Disney and Anime Plagiarism? 178
tenchiken asks: "Disney is at it again. A while ago they were accused of (ahem) lifting portions of Kimba for use in 'Lion King'. Now their newest movie, Atlantis has an amazing amount of similarity with GAINAX's classic Anime: 'Nadia, The Secret of Blue Waters'. Take a look at Ain't it Cool News's write up which has comparisons from the Anime point of view and of the Disney point of view. Details about the 'Lion King' and 'Kimba the White Lion' can be found here. Well, give Disney a little credit for The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, after all, those were original stories, right?" You know, I was looking at the ads for this movie just this week and I thought the exact same thing! While fiddling around on the web, I found
this comparison, and it appears that both pages are using information from
this Anime News Network feature.
Check out the above links as they may put the similarities (and any differences) into better perspective. So are the creative juices running dry over there in Disneyworld? Or is this just your average case of an earlier work's influence on a new release?
Welcome to the world of fiction (Score:1)
Try watching late-night TV for a few hours and see how many of the same cliches come up there.
This is what Disney does for Christ's sake! They make familiar stories. Whether familiarity comes from the fact they're folk tales, or just that they use a bunch of tired old cliches ... it doesn't matter, Disney films are for kids, who haven't seen these cliches used a thousand times already.
I often wonder about adults who go to Disney movies - unless they're animators themselves.
Re:Required Reading (for nasty distrustful geeks ; (Score:1)
Just so you know, this is kind of incorrect. In the Disney comic books Lady and the Tramp did become (ahem) life partners, and had several children. The most notable of their children was "Scamp."
That said, Mr. Disney most definitely had a very particular philosophy of life which was reflected in just about all of his works, but most especially his theme parks and TV shows. This leads to a certain amount of unsubtle progressive/capitalistic preachiness.
I personally find his ideas rather naive but mostly harmless. Furthermore, just about all creative works contain morals. Some of the ideas age well, and others become offensive, but later fade away into irrelevancy.
The (classic) animated movies themselves are actually rather free of context and so don't really suffer from any of these problems. An exception is Song of the South, which is enjoyable to people in East Asian markets, but much of the U.S. would have trouble with it for the same reasons that for them "Huckleberry Finn" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin" are difficult (and misunderstood) books today.
Anyway, yeah, to an adult in the Americas, now or in the last few decades, some of the older comics, whether Disney or D.C., can be rather disturbing in a modern context.
Re:Seven original stories (Score:1)
Re:It's not the same Disney anymore (Score:2)
http://www.apbnews.com/media/gfiles/disney/
-z129
A Proud Tradition (Score:4)
Yes, "Atlantis: The Lost Kingdom" is much like "Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water". But as the article notes, "Nadia" in turn borrows a huge amount from Miyazaki's "Laputa". The idea for "Laputa" of course came from the eponymous magical island from Swift's "Gulliver's Travels."
But of course this masterwork of the übertroll Swift was really a satirical updating of More's "Utopia," which was a Renaissance answer to Plato's dialogues concerning ideal government, notably 'The Republic' as well as 'Timaeus,' where the parable of Atlantis is described for the first time in extant Western literature (albeit with attribution to Solon).
Copyright applied to ideas is really nothing but a sham. If anyone is getting ripped off here, it is either Plato or the supposed Atlanteans.
tentacle rape (Score:1)
Re:Can't wait for Disney's version of (Score:2)
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Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
Re:Well... (Score:1)
Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of.. err, I mean a Beowulf cartoon made by Disney!
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Re:What ***I*** want to see. . . . (Score:2)
Re:Not quite. (Score:3)
Required Reading (for nasty distrustful geeks ;) ) (Score:3)
I don't know _where_ my brother turned this up years ago, but one reading of this small book will make your jaw drop, and answer questions you never thought to ask, like-
_Highly_ recommended...
Re:A Proud Tradition (Score:1)
I think it's pretty obvious that there's at least some cross-pollination between Nadia and Atlantis. If Disney had just come out and said "Yeah, we were partially inspired by Nadia, we think it's a cool show, but we're doing our own work here, not just rehashing something," that would be fine. But they deny that anybody within Disney even knew about the existence of Nadia! They lost a lot of credibility with the Lion King fiasco by claiming they didn't know anything about a movie that they provided some advice and support for!
In short, it's not the common elements that's the problem. It's the failure to acknowledge sources.
Re:Plato's Forms explains all. (Score:1)
But a +5, interesting?
Re:Originality. (Score:1)
Re:Call Me Naive (Score:1)
Re:Not that similar (Score:1)
Wow! You guys are on the Ball! (Score:1)
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Disney's modus operandi (Score:3)
This process is so institutionalized it's even got a name: "Disneyficiation".
The fact that they've taken to poaching story concepts from much more recent manga and anime works is perhaps somewhat depressing, but no different in style than Snow White. They even did it to themselves: IMO, Fantasia 2000 was mostly a Disneyfied knock-off of the original!
Re:Disney Classics (Score:1)
I am the author of the oldcrows.net page (Score:1)
Crow is simply maintaining that mirror [oldcrows.net] for me, ever since my ISP made me take down the original [silverhammer.org].
Anywho, since Atlantis has been released here in the U.S., I've prepared a postmortem letter and sent it out to my mirrors for posting. It should be up Saturday afternoon, so please check back then.
In a nutshell, my goals and motivation weren't quite what y'all may think...
Stay tuned.
It's MY page, dernit! (Score:1)
Furthermore, the guy who authored the page [oldcrows.net] has added a link to the following statement
Crow [mailto] didn't author the page. I did [silverhammer.org], and my own postmortem should be posted later today (Saturday) -- just as soon as Crow wakes up and checks his email.
Dynomutt (Score:2)
Re:Not quite. (Score:1)
Spoiler Alert so don't say I didn't warn you :)
In the original story (by Hans Christian Andersen), the bargain is that the mermaid will be given legs in exchange for her voice, but every step will be extremely painful, like she is walking on knives. If she doesn't get the kiss of true love by the third sunset, she'll die. The mermaid fails to get the prince to kiss her by the third sunset, and the sea witch shows up to offer her one final choice - if she will kill the prince, his blood will return her to mermaid form and she can return to the sea. She chooses instead to die because she really loves the guy, but in the end it turns out death has really turned her into some sort of air spirit instead.
It's not exactly happily ever after, but it rings pretty true to me. Sometimes true love just won't happen even when you really need it to.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Re:A Proud Tradition (Score:2)
I haven't seen Nadia yet, though I do intend to start getting the DVDs, since the first one was just released. But in my opinion the whole "they ripped off Nadia!" deal is the work of a few sad sacks who simply don't like Disney and will look for whatever reasons they can find to bash it. Either the resemblances come from plot points commonly used by a lot of other stories, or else they're sheerly superficial.
Look at common plot points. If the movie "ripped off" anything, it would be Stargate, Laputa, Titan A.E., 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a bit of Castle of Cagliostro, some Raiders of the Lost Ark, and a few other things. If I wanted to get really anal, I could go into all the old-timey radio shows that featured wisecracking switchboard operators like the one seen here. But really, what's the point?
The thing is, there are a lot of commonly-used ideas in here. Submarines, giant sea monsters, ancient relics that could do incredible damage in the wrong hands, greedy fortune-seekers wanting to put their wrong hands around those relics, giant monsters attacking ships, and so on. As Shakespeare said, there really is nothing new under the sun. It's all been done before, in some form or other--and the most successful tropes tend to get used over and over again, just because they are so successful.
And as for superficial coincidence . . . consider the case of Nancy Stauffer [realmuggles.com], author of some rather obscure childrens' books back in the early 1980s, and her claims of infringement by J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books. There are an awful lot of coincidences there--use of some similar names, such as a character named "Larry Potter" who wears glasses and has a cousin named "Lilly"; use of the term "muggles," which Rowling says she came up with on her own--but most of the "coincidences" she cites are just plain silly--such as the fact that both books have castles by lakes in them! The books weren't even widely known--the most they ever got was small-press publication, in America--whereas J.K. Rowling was writing her stories ten years later in England. It's unlikely in the extreme she could possibly have seen Stauffer's books--but she wrote what she wrote anyway, and golly gee, there are all these coincidences--but most of them, such as castles and lakes, are found in a lot of fantasy novels, not just the two of theirs, so it's not surprising that two unrelated fantasy novels would both have them.
As I've said, I haven't yet seen Nadia, but I really believe that most of the similarities between them are just that sort of coincidence. Either they're trappings common to many of those stories (just as fantasy stories or Westerns often have similarities), or they're outright coincidence.
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Re:Yeah, they ripped off stuff but... (Score:2)
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Re:Atlantis: the Lost Refrences (Score:1)
You do realize you just described the exact plot of Michael Crichton's 1987 novel Sphere?
Just a thought.
Proper credit (Score:2)
Maybe the original author would like to see a few bucks in royalties, but so what? it's not as if they couldn't afford it.
Somebody in other posts mentioned the GPL, and the apparent contradiction in our community which encouages to share IP when it's computer programs, but doesn't approve of derivative works when it's motion pictures.
The point is that every single GPL program I've seen properly recognizes its ancestors, be it direct and indirect, and acknowledges the work of those who created them. Disney's recent movies don't.
Re:Simba == Kimba? (Score:1)
Most of the names in Lion King are fairly pedestrian wordsfrom Swahili (Rafiki=friend, Nala=pretty, ...). Simba is just "lion" in another language.
Re:Can't wait for Disney's version of (Score:3)
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Good and bad of copyright law (Score:1)
Now the rejection letters in the mail read
"This has already been done.. try something original"
You want to kill...
Now picture this. You spend years writing a story and publish...
Now 15 other writers you never heard of before clame you copied them.
The problem is simple. A lot of storys are going to be very much alike.
In programming...
A friend of mine was working on a program with someone else..
That someone else make some small changes and clammed it as his own.
On the other hand.. I wrote my own BBS ground up and some idiot I never meet in my LIFE ordered me to stop using HIS software.
(My prompt looked like his prompt.. My prompt looked like everyones prompt..)
Basicly my 3 year old BBS was somehow a clone of his 6 month old BBS..
Anyway.. There is the problem..
Some people are theafs.. some people are crybabys.. and current IP law isn't very good at telling the diffrence..
ALL DISNEY MOVIES ARE LIKE THIS. (Score:1)
My friends and I used to gripe about it all the time. Some little kid is going to read hamlet sometime and think, "Wow, this is almost like the Lion King." And I'll have to execute a Disney animator. It's even worse when they butcher historical facts, like in Pocahontas. That was a real woman's life that they trivialized and lied about.
Ok, I'll calm down...
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family bonds (Score:2)
Laputa + Little Mermaid (Score:2)
OTOH, I still think the 70s TV animated version of "The Little Mermaid" is the best one: it's far scarier (like good fairy tales should be!) and there's no annoying sidekicks, dammit.
Especially when they combined it with "The Golden Prince." Now that's a freaky movie.
One would think (Score:1)
I was also especially happy to hear they plan to lay off 4000 people right between the releases of two movies that will each gross eight figures at least.
Something about their overly-happy sounding commercials rings a little off at times like these.
What ***I*** want to see. . . . (Score:3)
That should be a laugh riot. . . .
Re:Call Me Naive (Score:1)
Call Me Naive (Score:2)
that being said, it's not like their animated movies are original at all but they are fairy tales that have been "disneyized". I could accept "the little mermaid", but for disney to copy wholesale "Nadia", it's not so much ignorance as it is revisionist.
Walt's NOT dead!! (Score:2)
Disney's a big company... (Score:1)
Personally, I don't care if Disney the corporation fell off the face of the earth. Just save their feature animation department. They are absolutely phenominal when it comes to that.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
WildTofu [wildtofu.com]
Re:Not quite. (Score:1)
Re:Plagerism of Jules Verne? (Score:1)
Re:Shakespere? (Score:2)
But it wasn't as if he tried to hide this also this was a completly different environment from the century plus of "copyright" which Disney has lobbied for.
Kimba Rules (Score:1)
I knew there was something I liked about "The Lion King".
Re:Not quite. (Score:1)
The only way Disney is original is in how it can take so many varied stories from many cultures and shoehorn them into its single stock script. Truly amazing...
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Re:Not quite. (Score:2)
Nope. A Hans Christian Andersen story.
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Re:Disney Classics (Score:2)
That's a product of Studio Ghibli, whom licesensed it to Disney (under a fairly protective contract, no editing was permitted) through Miramax. Had this not happened, you'd likely have seen a Disney movie very similar to Mononoke eventually.
Of course, every Anime fan should fear the fact that Miramax has Ghost in the Shell 2, and who knows what they'll do to it (edit wise...)
Can't wait for Disney's version of (Score:5)
Differences of opinion (Score:2)
Realistically now, take a look at how many movies were based on samples from books, some parts may have been used, but were the authors really slighted when the entire book wasn't used? Could have been a name or town, etc. Not everyone is James Patterson to command mega bucks for their work, so there are plenty of times plagurism occurs. Similarly situations arise where many would like to claim something as theirs when others may have thought of something similar and acted in better fashion or faster to make something out of it.
Wouldn't surprise me if Disney ripped things here and there, as long as the entire concept isn't ripped then legally they violated no laws. Personally when I think of Disney I think of small children or do good family doo hickey types while for Anime I tend to think of younger, hip, into fashion, skateboarder, biker, geek types. So the comparison to me personally is non existant. Don't buy Disney if you think it affects you, however aren't there better things to bitch about [rawa.org]?
Re:Simba == Kimba? (Score:1)
his name was Leo, he was only Kimba in the US.
Drop me a line if you'd like more info.
Re:Disney Classics (Score:1)
Seven Dwarfs, actually. "Dwarves" was an obscure variant until Tolkien popularized it.
Plagerism of Jules Verne? (Score:1)
It doesn't seem to me that there is enough in common between the two, that didn't already come from Verne and Burroughs, as to make this cause for outrage.
It doesn't stop with movies... (Score:2)
Look a little more closely and you'll see that it's not just Hollywood that's run out, and it's not as bad in Hollywood as it is elsewhere. Tinseltown has been picking off ideas (plotlines, charachters) from many, many 'sources' for as long as it's been an institutuion. What I belive is happening now is people gaining better access to sources that hollywood rips from.
Disney's been doing Andersen's tales for years, no one's complained. Many plots steal (and pervert) european folk stories, something especially noticable in the 50s. (And, of course, they fact that 80% of Hollywood movies follow one of maybe 10-15 plots.) But there are still some good, original stories being produced in Hollywood. Let's remember that Disney is about as LCD as you can get.
The industry that has lost almost all hope, on the other hand, is the music industry. While it's not as bad as in Poland, where the big 5 'majors' constantly releasing the same artists that had hits back when most of the music buying public was being born, it's not getting any better. You have Britney Spears releasing one song twenty-four times (just listen to the beats on her album, it's all the same song). Bands making careers off on a single *cover* of some 80s hit. Everybody doing house and hip-hop remixes. Covers of old songs being hyped as the 'best new thing'. Producers recycling beats between artists...
Fortunately, it is exponentially cheaper to record, produce and release an album then it is a film. This gives the music industry to be constant flow of new ideas while allowing the them to take risks. At 10, 20, 50 million dollars a picture, the motion picture industry's not too keen on letting much go to chance. So unless the storyline has 'universal appeal' or, better yet, is tested (a book, a anime version =)) it's going to have a hard time getting made.
There is salvation. As technology has made the production of music dirt cheap (and it is, it really, really is) it's bringing down the costs of film production. Of course, we're nowhere near the quality of celuloid (although I've seen filtered digital film that, at PAL/NTSC resolutions looked better) you can actually put a small film studio together for the price of a small recording studio. We're seeing a proliferation of independant films, fresh, new story lines. That's definately something to look out for.
And if you're not into 'independant' cinema (as it is often lacking) check out movies from around the world. Asia and India have a thriving movie 'scene', putting out litteraly hundreds of titles each year, many of the best ones are transfered to DVD and released subtitled. Europe's movie industry is a bit tattered (especially Poland's) but you can still get a lot of good movies. (I'm currently going through my love affair with 'Fucking Amal [imdb.com]')
Yeah, they ripped off stuff but... (Score:2)
It wouldn't be entirely fair if I were to say that the movie was a TOTAL rip off, as I haven't seen it yet. Much like the Lion King, there is probably quite a bit of noticable influence.
The Lion King was sort of a mix between Kimba the White Lion and Hamlet, IMO. It didn't completely rip off of Kimba, but it was easy to tell that Disney took a lot of influence from that show.
Why doesn't Disney just go ahead and say something like, "We were influenced by Gainax's brilliant Nadia series." If they had said something like this when announcing the movie, they would probably get better PR. Instead, they flat out lie and deny that any of their animators have ever seen these series.
I think if they admitted the similarities as tribute or influence, instead of anime fans calling foul on Disney for ripping off Nadia, they'd be heading to the theater more eagerly to see Atlantis to find the tributes to Gainax's work.
Knowing Disney there is probably a decent amount of differences in the show, and I'm sure with all the lame songs that'll be there, that it won't be nearly as good as Nadia anyway.
Disney Classics (Score:5)
All of "Disney Classics" are just that-- classics that have been through Disney's machine.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves? Pinocchio? Cinderella? Sleeping Beauty? Aladdin? The Sword and the Stone? Brer Rabbit? Dumbo? Jungle Book? They're all classic folktales from various cultures. Disney never claimed to create the concept, just the adaptation you see under their banner.
That's why the official titles are Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, or Disney's The Little Mermaid. Same goes for Disney's Atlantis. They're adaptations of classic stories.
With each new medium (voice, tablets, scrolls, books, silent movies, talkies, animated movies, modern cinema and now computer-rendered movies), classic stories are told and retold and re-retold with the new medium's strengths or with a new angle to keep it fresh.
There are some legitimate causes for complaint if a new work draws too substantially or too unoriginally from an older work; Lion King, Mononoke, and Atlantis may suffer from being on the borderline of this issue. But to say that Disney isn't putting something original or fresh into any of their adaptations of cultural classics is a big stretch.
This has been going on far longer than Disney's corporate life, so why piss on Disney's parade? Oh, yeah, this is slashdot, where groupthink and corporate bashing is the norm. Where selling an adaptation of a public-domain concept is considered evil. Get over it.
Re:Originality. (Score:2)
The Shakespearean tradgedies that were based on Historical events tended to be a bit obvious as to what they were, eq. Julius Caeser and Antony and Cleopatra.
Re:Originality. (Score:2)
Originality. (Score:3)
For example, the Lion King was not ripped from Kimba, it was ripped from Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. Hamlet, like many of the bawdy bard's works, was just a retelling of assorted chunks of greek myths that he liked. The greek myths were old stories that had been handed down orally for centuries.
This kind of thing is basic stuff. Joseph Campbell taught it for decades (Exploration of Campbell's work inspired Star Wars, a popular Star Wars topic that is about as unoriginal as plots can be.). It was a PBS miniseries. Most high schools teach it as part of advanced freshman english classes. Any social anthropology teacher at any level will probably bring it up.
And of course, the idiots who run Slashdot, in an attempt to bring down the corporate machine, attack Disney for stealing plots for their movies, simply because they fail to realize that the plots of the Japenese animation they so often watch are no more original than they were when other people told the same stories a millenia ago.
Re:Plato's Forms explains all. (Score:2)
Ninja Scroll + Disney = (Score:2)
Simba == Kimba? (Score:5)
You didn't read the links, did you? (Score:2)
If you had bothered to read the linked articles, then you would have seen that they aren't simply talking about Disney retelling classic story with a modern twist but ripping off of a large amount of the plot for their non-classic movies (Lion King, Atlantis) from recent works that are still under copyright which is and if this were the U.S. with it's Disney bought Sonny Bono act would be under copyright for decades more which is PLAIGAIRISM.
Slashdot overreacts sometimes, this isn't one of them.
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Re:Shakespere? (moderate parent up , please) (Score:2)
I'm sure that someone who knows more of English history can give you a list of which Shakespeare story came from which source. (English was never my strong point). In any case, He was right on the point about this, and I would have made a similar comment if he hadn't first.
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Re:Simba == Kimba? (Score:3)
Re:who can sue? (Score:3)
Yes, it is... for Disney.
The copyright holder for Nadia must show that protectable elements of the work were taken. The artwork isn't close enough to be infringing, and the plot elements listed on the oldcrows page (e.g., "the bad guys are interested in Atlantis so they can capture and use the power source") are far too vague to be protectable. Furthermore, the guy who authored the page has added a link to the following statement:
Furthermore, even if the holder of the Nadia copyright could somehow prove that Atlantis used protectable elements, all Disney has to show is that the authors of Atlantis were not exposed to Nadia. Constructive knowledge (i.e., "being in the animation business they should have known") isn't sufficient; they must have actually known about it, as copyright law (unlike patent law) doesn't protect against independent creation.
Not that similar (Score:2)
Re:Seven original stories (Score:2)
Those seven stories have to be some broad genres to fit everything, and even then you'd be missing a lot of the differences between movies. Those differences, on the other hand, are what make movies entertaining.
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Aladdin is Chinese! (Score:3)
IT hath reached me, O King of the Age, that there dwelt in a city of the cities of China a man which was a tailor, withal a pauper, and he had one son, Aladdin hight.
http://mfx.dasburo.com/an/a_night_29.html [dasburo.com]
I'm having a bitch of a time trying to get the original French translation though.
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Shakespere? (Score:2)
Walt Disney wasn't frozen either (Score:2)
According to Walter Elias Disney's death certificate (source: Big Secrets by William Poundstone), he died of cardiac arrest due to a cancer arising from the passages of the left lung. Disney was cremated at Forest Lawn, Glendale, "and has a perfectly ordinary gravesite."
Eisner, however, should be **** for perverting the Constitution of the United States. [pineight.com]Re:Not quite. (Score:4)
David also wrote two other interesting secrets of DisneyLand books: Mouse Tales: A Behind-The-Ears Look at Disneyland and More Mouse Tales : A Closer Peek Backstage at Disneyland
Interesting reading for both Disney fans and haters.
Interesting thoughts (Score:3)
Given that, is it suprising that they want to make sure others don't do what they did -- take the work that came before them?
Will the copyright expire on any of the Mickey Mouse stuff?
Hollywood's:nationalism & historical falsification (Score:2)
Here we have a typical example. Instead of beginning in 1889's France, the story takes place in 1914's America. Why? Because this story involves cool heroes, a cool machine with an highly advanced technology, built by original and very wealthy people. Well, this HAS to be in America, doesnt'it?
This example follows the example of this Hollywoodian movie on the battle of England, where the allies manage to decode the German communication for submarines (again!), or something like that: this event was key in the battle of England. The British achieved it. In the Hollywoodian movie, the Americans do it. Pretty vicious, huh? It's based on actual historical events, but it's falsified to make sure that the heroes are American.
There are hundreds of examples of these types each year from Hollywood. It may be just because it is assumed to be good for business (although I know that Disney also has quite a conservative culture and has a problem with France), but it's morally unjustifiable. Moreover, which over country would dare do something like this than America? Can you imaging the Chinese movie industry creating "historical" movies, where the chinese are organizing the D-day and saving Europe from nazi Germany? Or can you imagine Zimbabwe shooting a movie where extraterrestrials attack, and where all the key events (their arrival, as well as their defeat) take place in Zimbabwe?
I know it's "just entertainment", and that it shouldn't be taken too seriously. Except that the power of Hollywood on the minds of the people everywhere on the planet has become tremendous. Hollywood can manipulate the people on a global scale, but to the advantage of one specific country, and of specific and sometimes questionable values. This explains in part the irritation of several countries with the American movie industry.
BOOYA!!!! (Score:2)
MPAA hypocrisy (Score:4)
Just your average case of MPAA hypocrisy, that's all.
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DOOR!!
Re:Call Me Naive (Score:2)
Atlantis: the Lost Refrences (Score:2)
While it may again be a case of similar source material, it may go farther as well..
1) The Disney's Atlantian machines have a remarkable resembalance to the "Strutters" in Dinotopia.
2) Dinotopia: The World Beneath has a very similar plotline: Scientist searching for a lost civilization, explores underwater for an entrance, then a cavern crawl, to the remnants (though uninhabited in this case) of a lost civilization they find a crystalin power source and then leave, upon which point the crystal brings out the worst in party members and a struggle ensues for the crystal.
3) Some similarity can be seen between Disney Atlantis' location on a plateau surrounded by waterfalls, and Dinotopia's waterfall city. There is some simiarity of architecture as well, but that can be more easly explained bythe efforts of both Gurney and Disney to make a "ancestor culture"
I'm not saying it happened, but after Seeing much the same thing happening in SW:TPM w. the design of Theed and the end parade in parcicular I wouldn't rule it out, and considering the similarities in source material between Nadia and Atlantis: I actually worry a little more about this possibility.
Another Site (Score:2)
This is how animation works (Score:3)
Animation would be impossible if it weren't for plagiarism. The animation artists are all crooks. It's an inherent part of their process.
First, they start with a single drawing, a stil image known as a "cell". Then, they make another that looks almost exactly like it, only it's a little bit different. Then they do this again, and again, thousands and thousands of times.
Then, once their "movie" is completed, they show each of these images, each essentially a ripoff of the previous image, in sequence very quickly. By pulling this fast switcheroo, the audience is fooled into thinking that it sees a "motion picture" and not thousands of repeated images, each of which varies very little from the ones immediately preceeding it.
Yet in spite of the obvious similarity of one cell of animation to the one preceeding it, the masses just seem to love it. If only they knew the real goings-on behind the scenes.
MOD THIS POSTER UP!!! (Score:2)
If you don't, urutsukidoji is the movie that started the tentacle rape anime genre ;)
Re:Not quite. (Score:3)
Give me a major break! (Score:2)
All the griping about Atlantis: The Lost Empire being a ripoff of Japanese anime makes me wonder if you can't do anything inspired by an earlier work.
Think about this: remember the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark? If that movie wasn't a rehash of the vast majority of movie serials from the 1930's and 1940's I don't know what is.
Anyway, having seen Atlantis, the movie is more like something inspired by a combination of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Gainax's Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water, the Hayao Miyazaki-directed movie Lupin III: The Castle of Caligostro, and the Miyazaki movie Laputa: Castle in the Sky.
The movie can get clichéd in spots, but gawd, the visuals and musical soundtrack are AWESOME. I highly recommend seeing this movie on the largest movie theatre screen you can find and make sure the theatre has a THX-certified sound system, too.
"The Shrek Effect" (Score:2)
It's a good article, and direct. Pick up a newsstand copy and flip through for it.
disney up to no good? (Score:3)
after spending some time on the SODH website, nothing disney does surprises me anymore.
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
Re:Shakespere? (Score:2)
Seven original stories (Score:3)
With a desire to see the plagarism, just about any story told can be accused of being heavily copied from an existing one - often without the script writers even being aware of the orginals existence. Take a look at the way, every time Spielberg makes a movie, several people sue him for stealing their ideas (kind of curious how he manages to keep copying the majority of his movie from several places at once).
The way things are going, I wonder how long it'll be before scriptwriting follows the original PC cloning and those working on it are kept in closed environments where the companies can prove they never saw anything from the outside?
Re:It's not the same Disney anymore (Score:2)
And I doubt it was merely Walt keeping Annette Funicello out of anything skimpy. Take a look at all the episodes of "I Dream of Jeannie" and count how many times you see Barbara Eden's belly button. You won't! It was too risque' at the time.
Anyways, its a good comparison... Mickey Mouse is a corporate identity and women are showing alot more skin on TV.
If Disney weren't so aggressive, they likely wouldn't be around at this point.
Oh yeah? (Score:5)
Cough cough...
Platos books online. (Score:2)
http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/browse-Plato.html [mit.edu]
It's all trite (Score:2)
Disney and anime are both exceedingly trite and cliche. They both use the same general framework and styles... I don't mean drawing styles, i mean narrative styles. Here I'm thinking of more grounded anime like this Nadia thing, not Akira type stuff. It's all the basic stock of characters. Basic plot: Ooooh the crystal is linked to the core... but mysterious! And she's... exotic! Like the guy said above, 7 basic story archetypes. Disney isn't that creative, and usually anime isn't either, even when it's being insane and random, it's just pointless pulling random ideas out of the writers' collective asses. (except the mechanical stuff, I'll give ya that, I dig that) So there's my rant. :P
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Questions for kids (Score:3)
What a surprise (Score:5)
There seem to be two issues at hand, and they may be related. First of all, Hollywood is so revenue-driven that they must try to hit the least common denominator with everything they do, which excludes a lot of highly artistic content which might just be too niche-market for the bean counters who run the show to approve. This also leaves out a good deal of stuff that just seems too wierd for the apparantly wierd people who decide what gets produced.
The other issue surrounds the culture of Southern California itself - at great risk of generalizing here, I'd describe it as soulless. Everything there has a price value, and that value seems to be the only one that matters. This highlights the age-old battle between Northern and Southern California with the northerners constantly accusing the southerners of being thoughtless and greedy. The fact is, it may not be possible for someone wholly immersed in the SoCal culture ideal to actually come up with much of anything that isn't plasticy and over-glitzy to everyone else. I know people from LA will vehemently disagree with this, but my rebuttal is: where's the content? When the best movies and television (in terms of quality, not ratings) are being made anywhere but hollywood, what is the problem?
My biggest concern is that Hollywood seems to behave as though it should be the cultural center for the US, and considering the "role models" it proposes, this would be a very bad thing indeed.
Insert flames here:
who can sue? (Score:2)
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Los Angeles Times (Score:2)
An Interesting and semi-related article [latimes.com] was in the LA Times this morning, about how Disney is laying off a good chunk of it's animation group, and many of the older members think that the new environment does not foster the kind of (perceived) creativity that made Disney famous.
From the Article:
But longtime animators say the more serious problem is that the division--once the premier place to work--lacks the creative vibrancy that fostered such hits as "Lion King."
Re:Simba == Kimba? (Score:2)
You've heard of Tar-Zan, right? Disney did a movie about him, too, only people realized up-front that it was "Disney's version" of it, and didn't spaz just because it was an adaption of prior art.
--Blair
It's not the same Disney anymore (Score:5)
I got my wish. Walter Eugene Disney wandered in about four o'clock and his first words to me were... "where are your parents?" When I'd assured him that I was not an orphan and well looked after, he wanted to know if I was having fun. I could hardly speak, I was so happy. He wished me and my family well, and then left. I still don't know for sure if the rumors about his loft above the firehouse was true or not. I didn't care... I'd got to say "hello" to Walt.
Fast forward fifty years. Michael Eisner makes more money in a year than Walt did in a lifetime. Disney, BuenaVista, and their subsidiaries routinely make movies that feature nudity, foul language, and violence. Disney gets sued over underwear. Disney gets sued over wages and benefits. Disney announces layoffs just to perk up the stockholders. Disney is no longer a kindly old grandfatherly type that wants to know where your parents are; Disney is now just another faceless megalithic corporation that just wants to know where your money is.
As an aside, did you know why Annette Funicello never wore a bikini in any of her beach movies? Yup, Walt. He thought it would make a bad impression on youngsters if a former Mouseketeer showed too much skin. He held her to a contract provision for the rest of her career just because his sense of moral obligation made him sure that that was the right thing to do.
If there is an afterlife, I feel sorry for Walt, looking down on what has become of his dreams for family oriented entertainment and family values.
That wonderful day in the firehouse is gone forever.
Re:man, this just happened to me too (Score:2)
Give and take. Or how about just take. (Score:2)
Hardly the first time Disney has poached earlier works for their animated films. What irks me is that at the same time they're making millions retelling other people's stories (and here I'm thinking more of Aladdin and Snow White and other renditions of classic stories) they're doing their damndest [asu.edu] to prevent anyone else from doing the same with their classic stories.
I'm not so bullheaded as to refuse to ever see a Disney film, but when I'm deciding what to go see I definitely take into account the fact that Disney's lobbying is a big reason there won't be any significant American contribution to the public domain [asu.edu] for years to come.
Re:One would think (Score:2)
Actually, it's precisely because of Disney's lack of originality that partly explains why they are successful (marketing usually fills in the rest). The public has been conditioned to enjoy familiarity and uninventiveness, or at least settle for this as the norm. A standardized committment to quality in all spheres of consumption usually emphasizes the standardization, and not the quality. *cough*Redmond*cough*
Come to think of it, does this make children's stories the breeding ground for Disney's crass expectations of what they'll eat up at the box office, since they have that built-in familiarity during those impressionable ages?
Re:Seven original stories (Score:2)
For that matter, aren't most Slashdotters against software patents? It seems to me that this arguing over plot similarities and owning ideas for stories is analogous to the patenting of software ideas.
Company A:"This database allows you to sort the entries by a user-specified criteria! We have a patent on that!"
Slashdot community:"Another company trying to claim ownership of ideas..."
A wider selection of anime may change your mind (Score:3)
I would invite you to contrast the artwork and character designs of "Magic Knight Rayearth" (by CLAMP) and "Kiki's Delivery Service" (by Hayao Miyazaki). Or Harlock Saga (by Leiji Matsumoto). Shirow's hard-eyed Deunan (from Appleseed) is another character design which breaks the mould.
Indeed, the very topic involves a show (Nadia) which breaks the standard "big-eyed" character design of anime - it is based more on the character designs of Hayao Miyazaki.
As for storylines being all the same
Getting to the original topic, I cannot believe that the writers and artists involved with Atlantis were completely unaware of Nadia. I have no problems accepting that many of their ideas came from the works of Jules Verne and other sources. It's just that those "other sources" have to have included Nadia for there to be so many similarities. It's far beyond coincidence.