A few months ago, I was inspired to write a piece after discussing a very derivative movie with my blogger/reviewer friend Rachel. She had then recently seen the Canadian/South Korean animated feature Spark, which saw a brief limited theatrical release here in North America in the middle of April. It came and went, no one even really noticed. Most folks seemed to point out that the film was way too similar to Star Wars, others who saw it said it felt like the umpteenth re-telling of the Chinese literary classic Journey to the West. From the trailers, it looked like a cross between Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy for kids.
To me… The movie looked a lot like platform games that came out in the late 90s/early 2000s, one of those very games got a similar movie adaptation over a year ago: Ratchet & Clank. The problem is, Spark didn’t fail critically because of its similarities to other franchises, but rather… How it didn’t do anything unique with what it had. I went on to argue that the “rip-off” label is overused on the Internet. Everything’s called a rip-off of something, but really, some of the best things are technically “rip-offs”: Star Wars, for starters. Basically Westerns, Akira Kurosawa films, Flash Gordon, classic pulp stuff, science fiction novels, all rolled into one. We love it because it did cool things with those familiar beats.
Really, any great story takes what’s been told before and does something with it all that keeps it thrilling and fresh.
I also talked about how I myself worry as a writer. I’ve been working on a fantasy/space opera/sci-fi cross-genre project for over a decade. It’s been brewing since 2004, and it actually evolved out of stories I was writing years before that, so in a way… I’ve been working on this thing since winter 2000. Almost seventeen years! And here I am now, worried that it – whenever it’s released to the world – will be perceived as a rip-off of two things. First, my concern was James Gunn’s film adaptations of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Second, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, visionary director Luc Besson’s adaptation of the long-running comic series Valerian and Laureline.
The project shares big similarities with both, and again, that worries me greatly. I had all these ideas in place for years, long before I had ever heard of Guardians of the Galaxy, and I only learned about Valerian‘s source material last year. So what was I to do? Cut that stuff? Dilute it till it was unnoticeable? No! That was the heart and DNA of the story! It doesn’t help that I also loved both Guardians movies and consider them to be Marvel Cinematic Universe highlights, and I’m eager to see Valerian on a big screen. It’s about space and other planets and such, what I’m writing about!
Now surely, what Guardians and Valerian did were probably done somewhere else before. The elements that make these two sci-fi pictures unique is that they were things other non-sci-fi movies had, but done differently… and those particular older works where what influenced me over a decade ago. But how would the public know that?
I had written about this dilemma before Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was released. I saw the film opening day and I adored it. I was then inspired by the film… Not what was in it, but rather its sheer quality and strong script. It challenged me, big time. It told me, “Take what you’re doing, and make it better!” Not better than Guardians Vol. 2, not superior, no… Make it better than what it used to be. Take what you have, and keep improving it. Make it the best thing you can possibly make of it. Pour your heart, soul, and passion into it. More than you’re currently doing right now.
That’s what I’ve been doing for the past few months. Changes, re-arranging, additions, I’m more in-tune with the story than I had been for years, really getting to the cores of the characters and sharpening so much of what was already there. Back in early 2016, I had made some serious decisions, which I laid out here on my first post. These very decisions improved a story I had been having so much trouble with, and a lot of those troubles came after the first Guardians was released. So much self-consciousness over the similarities and tone, but I had also excised a lot of material that was just weighing this whole thing down and making it a chore to write. Stuff that was lingering for years, that just needed to go. With those improvements made, the story roared alive once more.
I like a challenge. Perhaps it’s just a form of competition, another work of media reminding me of how I have to better my projects, and make them stronger and much more compelling. Maybe Valerian will have the same impact on me, it’ll make me go to my story and say, “How can I make this much better?”
In the meantime, I have to keep reminding myself that several great works have taken from others, now the part I have to master is making my own spin on these ideas convincing, because them being there isn’t enough… I have to show an audience that this isn’t some wannabe, but rather… Something I have always wanted to make, that’s a love letter of sorts to what I’ve seen, watched, and heard over the years.
To me, it just seems like a hard task in a movie commentary climate that shouts “rip-off” at all kinds of things, liberally. Heck, even the things I’m worried about are called rip-offs somewhere. The Guardians movies were compared to the 90s sci-fi TV show Farscape by some folks, Valerian is being called a Star Wars derivative, fancy that. It’s pretty complicated…
Writers… What do you personally do about these situations and dilemmas?
