Movie Sequences

It is common these days to see Indian movies blatantly copy foreign movies with a small twist in the end. For some reason, the entire scene by scene lifting of another movie has reduced drastically in the last year.

The new trend is to just recreate segments of hit western or south east asian movies. Segments as in, a series of stunt sequences, family situations, drama situations etc. Needless to say, if they never gave any credit to the original after copying an entire movie, they are not going to give any credit for copying segments.

The funny thing is the arguments between me and the Mrs. on these sequences. Somehow she manages to forget the original sequence and is amazed by the creativity of the Director or actor or cinematographer! That gets to me more than the director. It is easier for me to show relation to the original when the source of the sequences is another Indian movie.

For example, the movie we watched recently can be expressed with the equation:

Thotaa = Thotti Jaya + Fanaa - Chimpu

where Chimpu is the fudge factor, or in movie terms the sludge factor!

Here is another sequence:

Hero is cornered on a high rise building
He is standing on the parapet wall on the top floor looking down
The old and wise cop is puffing and panting but nevertheless has a gun pointed at the hero
Cop delivers a dialogue about how the entire building is surrounded and it is "surrender" or "death by falling"!
Hero lets cop count
Just as cop counts one hero spots a train in a distance. (the tracks are not even close to the building, but what the hell!)
When the cop counts three, there is a .5 second pause and the hero falls, arms out
Then we see the rope he is holding
He swings a distance of around half a mile and precisely lands on the top of the train.
The hero looks back and smiles
The old cop who looks like he needs eye glasses rated +5.5 in the right eye and +6.5 in the left, gives a wry smile and identifies the hero's face from the train top a mile away..

Familiar??? Lets see what you think the original is!

Here is another one.

Boy comes to girls parents house to be introduced.
Boy has just lost his job before joining girl on the trip
He needs money
The prospective father in law figures out that he has money troubles
So they have a race (running, go-cart, whatever) and if the boy wins the girls dad will loan him the money, if not the boy should leave the girl alone and walk away!
In the same movie girl stops talking to boy because he hid his "losing the job" part from her. Eventually boy helps girls dad join girls mom (they are fighting as well) and the parents help girl join boy! The director of the Tamizh copy is even supposed to have attributed the sequence to a wrong original! If you are a movie trivia buff name the original, copy and the wrong original mentioned in the media..

.

Comments

[Mirage]

Jumping from a high rise building to a running train in Fanaa was itself a copy from the movie "U.S. Marshals" :)

SO thotaa is a copy of the copy (Copy squared!)

[Sundar Narayanan]

the answers:

U.S. Marshalls was original
Telugu movie Athadu with Mahesh Babu was the copy

Kannamoochi Yenada (Prithviraj, Sathyaraj) - Tamil film
Guess who (Ashton Kuchneer, Bernie Mac) - Original (scene by scene situation copy)
wrongly attributed original "meet the parents"

:)

[Directhit]

have seen this jumping and falling onto the top of train or lorry or some other vehicle in many many movies - ivanga mattum eppadi puthoor kattu pottukkadha padi vizharaangalo :D
also in the recent polladhavan movie the climax fight where he dives bending backwards and attacks the villain is a copy scene by scene from Mel Gibson's Apocalypto - idhellaam movies la saadharanamappa LOL

PS : have been a silent reader of ur blog. continue the awesome job!!

[Kavi]

Moviedom resides in Copydom with No reference pincodes. The tracks are a mile away you see !