Comments on: [GUEST POST] L.B. Gale on “John Carter” and Ripoffs

By: L.B. Gale

L.B. Gale — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:20:56 +0000

“Also, can’t the filmmakers remind the critics that theyve adapted a hundred-year-old book. If people can’t be bothered to find out even that much, they have no standing to be criticizing the film. And are we supposed to pay attention to people reviewing trailers now?”

I think this has been the major issue of the marketing campaign. Forget the critics; why can’t the people selling the movie tell us what we need to know? It should have been sold as a classic–as something that you should have heard about if you’d never heard about it. The marketing campaign left it open to being seen as derivative and that’s a shame.

By: Michael Dempsey

Michael Dempsey — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 15:06:08 +0000

I’m glad you point out Virgil and Homer. Many of Shakespeare’s tales were taken from earlier versions as well…Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, etc. etc. As a writer, re-telling an earlier tale allows you to see what already works and doesn’t (to your mind, at least) and tweak it…stories are retold, and often improve in the re-telling. By the time Batman’s origin had evolved through countless re-boots and was tweaked yet again by the film Batman Begins, it had achieved a level of symbolic detail and mythic resonance that the original telling could never have achieved. Shakespeare is the world’s greatest RE-WRITER. What’s sad is that our culture, now in the throws of a ridiculously legalistic crusade against plagiarism, fails to comprehend that EVERY ARTIST “steals.” There’s nothing new under the sun.

By: James Holder

James Holder — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:59:30 +0000

Good article. I find the whole contemporary debate around “ripoffs” to be rather ill informed. Some internet “critics” just can’t be bothered to do a simple thing called research. And of course, if they can deploy the “ripoff” bomb, then they can diminish a work when it does not deserve to be because of what influenced the work.

By: Scott Laz

Scott Laz — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:38:57 +0000

See Johnathan Lethem’s “The Ecstasy of Influence” for a solid defense of ripoffs.

Also, can’t the filmmakers remind the critics that theyve adapted a hundred-year-old book. If people can’t be bothered to find out even that much, they have no standing to be criticizing the film. And are we supposed to pay attention to people reviewing trailers now?

By: PaulNYC

PaulNYC — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:22:58 +0000

I find criticism of “ripoffs” to be tiring at best. Everything is a ripoff of something that came before — at least in some part. On occasion something with more originality might come along and if not completely indecipherable, be ripped off itself in a more derivative way. There is value in getting under the surface of things and seeing how they tick but not at the expense of being able to simply enjoy things. If I sat around constantly pointing out where a piece of music is derivative of other pieces of music, I will be so busy marking trees that I won’t enjoy the walk through the forest.

By: Jeff Patterson

Jeff Patterson — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:07:14 +0000

I recall a similar outcry from less esteemed voices when the film version of Heinlein’s The Puppeteers was released. It so resembled the various invaders-hijacking-human-body movies that had come before that critics found it highly derivative, despite the source material pre-dating all of them.

By: Paul (@princejvstin)

Paul (@princejvstin) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:15:11 +0000

Harold Bloom likes LITTLE,BIG and precious little else in genre.

But Bloom does have a point–new wine in old bottles. Remix, and adapt, and make new.