racing scenes and a movie-ending finale reminiscent of Independence Day.

Hell, even Independence Day isn’t all that original – just like War of the Worlds, the invading aliens are defeated by a VIRUS.

So I’m basically thinking we’ve tapped out our creativity reservoir.  I shudder to think what this might mean for the next Riddick installment currently in production.  Now, I’m not in it – I am not involved in any aspect of it – so I obviously am not around to point out any instances of plagiarism to the Real Vin Diesel (and company).  Which could mean that we’re going to have another copy-cat movie schlepped upon us. 

I sure as hell hope not.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go have some shawarma.