The Greatest Movie Rip-Offs

James Cameron basically rips off his own film, Aliens, to use plot points for the film Avatar. (Big bad corporate entity attempts to exploit alien population with the help of military; Robocop type confrontation for the climax.) The aliens are bad guys in the former, and good guys in the latter.

 

Ah, silly me. I missed the part of your post where you explained that this wasn't Terminator 2: Judgement Day released by Tri-Star Pictures.

 

Fatal Attraction and Play Misty forMe.

 

OMG, artists swipe from other artists! I might faint.

BTW, A-L-L-Y.

 

Transmorphers...

 

how about silent night deadly night part II whose first 40 minutes are clips from the first movie? its all worth it for garbage day though...

 

Anything Brian De Palma directed.

 

Somebody said Predator?
Here, here: Robowar (yes, it's another italian rip-off directed by... YES! Bruno Mattei)

 

That movie is SO terrible that everything about it is the absolute worst. Did you notice that after the girl screams "ERIIIIIIIIIIC!" that she says a very calm "wait" afterwards and they left that in???

 

Now, we know you're too lazy to click on a link.

 

A buddy of mine and I watched this with the intent of seeing a movie so bad, it would be hilarious. It did not disappoint.

Every single outdoor scene has a ridiculous amount of "lightning" which is just somebody flicking a light switch a million times. Every actor is utterly terrible, and there are no real special effects to speak of except one horribly done sequence, just to say there's a robot in there.

It won't top Troll 2 but it's close.

 

Yeah, when my son was about 10 we rented it, because it was Saturday night and the selection was picked over.
Expectations weren't high, but I don't think we even got through the whole thing. Even a 10 year old thought it was stupid.

 

I guess the obvious example is A Fistful of Dollars ripping off Yojimbo. They have totally different settings and styles and are both great movies in their own right, but A Fistful of Dollars is still an uncredited remake of Yojimbo.

 

To inject The Beatles into the thread...Beatles Anthology ripped off The Rutles' All You Need Is Cash. Of course All You Need Is Cash is said to have originated after George Harrison showed Eric Idle a rough print of the Long And Winding Road that Apple worked on forever. Certainly more of a satire, but you get the idea.

 

I think the “mockumentary” began with Albert Brooks’ Real Life. No rip-offs. Just the beginning of a trend. There’s at least some idea theft from The Rutles by Spinal Tap.

 

More along the lines of “homage” and “inspired by”: Meet John Doe and the subsequent Network and The Hudsucker Proxy.

 

HANCOCK, starring Will Smith. That guy wasn't ANYTHING like Tony Hancock!

 

The Blair Witch Project ripped me off!!!!!

 

Not a carbon copy, but Good Will Hunting bears a more than casual resemblance to Breaking Away.

 

Body Heat is similar to Double Indemnity.

I'm not sure if one can distinguish homage, rip-off and remake. The Magnificent Seven is an adaptation of The Seven Samurai; The Departed is a remake of the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs; and Kurosawa took the plots of Macbeth and Lear and made Throne of Blood and Ran, respectively.

Under Suspicion is an English language version of Garde a Vue; ditto how The Birdcage copied La Cage aux Folles and Fathers' Day copied Les Comperes. At least in these last three copies, the scriptwriter of the original does get credit for the story in the remake.

 

Which reminds me: Three Men and a Baby and the French version (the name of which escapes me at present).

 

I always thought that 1970's MASH was really based on 1952's Battle Circus, starring Humphrey Bogart. They are both Korean War movies set in a Mobile Army hospital unit, with hard drinking, skirt chasing surgeons. You be the judge

 

I saw a movie today at the theatre and one of the trailers shown before the movie was for a movie called A Dog's Way Home (based on a book of the same name.) This movie is one of many movies about a dog, raised by a family as a puppy, grows up, gets lost far from home and then has a long adventurous journey finding his way back home. I can't even count the number of Dog movies that have followed this same plot, going as far back to some Lassie movies.

To cater it to the child demographic, the narrator of the movie is the dog itself. LOL. So, in that, sense it also rips off all those recent "talking" animal movies too.

This trailer basically tells the whole story too. Probably no reason to see the movie unless you have a kid who is begging to see it.

 

One might throw Cannonball Run it there for a more decadent and car focused theme.

 

Cheaper by the Dozen and Yours, Mine and Ours? Perhaps it was just a similar premise. I haven't seen either for quite some time.