Legal Plagiarism in Movie Industry: Copyright’s Blindside

Have you ever watched a movie and suddenly got a strong impression that the plot is somehow familiar to you? Have you ever got the dejavu feeling that you have seen the scene somewhere but you just cannot recall it? I am sure that most of us have. After all, there are really not many stories you can develop from a movie, which can be grouped to genres such as an action flick, a love story, an epic adventure, a touching drama, or even a biography. Those genres are fixed, and for that reason, there will always be a feeling that one movie is similar to the others. However, sometimes there are movies that are just too similar. When this happens, questions will be raised, rumors will be whispered, and accusations will be thrown blindly.

This similarities issue is also something that falls upon last year’s most acclaimed movie, Avatar. This James Cameron’s movie appears to have some, if not a lot, similarities to Disney’s 1998 animated movie Pocahontas. This resulted to a lot of talks and discussions all over the blogs on the internet. A group of people even went as far as to re-cut the trailers and replace the audio of one with the other, simply just to point out how similar these two movies are. Political Remix Radio took the liberty to surf via various sites and chose two of their favorite re-cut videos. Their re-cut videos were Avatar and Pocahontas. Avatar gets this serious attention mostly due to its good reviews and compliments. Additionally, who can deny the amazing visuals it has? Avatar has definitely created a breakthrough to the movie technology, but surprisingly, it has a similar story as Pocahontas. The defends for Pocahontas are pouring as the terms such as copycat, plot theft, mimicry, plagiarism, etc were soon raised to question Avatar. Is Avatar really an upgraded remake of Pocahontas? Has James Cameron really done an act of plagiarism?

Actually, similarities are considered very common in the movie industry. There will always be movies about taking revenge as the plot, singing forbidden love as its music, or even using giant monsters to destroy the world. These themes are used over and over again in a movie. Eventually, it is almost like saying that there are only seven notes in music, but many combinations can be made from those notes. Therefore, a little similarity in music is quite acceptable. However, movies are not just a 5-minute video clip. People will sit and watch a movie for a longer period of time. The elements that form a movie are even broader than music; and the main elements are the plot, the script, the acting, and the music. These four elements alone should make similarity in movies more noticeable than in music. People who really understand about music might have different opinion about this. But in this case, I am just talking about movies in general.

As similar as a movie to another, a movie needs to come with at least a little sense of originality (even though audiences will always spare a small room for similarity). The problem is that there are some people who apparently lack in their sense of originality and try to take a short cut by just following the footsteps of already successful moviemakers. In short, these people would take a plot from famous and popular movies and reproduce it in their movie. The only change would just be the people involved in it. Is there any ways to prevent this dreadful thing from happening?

To protect a creative work such as movies, writings, and songs, mankind has created an instrument called copyright. Copyright protects somebody’s work to be used, copied, distributed, or performed without the consent from the creators. Basically, the owner of the original work has to earn royalty from people who want to copy his or her work. Any violation to this copyright will be considered as copyright infringement, and law will prosecute the offender. This copyright policy seems to have covered all the bases needed to protect a creation but ultimately it has one big weakness: it only protects a work in tangible form. Things like ideas, names, titles, are not in tangible form and therefore are not included in copyright protection. In other words, copyright doesn’t protect ideas, but it protects the form in which the ideas are expressed, such as a song, a video clip, a photograph, a piece of writing, etc.

Just simply by knowing these facts, we can come to a conclusion that there are gaps in these regulations which can be used—not to break the rules, but simply just to bend them and stay in the safe zone. Let’s take a look at James Cameron’s Avatar again. Even though it is said to have dozens of similarities with Disney’s Pocahontas, they are not the same. The characters’ names are different; the setting is different; the tribe’s names are different; and of course the visual is very much different. They only share some similarities like storyline, etc and therefore Avatar cannot really fall to the category of plagiarism. Plagiarism happens when a piece of work is copied entirely. So, just by following this formula, we can always create a movie, take a plot from our favorite movie, mix and match the storyline a little, generate a little upgrade in the visual effects area, and we can still walk away unharmed and even more successful than before. The most important thing is that this kind of act can still be considered legal and acceptable. There might be a couple of lawsuits to face, but it is hard to prove any foul plays in this area.

In the end, we must always look everything from the bright side. Not everybody is that low to just rip-off a story from another movie and re-create a new movie from it. Some similarities can happen accidentally and incidentally. Of course, there are still some honest producers out there. However, when there is a light, there is also darkness. Despite the honest producers doing an honest work, there are others who are not honest and love to take “short cuts”. With this big gap in the copyright law, there will always room for cheaters. It all comes down to the people doing the business. They can work hard and be creative, or they can just work “smart” (copy others’ creative ideas).

Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 is without a doubt the most anticipated movie of this year, and we are just days apart from its release. If you need entertainment, I think this movie can provide you with just that. It seems like it will be even better than its first movie as more casts are brought upon this flick. Aside of Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow--who were in the original casts of the first movie--Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, and Mickey Rourke will join this second movie. Don Cheadle will replace Terrence Howard to play as Tony Stark's best friend, Rhodey.

The latest trailer itself shows that Mickey Rourke takes on the role of a super villain worthy enough face the Iron Man, Ivan Vanko. He even went as far as creating his own arc reactor. Scarlett Johansson is plotted to be the Black Widow, a heroine from the marvel universe who is famous as a spy and master of disguise. If you wondered when War Machine will make his appearance in the first movie, then your wait is definitely over.



Iron Man 2 is great to start our summer movie time. I can't wait to see it. Other countries are lucky enough to be able to see it now but we, in the U.S. have to be patient for a little while as it will hit the cinema on May 7th. Make sure to clear your schedule up for the date.

Real World or Fantasy: Is It Really That Hard to Choose?

Just recently, i saw an interesting post on The Movie Blog about L.A.R.P. For those who are not familiar with this term--which sounds like a name of a disease or some high tech gadget the first time I heard it--it stands for Live Action Role Playing. As the name implies, it is a role playing game where you can dress up and act as one of your favorite movie or game characters. This is not a new thing; it may look and sound ridiculuous at first but it has grown to be very common these past few years. In Japan, it is known more as cosplay or costume player.

This particular L.A.R.P however, stands for something else; it stands for Live Avatar Role Playing. Well, the name kind of tell its meaning, isn't it? In this kind of live action role playing, you can role-play as the Na'vis from the movie Avatar. If you have never heard of Avatar before, then maybe you should move out from the place you are living now because it was the most talked about movie in 2009 and it still is (by some people, that is).

When I see people doing Live Action Role Play, I always feel that they are doing it because they like doing it, they want to do it, and they need to do it. But after that, I can't help but to ask: why do they need to do it? Is there something in their real life that they are not satisfied with? Is their life so heavy that they need to live in another role?

At least I can think of one reasonal background that pushes people to like L.A.R.P.ing. We know that life is hard. All of us experience the difficulties in life as we grow up. When we were little, we were fed with all the fairy tales told by our parents before we went to bed. As we grow up, it became so clear that reality is nothing like fairy tales. The fact that they are so different is why we need fairy tales in the first place. We need something to encourage us, to keep our hopes high.

So, we are basically nurtured with the idea that we live a life where dreams can come true when we try our best. However, is that really true? Does that really work for all of us? Yes, I have heard and read about the American dream, but we need to look at the numbers here; how many people have actually achieved their dream? Most of us are still chasing our dream, and most of us can't even get close to our dream. Having faced with reality which doesn't always go as we want it to be 24 hours a day, 7 days a week will surely put a lot of weight on one's shoulder. What better way to lose the weight than living another life? Living another dream, living another fantasy for a few hours by doing L.A.R.P doesn't seem like a bad option at all. Even though it only lasts for a few moment of role playing, we can surely get a brief of release. Nevertheless, this video here shows a higher level of role playing. It surely takes more than plain dedication to paint your whole body blue and run around half naked in the open like that.

I know i might be overthinking things here because not everybody is that stressful and rejecting their life to go as far as L.AR.P.ing. That could just easily be the way some people do to have some fun. Just like some people like working out or traveling, some people might just like role playing. Most of all, they are doing L.A.R.P. in their own time and expense and they shouldn't be judged differently just because of that. The way the world goes nowadays, we are lucky just to be able to think straight, and it doesn't matter how you get your engine running. The fact that it's running is the only thing that matters.

Movie Marketing 101 by Variety

Variety, a world famous entertainment trade magazine, has recently been the most magazine talked about as it made it to be headline of most movie blogs. One of the talk about it can be found on In Contention in their post The price of Variety. Unfortunately, Variety didn't become the talk of the country because of its shining achievement. Instead it was involved in a scandal involving a movie called Iron Cross. CHUD even went as far as stating Variety caught in boffo payola scandal-trade ankles ethics?

Evidently, Iron Cross was one of the movies aiming for the Oscar. If somehow you fail to recognize the movie in one of the nominations, then don't worry, i am just as clueless as you are. During Oscar nominee ballots period, a movie can always try to push its way through the nomination in every way possible. One of the many ways to do it is through an Oscar campaign. It is really not a new thing. In fact, it has already been acknowledged as one of the marketing techniques to promote a movie. Apparently, Iron Cross is one of the movies who utilized the marketing technique with the help of Variety. It is reported that the producers of Iron Cross spent $ 400,000 to market it through variety. That amount of money will ensure that the movie--as made clear by CHUD--make it into Variety's Oscar contender screening series, complete with Q&As with the film makers, and is advertised in Variety daily until the deadline for Oscar nominee ballots passed. The $ 400,000 surely isn't well spent here, as we hardly even heard of Iron Cross.

Iron Cross is a movie about revenge and its main attraction is that it's the last movie of Roy Scheider. He died during production. Scheider plays a role of holocaust survivor who wants some payback from the ones who responsible to have made his life miserable. It is a simple movie with a simple plot. However, Robert Koehler from Variety thought that the movie was worse than just simple and gave it a negative review. This was the origin of all the talks which aroused later on. The movie's producers who invested some money to promote the film through Variety couldn't take the negative review nicely (of course they couldn't, just look at the amount of money they spent on variety itself). Stranger thing happened afterwards; the negative review was then removed. If you somehow want to see the review, worry not; the internet saved it all. A Google cache version of the review can still be found out there.

The removal of the negative review is what made the whole thing became a greater isssue as a lot of people seemed to doubt Variety's integrity. By removing the review, Variety showed the public that their integrity can be bought, or at least compromised. Just provide $ 400,000 and you can do just about the same thing. After this, an even funnier thing happened. As reported by In Contention, the negative review was returned to its place soon after its removal. Apparently when everybody started to doubt your integrity, there is only one thing you can do: Show that a little piece of integrity is still left. Variety did just that, and they just need to face the law suit by Iron Cross' producers and director now.

So, what is the moral of the story here? It's simple. Business is business, and being objective is being objective. When they clash, show your integrity by keeping your objectivity on the ground. When the problem becomes worse, just loosen up that tight integrity for a while and cope with the business side. When the public finds out about it and starts to doubt you, well, just show them that you are objective. Face a couple of law suits and you can still walk tall along side your integrity. At least that was what Variety did. Did it work?

Clash of the Titans: Where are the Titans?

Anyone who read my post, The Titans are Here! can definitely state that I had high expectations to Clash of the Titans. How could I not? The trailer and everything looked so promising at first. However, we can't alwyas get what we expected, can we? Even though I haven't watched the original 1981 movie, but I believe it has more to show than this new craft.

The movie itself takes us back to the time of the gods, when gods--led by Zeus--rule over humans. The humans however, are starting to lose their faith of the gods. They have problems worshipping the gods while they suffer in life and the gods are so busy partying at Mount Olympus. The story starts out when a fisherman finds a coffin floating in the sea. Inside the coffin, there is a little baby who soon grows up to be Perseus (Sam Worthington). He lives a happy yet humble life, being a fisherman just like his foster dad, spending his time with his new family. His life reaches a turning point when his whole family becomes casualties when Hades (Ralph Fiennes) eradicates the humans who deny the gods.

Hades himself, is not without motives. He has a grudge against Zeus (Liam Neeson) because when the three god-brothers split up the world, he got the short straw of it. Zeus got Olympus, Poseidon (Danny Huston) got the sea, and Hades got the Underworld. This will surely set fire on anyone's heart and this time Hades wants to get rid of Zeus for good. His plan is to weaken Zeus by making the humans stop worshipping Zeus. Apparently, Zeus will become weaker if humans stop believing in him while Hades becomes stronger just by feeding of humans fear. For this sole reason is a city named Argos was chosen to be destroyed by the Kraken if the people in the city don't sacrifice the princess of the city, Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) to the Kraken.

Perseus, on the other hand, driven by revenge and disappointment of the gods sets out to get even with Hades. In order to beat Hades is to weaken him first and the only way to do that is by slaying his son, the Kraken. By slaying the Kraken, Perseus can save the city and also get his revenge on Hades. Very convenient for Him, isn't it? So the journey to find a way to beat the Kraken begins. On the journey, he met Io (Gemma Arterton) who soon grows to be his love interest. As usual, our hero will never get the easy way out. He must face giant scorpions, climb the highest mountains to talk to sorcerers, enter Medusa's lair to cut off her head, and finally defeat the Kraken and send the ruler of the Underworld back to the bottom of the earth. If these seem like a job impossible to do by a mortal man, then it is simply because Perseus is not just an ordinary human. He is actually the son of Zeus. Apparently Zeus--defied by a human king in the past--decided to get even with the king by disguising himself as the king and had a go with the king's wife. The king who couldn't handle the fact then sent both the queen and the baby drifting in the sea. Hence, we know now why there is a baby floating in the middle of the sea in the first place.

Overall, I have to admit that the movie does have great visual effects that the original 1981 version failed to give at that time, but i'm afraid that it's all that it has. The movie plus the characters didn't leave any strong impressions as they are so easily forgotten. I already knew that Perseus would cut off Medusa's head and defeat the Kraken in the end, so why not spend some time in building the characters? Perseus as the main character doesn't seem to have a strong enough reason to even start his journey in the first place. Not to mention the mysterious character Io who doesn't even exist in the mythology. It appears she is just there to be the perfect match for Perseus. Gemma Arterton is undeniably pretty, but it is just terrible to put her in the movie just to satisfy our eyes. There is just something off about the movie. The story doesn't really start and end coherently. It's as if it wants to go to so many places at first but ends up going nowhere at all. To add everything up, it is not originally a 3D movie, but it was a 2D movie made to be 3D just to make extra money for the studio, and we know for sure that converted movie like that doesn't really show the best quality of 3D movies.


Cast: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Alexa Davalos, Mads Mikkelsen, Jason Flemyng

Director: Louis Leterrier

Genre: Action, Adventure

Theatrical Release: April 2, 2010 Worldwide

Rating: PG-13

Offensive Comedy: The Ethical and Unethical Question

Recently I read 2 different posts from Screen Junkies: 'South Park' Messed With the Wrong Muslims and Ginger Kid Responds to 'South Park'. The titles of the posts can speak for themselves about the main topic of the posts. Yes, it is none other than South Park. Oops, they did it again. For those who are not familiar with South Park, it is actually an animated sitcom dedicated for adult audiences. Perhaps, we can say that its genre is pretty much like The Simpsons; the kind of animation you prefer to keep away from little children. It is (in)famous for its adult, satire comedy. Most of its episodes are to make fun of something, but honestly, a comedy gets through the day by simply making fun of anything. We know how this work, don't we? It's all fun and game until somebody gets hut, or in this case, offended.

This time, South Park offended the Muslims with its 200th episode depicting the Prophet Muhammed in a bear suit. The reason behind the choosing of a bear suit is not clear, but apparently it is considered offending by the Muslims around the world. A death threat is even thrown at the creators Trey parker and Matt Stone. On another occasion, one of South Park's episodes has also offended Ginger boys. Ginger boy is a term used to refer to a person with physical description such as red hair, freckes, and pale skin. These are not the only people who get offended by South Park as a lot of similar cases have happened to South Park before. Just by looking at South Park's genre will surely bring us to a clear conclusion that more similar cases will happen in the future. It is a comedy to make a statement, to say the words which we are too hypocrite to say, and most of all, it is a comedy; comedy is supposed to be entertaining, well at least when you are not at the receiving end of it.

The thing about South Park is that it plays itself very closely to the edge of ethical norms. Comedy must be free to make its point. People who can laugh at themselves out loud are said to have grown to be very open and mature. However, not everybody is open and mature. We can not just label and standardize all the people in the world. Some of them will get offended and some won't. Some will say that other comedy show can succeed without the neccesity of offending others and that might be true. But if that is the case, then that comedy is definitely not South Park.

What's in A Movie?

When I chose to write a blog about movies, I didn’t really think much about the reason behind it. It just occurred to me that when you want to do something, you’d better do something that you like, something that you can put your interest in; and movies seemed to fit nicely in the frame. Now, that I have written quite a lot of posts, I realized that there are some questions that have always been on my mind and might have been ignored. What makes people like movies? What is so intriguing about movies that people would spend their time going to the cinema every weekend? Therefore, what’s in a movie?

According to the Word Net Web, a movie is a form of entertainment that enacts a story by sound and a sequence of images, giving the illusion of continuous movement. From this definition, we can take that entertainment is the main purpose of a movie. People go to the cinema to be entertained; let it be for flashy visual effects, heart-breaking moments, or the most grotesque scenes. We all want and need that (almost) 2-hour length of entertainment. Then again, entertainment is not the only word associated with movies. According to The Geek’s Guide to Movies: Are Movies art?, movies are also a form of art. This assumption is reached through a study based on the book “Varieties of Visual Experience: Art as Image and Idea," by Edmund Burke Feldman.

“Dr. Feldman divides the experience of seeing the work of art into the work itself which is perceived (the visual form) and our understanding of what it is we're seeing (the aesthetic structure). While you and I may see the same object, our understanding of what we're seeing is likely very different. So for our discussion we'll take as a given that the visual form exists outside us, there for all to see, but that the aesthetic structure which we give to the work exists solely inside us.”

By taking visual form and aesthetic structure into consideration, we can then obviously draw a conclusion that movies do have the visual form, and we, as the audience, most certainly have our own different understanding that classify movies according to the aesthetic structure. Hence, if we combine all the previous definitions about movies, all movies must be a work of art and they have a sole purpose of entertaining people.

However, the words entertainment and art have never had good terms with each other. As Jonah Goldberg stated in Are movies art? A symposium featuring: Jonah Goldberg * Chris Weinkopf * Brandon Bosworth * Josh Larsen * Cristopher Rapp * Jonathan Last * Terry Teachout, we have several problems regarding this art and entertainment issue. There is a general idea within our society that art is always boring, and therefore, something fun and popular is definitely not an art. To sum it up, some people who consider themselves as a certain “art elite” usually think of art as something that is limited and exclusive. Essentially, there is nothing wrong with this view because we were raised with these kinds of conservative ideas: art is exclusive, original, and one of a kind. This concept makes art so highly regarded in life. Take the painting of Monalisa as example. There is only one Monalisa painting in the whole world, and it can never be this famous and praised as a marvelous piece of art if it can be found in every house. If we follow this idea and compare it with movies, which are produced and sold massively all over the world through DVDs and cinemas, then we would definitely think that movies do not fit into the art category. Is it true that something fun, entertaining, and popular can never be an art?

It seems that the world has forgotten that the “old art”, which we find boring now, used to be popular and entertaining in the old days. It has become dull now because it is not living in its own entertainment time frame anymore. On the other hand, movies that we know of now are in the current entertainment time frame, but they are not receiving such a warm welcome in the “art zone”. The more popular a movie is, the harder it will be to be recognized as an art. The problem is not from the lack of artistic qualities that the movie presented, but from the people who claim themselves as the “art elite”. These people are still living in the “old time frame”, and as long as they are still stuck in the past, everything that is not “old school” will always get a bad welcome from them.

The good thing is that there are also people who live in the present time frame. These people are more open to changes and can cope with the fact that movies–the entertaining and popular ones–can also be considered as a piece of art. Nevertheless, there are still some disputes on whether or not all movies can be deemed as an art. The reason is clear, because if all kinds of movies are to be named as an art, then we must also bear the fact that a personal video shot, amateur cell phone documentation, and even porn will also fall into the category of an art. We certainly need a better mean of classification to really put these movies to their respective boxes. Jesse J. Prinz’s written version of a talk at the Pacific APA, 2007, has then classified movies into two separate categories: 1.) The art films and 2.) The non-art films.

According to When is Film Art?, we can conclude that art films are intended to be exhibited in galleries, independent movie theaters, or film festivals. This really comes to a synch with the view that art is an exclusive class, and is there any better ways to keep its exclusivity than exhibiting films in limited places? Next, we have non-art films that are intended to be exhibited at the cinemas around the world. This kind of movies is made for larger mass audiences, for general public to enjoy. Hence, as the term implies, it is definitely not an art. Apparently, these movies are already labeled as art or non-art from the moment they are intended to be made.

This art and non-art classification of movies does help us to categorize movies. However, this classification does not really bring justice to the non-art films because it denies movies that are shown at public cinemas as an art. We know that not all movies are art, but it is also harsh to say that all movies that are intended for general public as a non-art. This kind of movies–the ones exhibited at cinemas around the world–is usually the entertaining kind. It usually gets so much attention, watched by so many people in the world, and of course, popular. Isn’t art supposed to have an aesthetic structure? Isn’t an aesthetic structure supposed to be our own understanding and acceptance of the object? If that is the case, then isn’t something popular, which attracts a lot of people to see it and bring up different understanding, at least worth a chance to be considered as an art?

In the end, it doesn’t really matter if a movie is considered as an art or not. It also doesn’t matter if one likes an art film or not. Each of us definitely has different taste from one another. Before we start talking about what it is in a movie to us, we must all take a step back and look at the initial definition of art. Art is a form of entertainment that enacts a story by sound and a sequence of images giving the illusion of continuous movement. Actually, only the first four words of this definition that really matters: art is a form of entertainment. Art is an entertainment, and entertainment is there to entertain people. Thus, everything about movies will eventually come down to these things: Do you have a great time watching it? Are you entertained when you watch it? Do you leave the cinema with a smile on your face? If the answers to those questions are yes, then that particular movie has done its purpose well. That kind of movie will surely receive my understanding, and therefore fulfilled the aesthetic structure needed to be classified as a piece of art. At least, it has become a piece of art to me. What about you? What’s in a movie to you?