In Hollywood, originality is grossly overrated. In fact, it is often deterred completely– major studios systems mostly opt to produce concepts that are familiar to audiences, but just different enough to be construed as new. The reality of movie making is that most celebrated films are straight up rip-offs. To demonstrate the success rate of cinematic thievery, here are 15 filmmakers whose big hits stole concept, style, or story from other media.
George Lucas
Photo: Ian Wilson/WENN.com
Star Wars isn’t just a rip-off of one film, it steals from a multitude of sources and mashes them together. The film’s episodic structure is taken from old Flash Gordon serials as, before he came up with Star Wars, Lucas had tried unsuccessfully to remake that property. Several of the film’s characters are also modeled on the cast of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai adventure Hidden Fortress. Luke Skywalker’s desert planet of Tattoine is lifted from Frank Herbert’s iconic novel, Dune, as is the concept of the Jedi Mind Trick. Finally, the look of C-3P0 was taken from the iconic robot of Fritz Lang’s M. Despite taking these ideas as his own, George Lucas is given a pass by most science fiction and film aficionados for intermingling these ingredients in a unique way.
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