As someone who hasn’t watched FernGully (but should), I’m increasingly skeptical of these types of “plagiarism” comparisons between movies. Lindsay Ellis recently broke down the “Aladdin was stolen” narrative and compellingly showed “it’s complicated”, and more obviously, YMS five years ago fucking eviscerated the then-popular argument that The Lion King was a ripoff of Kimba the White Lion.
(Edit: I’d say this especially goes for someone like James Cameron who clearly takes immense pride in his work and setting himself apart. That’s circumstantial, of course, but it seems totally out-of-character.)
Was Kimba also based on Hamlet or something? As far as I’m concerned that plotline is in the public domain. Or is it just using lions to tell the story that was supposedly stolen?
Also, how could Aladdin be “stolen” when it obviously takes direct inspiration from several stories in 1001 Arabian Nights? Are people claiming that it was stolen from some other story that was inspired by the same book?
The Aladdin bit is that there was another project in the Disney pipeline by a famed director that also had a lot of Arabian aesthetics, and I think a lot of the people upset are bitter that the other one just didn’t turn out very well.
You should watch the Lindsay Ellis video, it’s pretty good.
On the other hand, your instincts are entirely right about The Lion King, and when I say “YMS eviscerated it”, I mean that it’s the most comically ridiculous yet superficially believable accusation of plagiarism you could possibly come up with. This is genuinely worth 147 minutes of your time, and it’s one of the funniest videos I’ve ever watched. One of the comments summarizes it best: “Damn, can’t believe kimba invented Africa, and real life just ripped them off like that.”
In 1973, a promotional booklet was released with a public announcement by Williams about the status of his project:
Nasrudin was found to be too verbal and not suitable for animation, therefore Nasrudin as a character and the Nasrudin stories were dropped as a project. However, the many years work spent on painstaking research into the beauty of Oriental art has been retained. Loosely based on elements in the Arabian Nights stories, an entirely new and original film is now the main project of the Williams Studio. Therefore any publicity references to the old character of Nasrudin are now obsolete.
So it seems the Thief and the Cobbler was based in part on the Arabian Nights, and the original plot was also from Arab folklore.
So in other words, Aladdin is merely based on the same work of classic literature, which I believe is public domain. So allegations of plagiarism are foolish, unless all references to Arab folklore are now off the table too.
One of the comments summarizes it best: “Damn, can’t believe kimba invented Africa, and real life just ripped them off like that.”
That’s pretty funny. I might watch the video another day. From your comment I gather enough to conclude that the main premise of the accusation is “Shakespeare told by animals,” and I concur that that’s laughable.
As someone who hasn’t watched FernGully (but should), I’m increasingly skeptical of these types of “plagiarism” comparisons between movies. Lindsay Ellis recently broke down the “Aladdin was stolen” narrative and compellingly showed “it’s complicated”, and more obviously, YMS five years ago fucking eviscerated the then-popular argument that The Lion King was a ripoff of Kimba the White Lion.
(Edit: I’d say this especially goes for someone like James Cameron who clearly takes immense pride in his work and setting himself apart. That’s circumstantial, of course, but it seems totally out-of-character.)
Was Kimba also based on Hamlet or something? As far as I’m concerned that plotline is in the public domain. Or is it just using lions to tell the story that was supposedly stolen?
Also, how could Aladdin be “stolen” when it obviously takes direct inspiration from several stories in 1001 Arabian Nights? Are people claiming that it was stolen from some other story that was inspired by the same book?
The Aladdin bit is that there was another project in the Disney pipeline by a famed director that also had a lot of Arabian aesthetics, and I think a lot of the people upset are bitter that the other one just didn’t turn out very well.
You should watch the Lindsay Ellis video, it’s pretty good.
I see. From wikipedia:
So it seems the Thief and the Cobbler was based in part on the Arabian Nights, and the original plot was also from Arab folklore.
So in other words, Aladdin is merely based on the same work of classic literature, which I believe is public domain. So allegations of plagiarism are foolish, unless all references to Arab folklore are now off the table too.
That’s pretty funny. I might watch the video another day. From your comment I gather enough to conclude that the main premise of the accusation is “Shakespeare told by animals,” and I concur that that’s laughable.
I saw both. Avatar is a marvel of VFX, but the story is definitely ferngully.