Have you ever watched a film and thought you’d seen it before even though it’s your first time seeing it?
Yeah its a strange question for sure, but I have just had that feeling. I only recently watched Ready Player One and all through the film, something was niggling away at the back of my head. The overload of 80s nostalgia and video game references were not enough to distract me from the fact the overall plot was similar to another film. A film where five kids enter a world of wonder and amusement, a world that co-exists along with the real world…”a world of pure imagination” one could say.
So quick synopsis for Ready Player One. A poor and underprivileged kid enters a contest to out-right win an entire multi-million dollar company. Along the way he meets four other kids all wanting the same prize. The five meet in a world called The Oasis, a world like no other crafted by an eccentric individual who is a genius video game programmer that creates tests for those who enter. Solve/survive the tests and inherit the whole company.
Does any of this sound familiar? What if instead of a computer generated world it was a chocolate factory and instead the eccentric individual being a computer genius he was a confectionery one? Well you’d have Charlie/Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Now I’m not saying the are the exact same film…but they are strikingly similar in various ways. Both films feature a poverty stricken main character, both are about escapism, both have an isolated and eccentric genius behind the company, both films revolve around testing the protagonist for them to claim their prize and so on.
You know what, I have more too…
The Lego Movie
This film was much more fun that I thought it would be. A kids film adults can enjoy just as much if not more so.
The plot is about a loner main character who meets a mysterious girl dressed in black. This girl introduces our hero to all sorts of surprising secrets including a whole other world our hero is not fully aware of. He gets questioned by the authorities, but the hero is rescued by the girl in black and he is then introduced to a male character who yaks on about some kind of a prophecy. As it turns out, the hero character is destined to be “The One” from the prophecy. The obligatory training begins to ready the chosen one for his unavoidable destiny. During an action scene where it turns out the hero has been tracked, the authorities turn up and take hostages. The hero comes up with a plan to save the hostages that are held in a skyscraper. The hostages are being tortured via some kind of brain thing to extract information from them. Near the end, the hero ‘dies’ only he’s not really dead and comes back stronger than before and takes on the bad guys to win fulling the prophecy after which the hero and girl in black fall in love.
Cracking flick, but remove the kid friendly angle and aim it toward a more adult audience and well, you have The Matrix. Yes, The Lego Movie is a more kid friendly take on The Matrix.
The Terminator
One of the finest Sci-Fi films ever made. The right blend of action, thriller and even horror…yes horror.
This film tells the tale of an unaware female being stalked by a killer who is not all he appears to be. But before we get to that, the killer steals someone’s clothing before stealing a car and heading into town to find his victim. The killer stops off at a store to stock up on weapons. The female lead is helped along the way by a male character who is mainly there for exposition while wearing a trench-coat. Our female lead has a friend who suggests the lead needs to live a little and let her hair down and strangely enough this friend is killed off pretty quickly. The trench-coat wearing male tries telling the cops all about what is going on but they don’t believe his story. Eventually, the killer discovers where the girl is and the stalking continues. It all builds to a showdown in a building where the trench-coat wearing dude seems to kill the killer…only for the killer to not really be dead.
So lets just ignore the whole time traveling details of The Terminator for a second and you have a slasher horror film here, one we have seen before. Its Halloween isn’t it? The Terminator is a Sci-Fi spin on John Carpenter’s Halloween.
Interstellar
One of Christopher Nolan’s better pictures and shows what he can really do when he just copies another film.
So this one takes place in the future (from when the film was made) and is about a discovery of a big black thing in space. A board of suits get together and decide the big black thing needs investigating. So a team of astronauts are sent up into space to research and learn what this big black thing really is. The main character starts to feel homesick and tends to stay up late missing his family. The ship they are on has a super advanced A.I computer. Our main guy decides to get close to the big black thing which opens some kind of portal our hero enters. On the other side, he finds himself in a strange room looking at himself at another point in time. He eventually finds a way out that leads him to floating around in space.
So what we have here is a take on another Sci-Fi classic. A more lavish and emotional story I admit but still pretty much the same film as 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
This sequel to the smash hit original owes quite a lot to a certain other monster movie.
A team of experts head out to a mysterious island in the middle of nowhere to document the life found there. This island is inhabited by numerous vicious creatures and the experts end up trapped on said island where they soon find themselves having to fight for their lives. Numerous chases and action sequences ensue but eventually they capture one of the bigger animals found on the island which is then transported via boat to a major American city. The enraged creature manages to escape and run amok around the city causing great fear and destruction along the way.
The only thing that is missing here is the weird love story between a giant monster and female lead, cos what you have here is King Kong (any version).
Jurassic Park
Oh I’m not done with those damn dinosaurs yet, even the original film was not that original.
So here we have the basic concept of taking a theme park to a whole new level. A hugely successful company open an all new theme park with the major attraction allowing people to experience a time long lost in history they never otherwise would get the chance to visit and live through. Only things do not go according to plan as the main attractions turn on the visitors and the very people who created them. People die as the very things created to entertain turn to murder and the humans are left fighting to survive and escape the park that has gone haywire.
So this one kind of gets a free pass seeing as the two movies were both written by the same person, Michael Crichton. But Jurassic Park is an updated version of Westworld.
Independence Day
Yeah I know its cheesy but I really enjoy this flick…the sequel, not so much.
Aliens come from somewhere (maybe Mars?) and strategically place themselves all over the planet. Have they come in peace? Well no as they then destroy famous monuments and buildings along with thousands upon thousands of lives. We Earthlings put up a bit of a fight but it soon becomes clear that these aliens are far to advanced and powerful, the planet is doomed…that is until the aliens become infected with a (computer) virus. They begin to die out and Earth is saved.
I know invading aliens is hardly an original idea but how they were taken out with a virus? H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds was clearly the inspiration behind this one.
Have you ever watched a film and thought you’ve seen it before even though it’s your first time seeing it?
Yeah its a strange question for sure, but I have just had that feeling. I only recently watched Ready Player One and all through the film, something was niggling away at the back of my head. The overload of 80s nostalgia and video game references were not enough to distract me from the fact the overall plot was similar to another film. A film where five kids enter a world of wonder and amusement, a world that co-exists along with the real world…”a world of pure imagination” one could say.
So quick synopsis for Ready Player One. A poor and underprivileged kid enters a contest to out-right win an entire multi-million dollar company. Along the way he meets four other kids all wanting the same prize. The five meet in a world called The Oasis, a world like no other crafted by an eccentric individual who is a genius video game programmer that creates tests for those who enter. Solve/survive the tests and inherit the whole company.
Does any of this sound familiar? What if instead of a computer generated world it was a chocolate factory and instead the eccentric individual being a computer genius he was a confectionery one? Well you’d have Charlie/Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Now I’m not saying the are the exact same film…but they are strikingly similar in various ways. Both films feature a poverty stricken main character, both are about escapism, both have an isolated and eccentric genius behind the company, both films revolve around testing the protagonist for them to claim their prize and so on.
You know what, I have more too…
The Lego Movie
This film was much more fun that I thought it would be. A kids film adults can enjoy just as much if not more so.
The plot is about a loner main character who meets a mysterious girl dressed in black. This girl introduces our hero to all sorts of surprising secrets including a whole other world our hero is not fully aware of. He gets questioned by the authorities, but the hero is rescued by the girl in black and he is then introduced to a male character who yaks on about some kind of a prophecy. As it turns out, the hero character is destined to be “The One” from the prophecy. The obligatory training begins to ready the chosen one for his unavoidable destiny. During an action scene where it turns out the hero has been tracked, the authorities turn up and take hostages. The hero comes up with a plan to save the hostages that are held in a skyscraper. The hostages are being tortured via some kind of brain thing to extract information from them. Near the end, the hero ‘dies’ only he’s not really dead and comes back stronger than before and takes on the bad guys to win fulling the prophecy after which the hero and girl in black fall in love.
Cracking flick, but remove the kid friendly angle and aim it toward a more adult audience and well, you have The Matrix. Yes, The Lego Movie is a more kid friendly take on The Matrix.
The Terminator
One of the finest Sci-Fi films ever made. The right blend of action, thriller and even horror…yes horror.
This film tells the tale of an unaware female being stalked by a killer who is not all he appears to be. But before we get to that, the killer steals someone’s clothing before stealing a car and heading into town to find his victim. The killer stops off at a store to stock up on weapons. The female lead is helped along the way by a male character who is mainly there for exposition while wearing a trench-coat. Our female lead has a friend who suggests the lead needs to live a little and let her hair down and strangely enough this friend is killed off pretty quickly. The trench-coat wearing male tries telling the cops all about what is going on but they don’t believe his story. Eventually, the killer discovers where the girl is and the stalking continues. It all builds to a showdown in a building where the trench-coat wearing dude seems to kill the killer…only for the killer to not really be dead.
So lets just ignore the whole time traveling details of The Terminator for a second and you have a slasher horror film here, one we have seen before. Its Halloween isn’t it? The Terminator is a Sci-Fi spin on John Carpenter’s Halloween.
Interstellar
One of Christopher Nolan’s better pictures and shows what he can really do when he just copies another film.
So this one takes place in the future (from when the film was made) and is about a discovery of a big black thing in space. A board of suits get together and decide the big black thing needs investigating. So a team of astronauts are sent up into space to research and learn what this big black thing really is. The main character starts to feel homesick and tends to stay up late missing his family. The ship they are on has a super advanced A.I computer. Our main guy decides to get close to the big black thing which opens some kind of portal our hero enters. On the other side, he finds himself in a strange room looking at himself at another point in time. He eventually finds a way out that leads him to floating around in space.
So what we have here is a take on another Sci-Fi classic. A more lavish and emotional story I admit but still pretty much the same film as 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
This sequel to the smash hit original owes quite a lot to a certain other monster movie.
A team of experts head out to a mysterious island in the middle of nowhere to document the life found there. This island is inhabited by numerous vicious creatures and the experts end up trapped on said island where they soon find themselves having to fight for their lives. Numerous chases and action sequences ensue but eventually they capture one of the bigger animals found on the island which is then transported via boat to a major American city. The enraged creature manages to escape and run amok around the city causing great fear and destruction along the way.
The only thing that is missing here is the weird love story between a giant monster and female lead, cos what you have here is King Kong (any version).
Jurassic Park
Oh I’m not done with those damn dinosaurs yet, even the original film was not that original.
So here we have the basic concept of taking a theme park to a whole new level. A hugely successful company open an all new theme park with the major attraction allowing people to experience a time long lost in history they never otherwise would get the chance to visit and live through. Only things do not go according to plan as the main attractions turn on the visitors and the very people who created them. People die as the very things created to entertain turn to murder and the humans are left fighting to survive and escape the park that has gone haywire.
So this one kind of gets a free pass seeing as the two movies were both written by the same person, Michael Crichton. But Jurassic Park is an updated version of Westworld.
Independence Day
Yeah I know its cheesy but I really enjoy this flick…the sequel, not so much.
Aliens come from somewhere (maybe Mars?) and strategically place themselves all over the planet. Have they come in peace? Well no as they then destroy famous monuments and buildings along with thousands upon thousands of lives. We Earthlings put up a bit of a fight but it soon becomes clear that these aliens are far to advanced and powerful, the planet is doomed…that is until the aliens become infected with a (computer) virus. They begin to die out and Earth is saved.
I know invading aliens is hardly an original idea but how they were taken out with a virus? H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds was clearly the inspiration behind this one.
Little Bits of Gaming & Movies 
Nice article…
and I see what you did there!
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