Name some completely "original" films.

[Project862006]

Unbreakable

 

[Asteroid-Man]

not to cut in, but you listen to any film score by james horner, you'll hear music from before. Horner (and yes, I'm a fan of his) plagiarizes himself like no other.

Hell, that's true for almost any composer. Any good composer has a distinctive sound and style that should be instantly recognizable.

true.

Zimmer has Synths
Williams has rousing action cues
Young has choirs and ominus themes
Elfman has zany cues
Horner copies himself (that's not a bad thing either, love his Honey, I shrunk... score)

True. Williams has those horns, Elfman with the female or child-like chorus, Horner with the trumpets and chorus, Zimmer with the drums and electrical like sounds with orchestra, etc.

There is a difference between Style and reusing an entire musical segment note for note. Your rebuttals get one of these:

 

[Doctor Jones]

How so? In each of their scores you can hear what makes their scores distinct. It's not hard to notice.

 

[Asteroid-Man]

Again, with the other composers their STYLE makes them distinct. With Avatar bars upon bars of music are taken directly from Troy and Enemy at the Gates and reused NOTE FOR NOTE. Why is it so hard to fathom that Avatar wasn't 100% awesome and original!? For God's sake, The Dark Knight was better than Avatar and you don't see me calling it original!

 

[Kent]

How so? In each of their scores you can hear what makes their scores distinct. It's not hard to notice.

You don't see the difference between doing something in the same style and doing something identically note by note?

 

[X-Ray]

Signs
Ichi the Killer
Old Boy
Hana-bi
Last Night

 

[Laderlappen]

Edward Scissorhands
Mulholland Dr.
Clockwork Orange
Rear Window

 

[Doctor Jones]

You don't see the difference between doing something in the same style and doing something identically note by note?

I do. I'm saying that each composer has these distinct characteristcis in their scores for me to tell who they are. When did I say they were identical?

 

[bullets]

Edward Scissorhands

That was basicaly a sequel to Frankenstein.

 

[hammerhedd11]

Nightmare before Christmas

 

[redhawk23]

But you're wrong about the "obvious influence". It wouldn't be nitpicking to say that "Avatar" shares the same basic story of "A Man Called Horse", "Dances With Wolves", and "The Last Samurai" because it does. It's not the exact same story of course, but they all share the same basic premise. "Tarnation" is a documentary assembled over the course of Jonathan Cauoette's lifetime using home video footage that he shot as a way of coping with his disturbing circumstances and the mental illness of his mother. He edited it using a Mac, spliced it in with footage from old films, and constructed it basically as a therapeutic exercise. It's not fiction.

It would help if you would watch the film before making such judgments.

and yet nobody is calling out Dances with Wolves for being unoriginal.

 

[jmc]

It's not about originality, it's about execution, there's nothing wrong with retelling a premise that's been done before, the problem comes when you don't do anything new or different to that premise. If it's just a 'by the book' kind of story where no curve balls are thrown then it shouldn't come as a surprise when people complain it's flat or lacking. Avatar's not the only film that suffers from this, it's just the most recent and high profiled example.

 

[A&W]

Out of all the movies I listed, that was the one I was not sure of posting, but not for the reasons you state.
The thing is, I've come across many people whos jaws dropped at the switchover point while watching that movie, like they had never had their expectations pulled out from under them like that before.
I'm not a horror expert, so I don't know of any other movie that went so far off into a completely different tangent as that movie, it did switch genres, and did so successfully.
edit: and for me, that was somewhat original.

I agree on that part.

 

[spider-neil]

there is;
a) original story
a story that doesn't borrow from an other story

b) original execution
a known or familiar story is presented in a completey new and fresh way
example is memento. the story is a familier one, someone has lost their memeory and they are retracing their tracks to fill in the blanks, the presentation however is original but the movies starts at the end and works it's way back (forwards?) to the beginning.

someone posted toy story. no way on this earth is toy story and original story but the presentation (first fully 3D movie) was completely original.

to cut a long story short, I think there is very few of 'a' exists because everyone borrows from everyone else, even shakespare borrows from the greeks.

 

[Kurosawa]

and yet nobody is calling out Dances with Wolves for being unoriginal.

I have. And not only is the Man Called Horse/Dances With Wolves/Last Samurai/Avatar story not original, it's also racist and lame.

 

[Asteroid-Man]

I do. I'm saying that each composer has these distinct characteristcis in their scores for me to tell who they are. When did I say they were identical?

No what you posted was style, what we were referring to was how the composer for Avatar took his music note for note from his previous films.

 

[TheComicbookKid]

Roadhouse

 

[Sentinel X]

I have. And not only is the Man Called Horse/Dances With Wolves/Last Samurai/Avatar story not original, it's also racist and lame.

Oh boy...

 

[Gunga Diner]

Home Alone was..I think..

Based on a book

 

[Gunga Diner]

Edward Scissorhands
Mulholland Dr.
Clockwork Orange
Rear Window

Based on a book

 

[Gunga Diner]

The Big Lebowski

 

[The Jester]

I'm not the person you asked, but I did find it odd that you said "you don't have to look that far" and then you listed a bunch of movies I never even heard of.

but you do ask a good question. I think jediangel gave a pretty good definition, and if a movie meets that standard than it can be considered original. That doesn't mean some movies can't be even more original than others, but unless it's a rip off, then people shouldn't be labeling something as unoriginal.

But how do you define originality? Without saying "hasn't been done before" because you could say that about almost every movie, even remakes.



edit... I think Beatlejuice is a very original movie, but one could argue "it's about ghosts and ghouls haunting a house and it's been done before" It still had a lot of originality to it just like avatar. I think BJ was probably the first movie that humanized the ghosts in such a down to earth way, and the villain was pretty cool too.

Yes forced relocation has been done before in history, and a person defecting to the other side has been done before. But there has never been a movie where humans forced the relocation of extra terrestrials. That's why it is unfair to make it sound like some kind of rip off.

You just posted before this that anything involving ghosts is not completely original.

I agree that Beetlejuice is an original movie, but don't contradict yourself. Your logic is comparable to saying "anything in space isn't original because movies have taken place in space before"

 

[Golgo-13]

Waterworld

 

[Kurosawa]

Oh boy...

It's the truth.

http://io9.com/5422666/when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar

It's also pretty anti-US.

 

[Sarge 2.0]

and yet nobody is calling out Dances with Wolves for being unoriginal.

And how do you know that?

Also, does no Avatar fanboy bother to read my post? I said nothing about whether or not the movies were original, I said they shared the same basic premise.