Did star wars rip off the new gods?

[Lightning Rider]

I said this, back when this thread had its first go-around:



Let's just say that's a given. I'm not interested in talking the influences to death. My point now is that, if you showed a Fourth World movie today, it would probably not do well because people would look at it as mining the same material as Star Wars.

And I contend that's an injustice. We can argue about the relationship between one and the other until doomsday--but it's not going to change the fact that audiences see Star Wars as the original and they would see anything else--Fourth World or JOHN CARTER--as the knock-off.

We have only to look at JUSTICE LEAGUE to see how it doesn't matter if you were truly there first (the Justice League of America clearly were before the Avengers)--the memory of pop culture is obtuse. George Lucas has tricked the world into thinking he was the High Father.

I think there’s definitely enough of a difference to make it feel fresh enough, the harder trick imo is selling that kind of mythological space epic to a modern audience. It would take a masterpiece in film-making.

[dancj]

5. L'incal by Moebius - french comics from witch all modern SF is inspired from

Star Wars predates The Incal.

[Trey Strain]

I think a Fourth World movie would suffer from the same problem that Fourth World comics suffer from -- no people.

Yes, I know that Star Wars is supposed to happen long ago and far away. But those are people who the audience is rooting for.

[dancj]

I think a Fourth World movie would suffer from the same problem that Fourth World comics suffer from -- no people.

Yes, I know that Star Wars is supposed to happen long ago and far away. But those are people who the audience is rooting for.

I rooted for R2D2

[The Darknight Detective]

Audiences wouldn't have been completely wrong. Obviously New Gods isn't based on Star Wars, but the business decision by movie studios to make the film almost certainly would have been - just like the decision to make Narnia films was probably based on the success of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films.

The audience would still be wrong, regardless of the studio's intent, because the source material of the Fourth World and Narnia still predates the others you mentioned. Frankly, anybody who would argue that a New Gods movie was a ripoff of Star Wars after knowing which came first would be disingenuous, IMO.

[Jim Kelly]

There's a problem for the movie studios in wanting to look enough like the other thing to benefit from the interest, yet not too close that people believe the movie is only trying to ride on the success of the other and has nothing new to offer.

Because the Marvel movies have Thanos, DC doesn't want their Darkseid to appear too similar. And yet Thanos is very simiar to Darkseid. If DC does introduce Darkseid, they have to be very careful about setting up his relationship to Orion--so it doesn't look like they're copying the Darth Vader - Luke Skywalker relationship.

It's ironic, because DC shouldn't have to worry about these similarities. And yet if the DC movies seem too similar, audiences will just view them as inferior knock-offs--and opt for what they regard as the "real thing": Marvel and Star Wars.

And the more effort a movie studio puts into trying to distance their work from the work of others, at some point it's going to seem like wasted effort and not worth the investment of so much capital.

[The Darknight Detective]

There's a problem for the movie studios in wanting to look enough like the other thing to benefit from the interest, yet not too close that people believe the movie is only trying to ride on the success of the other and has nothing new to offer.

Because the Marvel movies have Thanos, DC doesn't want their Darkseid to appear too similar. And yet Thanos is very simiar to Darkseid. If DC does introduce Darkseid, they have to be very careful about setting up his relationship to Orion--so it doesn't look like they're copying the Darth Vader - Luke Skywalker relationship.

It's ironic, because DC shouldn't have to worry about these similarities. And yet if the DC movies seem too similar, audiences will just view them as inferior knock-offs--and opt for what they regard as the "real thing": Marvel and Star Wars.

And the more effort a movie studio puts into trying to distance their work from the work of others, at some point it's going to seem like wasted effort and not worth the investment of so much capital.

Understood, Jim, but it's not as if WB can't send out a press release to every major and minor film critic stating the facts. If a critic ignores it, then they should be called on it, IMO.

[Midnighter]

Every writer/creator is influenced by what came before. It stems from stories being orally handed down amongst people both before and after the written word came into being. It's unavoidable. It's practically in our collective Dna.

[Lee Stone]

I think a Fourth World movie would suffer from the same problem that Fourth World comics suffer from -- no people.

Yes, I know that Star Wars is supposed to happen long ago and far away. But those are people who the audience is rooting for.

The Forever People are people. As are Mister Miracle and Barda.
Lightray and Orion look like people.

The only problem a New Gods movie would have with modern audiences isn't that they would draw comparisons to Star Wars.
It's that they would draw comparisons to Thor.

[The Darknight Detective]

Every writer/creator is influenced by what came before. It stems from stories being orally handed down amongst people both before and after the written word came into being. It's unavoidable. It's practically in our collective Dna.

True. Nothing has been truly original for quite a few millennia and beyond.

[jbmasta]

Star Wars' story is so generic that you can make comparaisons with everything really.

And that's one of the reason why a new hope was so successfull, that's an universal tale.

The idealistic young blood, the old mentor, the princess to save, the diamond in the rough and his pet, the evil villain...all the stereotypes are there.

Let's call them tropes. It would be nice of one of the Star Wars protagonists wasn't a fatherless figure (we don't get much about Uncle Owen, but A New Hope wasn't the height of Luke's characterisation so who knows as far as the movies go) who grew up on a remote desert planet, only to be discovered as one of the most powerful Jedi upon who was responsible for the fate of the Jedi Order, gaining the attention of a Sith Lord intent on corrupting them in doing so.

[Jim Kelly]

True. Nothing has been truly original for quite a few millennia and beyond.

As Gertrude Stein wrote "A rose is a rose is a rose."

And it's all very nice to have these academic discussions about how nothing really is new. However, the problem arises when people who are not interested in higher intellectual pursuits, but only in making profit for themselves, use this kind of slippery argument to take ideas from other people and then not compensate those people because those people didn't really own them. So the argument goes. But then these same capitalists will claim ownership of all the ideas and get filthy rich.

So we're kind of just helping those .1% claim everything for themselves, by making the argument for them that they're free to plant their flag wherever they want. It's the stupid rest of us that didn't make sure to trademark and copyright everything. Us stupid 99.9% deserve every bad thing we get. Merry Christmas.

[Coin Biter]

I’ve not seen anyone argue that the Justice League, as a concept, is a rip-off of the Avengers. However, the Justice League film involves a group of costumed heroes banding together to fight an alien menace. Similarly, the Avengers film had involved a group of costumed heroes banding together to fight an alien menace. Therefore, those films are going to invite comparison. There’s no way of avoiding that, but I’ve not seen people argue that Warner Bros/DC are copying the “team up group of superheroes” idea. I have seen people argue that their decision to make the film might be influenced by the Avengers’ success, but then again, that could be right. If critics are under a misapprehension as to how old the comic origins of the Justice League is, I suspect that if anything they might believe it’s older than it is, given how old Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are as characters.

So Justice League/Avengers has a comparison issue because the films take the same form. I doubt that would be true of New Gods and any Star Wars comparisons, which are fairly broad anyway, whatever the comparisons between the Orion/Darkseid parentage and the Luke/Vader one (bearing in mind that Darkseid is not an analogous figure to Vader, and there wouldn’t be any “redemption” arc in the movie ). The situation would be closer to Guardians of the Galaxy/Star Wars, where some similar tropes would be used.

So I actually don’t really feel there are any problems at all with Star Wars/New Gods to be honest.

Thanos/Darkseid is another matter, unfortunately. The only thing that could be said is that Warner Bros could have pre-empted that if they’d chosen to.

So far as using other people’s ideas to make profits from corporate owned IP while the original creators are left with little compensation is concerned, that’s almost a separate point, but yes, it is the black heart of the American comics industry.

[mortymantis]

There's a problem for the movie studios in wanting to look enough like the other thing to benefit from the interest, yet not too close that people believe the movie is only trying to ride on the success of the other and has nothing new to offer.

Because the Marvel movies have Thanos, DC doesn't want their Darkseid to appear too similar. And yet Thanos is very simiar to Darkseid. If DC does introduce Darkseid, they have to be very careful about setting up his relationship to Orion--so it doesn't look like they're copying the Darth Vader - Luke Skywalker relationship.

It's ironic, because DC shouldn't have to worry about these similarities. And yet if the DC movies seem too similar, audiences will just view them as inferior knock-offs--and opt for what they regard as the "real thing": Marvel and Star Wars.

And the more effort a movie studio puts into trying to distance their work from the work of others, at some point it's going to seem like wasted effort and not worth the investment of so much capital.

Thanos is a rip off of darkseid. JIM starlin was tasked with creating a new gods villain for marvel. He first chose metron and then was encouraged to go with darkseid. Thanos is darkseid ripnpff too

[Lee Stone]

Thanos is a rip off of darkseid. JIM starlin was tasked with creating a new gods villain for marvel. He first chose metron and then was encouraged to go with darkseid. Thanos is darkseid ripnpff too

While this is true, a lot more has been done with Thanos at Marvel than Darkseid at DC. And most of the New Gods runs have been repeatedly retconned out of existence, leaving Darkseid with barely any history. Whereas at Marvel, there's Starlin's original Thanos saga from Captain Marvel up through Warlock, then through the Infinity Trilogy and his use in Annihilation. All still in canon, I believe.
Marvel's done much more with Darkseid than DC.
If DC could ever just keep one New Gods thread going without hitting a reset button...