Have Your Say: When You Think It Was Inspired By...

Editor, Europe; Rotterdam, The Netherlands (@ardvark23)
Have Your Say: When You Think It Was Inspired By...
We've all encountered it: the sense of deja-vu when you see a film and one scene suddenly looks VERY familiar for some reason. And you think: that scene, or idea, or design bowled me over, but in another (favorite) film from ages ago. And you know with absolute certainty that the director has seen that film, and has used that bit for himself. Was this bit (gasp) stolen? Or was the director at least heavily inspired by it?

Famous examples include Jennifer Connelly screaming underwater in a bathtub in Requiem for a Dream, a scene which Darren Aronofsky seemed to have lifted shot for shot from Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue. Director Quentin Tarantino, often happy to list his influences, has been hit with many questions about inspirations he flat-out denies (cough-Truffaut-cough). And last week we saw the same questions pop-up when the trailer for Overlord seemed to contain similarities to unused designs and scripts from some years back.

Pondering similarities can be fun, especially if you're not too mean-spirited about it and when you can avoid yelling "STOLEN!!" like a crazed fanboy at every opportunity. I mean, we are all inspired on a daily basis by things we see, right? In the case of Overlord, some sleuthing by Dutch magazine Schokkend Nieuws allowed us to see this kick-ass design art for the Nemesis project, and you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes (or read Schokkend Nieuws' article) to see that this drawing itself contains a few nods to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom already.

So that brings us to our question of the week: can you share with us your moments when you saw a film and were 100% sure it was inspired by another one? And do you consider that moment to be an homage, a parody, a shout-out, or a sneak steal?

Chime in, in the comments below, and HAVE YOUR SAY!!


(The Nemesis artwork is by Sarina Reilingh, and its use here has been approved by the artist.)
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