10 films that ripped off better movies
Imitation is called the sincerest form of flattery for a reason, but sometimes, that approach can be taken too far and lead to outright plagiarism.
There’s no shame in being influenced by or indebted to the movies or filmmakers that came before – with Quentin Tarantino making it a hallmark of his entire career – but a blatant facsimile almost always yields an inferior final product.
That’s not to say there haven’t been successes along the way, but when one film is so clearly copying the homework of another that legal action ends up being taken, a line has been crossed. That’s not to say that was a fate to befall all ten of the following titles, but either way, reading too far between the lines isn’t required to see how they ended up coming together from either a script or story perspective.
Several of them provide perfectly acceptable entertainment in their own right, to be fair, but that doesn’t mean ripping off a much better movie is a practice that comes either recommended or endorsed.
10 films that ripped off better movies:
10. The Wizard (Todd Holland, 1989)
A classic drama that earned over $350 million at the global box office and won Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Actor’, and ‘Best Screenplay’ may not appear to have much in common with what’s essentially a nauseating exercise in product placement seemingly designed for the sole purpose of hawking Nintendo merchandise and marking Super Mario Bros 3, but it does.
The Wizard finds Fred Savage’s guileful Corey facilitate his brother’s escape from a psychiatric facility, having discovered that his sibling’s innate gifts in one particular arena – in this case, his video game skills – set him up for an easy windfall at an upcoming tournament that carries a substantial cash prize which he’d have no chance of securing himself. Whether that was the intention or not, it sounds an awful lot like Rain Man from the outside looking in.
9. King Solomon’s Mines (J. Lee Thompson, 1985)
Of course, H. Rider Haggard’s novel was published almost a century before Harrison Ford went on his own treasure-hunting mission in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the timing of King Solomon’s Mines was somewhere between coincidental and suspect.
Released to coincide with the 100th anniversary of its source material, the film was shot back-to-back with Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold, initially as part of a planned trilogy that never ended up making it across the finish line. However, would the milestone have even been celebrated had audiences not proven old-fashioned adventures were a prospective box office goldmine through Steven Spielberg’s classic and its successor, Temple of Doom?
That remains up for debate, but Hollywood suddenly deciding it needed two movies as soon as possible focusing on a hat-wearing hero with a penchant for khaki immediately after Indiana Jones arrived on the scene is nothing if not suspicious.
8. Friday the 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980)
Jason Voorhees may have gone on to become every bit as iconic as Michael Myers as one of the slasher genre’s titans across a string of sequels, remakes, and crossovers covering everything from film and comic books to video games and novels, but Friday the 13th was quite literally created to cash in on John Carpenter’s Halloween.
Screenwriter Victor Miller has gone on record saying as much, revealing that he got a call from director Sean S. Cunningham, who suggested the two of them put their heads together and figure out a similar concept that had the potential to replicate what Halloween was doing at the box office.
To be fair, that’s precisely what they did after Friday the 13th recouped its $500,000 budget 100 times over at the box office, launching a long-running saga in the process. On the other hand, it may have turned out to be every bit of Halloween‘s equal in terms of notoriety, but it was nowhere near as good as a movie.
7. Piranha (Joe Dante, 1978)
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was hardly short of imitators, considering Orca, Barracuda, Alligator, Grizzly, Mako: The Jaws of Death, Great White, and Monster Shark all arrived in its wake, but Piranha stood out as the pick of an otherwise-detestable bunch for several notable reasons.
For one thing, it was anointed by Spielberg himself as the best of the Jaws rip-offs to emerge, with Joe Dante’s tongue-in-cheek tone and self-awareness ensuring it gained a life of its own beyond the blatant inspiration, and it even launched a franchise that would see a young and untested filmmaker named James Cameron make his feature-length directorial debut on first sequel The Spawning.
Aiming for silly rather than scary and succeeding, Piranha is a firm cult favourite that embraces its budgetary limitations and provides plenty of fun, but it still can’t hold a candle to the blockbuster that changed the face of cinema forever.
6. Justice League (Joss Whedon, 2017)
Joss Whedon wasn’t credited on the theatrical release, but it’s since been made abundantly clear through the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League that he was tasked to reshoot great swathes of a comic book crossover that earned $657m at the box office but still couldn’t turn a single penny of profit.
Casting envious glances at Marvel Studios, Warner Bros and DC Films was too desperate to try and play catch-up with its most famous rival, with Snyder’s dark and gloomy tone reaping big financial rewards but poor critical notices when Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice landed in cinemas.
After Snyder dropped out of the director’s chair following a family tragedy, the studio drafting in the exact same filmmaker who’d steered Marvel’s The Avengers and sequel Age of Ultron to a combined haul of almost $3 billion globally was as transparent and cynical as it gets, even if it ultimately backfired.
5. The Fast and the Furious (Rob Cohen, 2001)
A handsome rookie cop is tasked to go undercover to befriend and ultimately take down a gang of criminals responsible for a series of heists and robberies, with the group being fronted by an undeniably charismatic frontman who treats his friends as if they were his own family.
The police officer ends up being seduced by their liberating, hedonistic way of life to the extent that once he’s welcomed into the crew, he finds himself torn between doing his civic duty to solve the case or sabotaging his own career to let them off the hook, matters complicated by one of them becoming his love interest.
Anyway, that’s enough about Point Break; this was supposed to be about The Fast and the Furious. Kathryn Bigelow’s movie is better, but Rob Cohen’s proved to be bigger than anyone could have possibly imagined, with the 11th mainline chapter in The Fast Saga – and 12th overall – roaring into cinemas in April of 2025 to improve upon its status as fifth highest-grossing franchise in cinema history.
4. Mac and Me (Stewart Raffill, 1988)
Whereas the aforementioned The Wizard did at least distance itself from spiritual predecessor Rain Man while burying it under an avalanche of product placement, Mac and Me couldn’t have done much more to remind everyone that was at its essence “McDonalds and Coca-Cola present: Definitely Not E.T.“
A young boy comes into contact with a visitor from beyond the stars, and the government isn’t too pleased about this development, causing the humans he’s befriended to try to keep him safe as the walls begin closing in. Same concept, same plot, but the execution was lightyears apart. E.T. had a secret Harrison Ford cameo, Mac and Me brought in Ronald McDonald to put the exclamation point on a dance-off set in one of the fast food chain’s locations. Similar, yes, but so very different.
3. Critters (Stephen Herek, 1988)
There’s scarcely a bandwagon money-hungry studio executives won’t jump on if it’s proven to be successful elsewhere, with Joe Dante’s charming, mischievous, and razor-sharp Gremlins helping to usher in a brand new age of cinema after it conspired – alongside Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – to serve as the basis for the creation of a new PG-13 rating.
Suddenly, comedy-tinged horrors (or horror-tinged comedies) about small creatures wreaking havoc were everywhere, with Critters emerging as the most high-profile amongst the likes of Ghoulies, Troll, Hobgoblin, Munchies, and Leprechaun.
Co-writer and director Stephen Herek has repeatedly denied that Critters exists solely because of Gremlins, noting that his script was written and ready to go before the latter even started production. Of course, the success of one helped accelerate development of the other, and the similarities are there for all to see.
2. Disturbia (D.J. Caruso, 2007)
Somehow, Disturbia survived two separate lawsuits to go down in legal history as a movie that in no way, shape, or form was a remake, reinvention, or adaptation of either Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Rear Window or the short story It Had to be Murder, which originally inspired the 1954 mystery thriller.
Even though both focus on a housebound main character who staves off the looming threat of boredom by indulging their voyeuristic side before becoming convinced their neighbour is a murderer, a pair of copyright infringement lawsuits brought against executive producer Steven Spielberg, his production company DreamWorks, Universal Studios, and its parent company Viacom were dismissed.
To say Disturbia wears those Rear Window influences on its storytelling sleeve would be stating the obvious, but it evidently didn’t do so to an extent that stretched into illegality.
1. Lockout (Stephen Saint Leger and James Mather, 2012)
Disturbia may have survived the courtroom, but the Luc Besson-produced Lockout most definitely did not, with John Carpenter emerging victorious after suing the filmmakers for plagiarism, claiming the sci-fi actioner had blatantly ripped off Escape from New York and its sequel Escape from L.A.
In a manner ever so slightly different to Snake Plissken but evidently not enough for the judge, Guy Pearce’s roguish former operative is promised his freedom if he can successfully rescue the daughter of the president from a space station that’s found the inmates actively running the asylum.
After Besson’s appeal was rejected, he was forced to pay out €450,000 to Carpenter, Escape from New York writer Nick Castle, and production company StudioCanal. It’s one thing to nod towards somebody else’s film and use it as the springboard for your own, but it’s something else entirely to be successfully sued over it.
