In 2004, Chasing
Liberty was released to theaters.
This romantic comedy saw Anna Foster (Mandy Moore), the daughter of
President James Foster (Mark Harmon) travelling across Europe in an attempt to
escape her father’s overbearing nature.
Hot on her trail are Special Service agents Alan Weiss (Jeremy Piven)
and Cynthia Morales (Annabella Sciorra).
Little does Anna know that the guy she ran away with, Ben Calder
(Matthew Goode), is another agent, undercover to protect her.
The reason I am bringing all that up right away is because
there was another movie that came out around the same time with a similar
premise. This is something that happens
often. There will be two studios that
develop movies with similar stories around the same time. This doesn’t mean a studio like The Asylum
that makes a movie to cash in on the potential success of another movie. The movies in these cases aren’t low budget
schlock made for a quick buck. These are
big, Hollywood movies that have similar concepts that were for whatever reason
conceived around the same time.
First Daughter is
the other movie in the Chasing Liberty
scenario. The story isn’t quite the
same, though there are some big similarities.
Samantha MacKenzie (Katie Holmes), daughter of President John MacKenzie (Michael
Keaton), goes off to college and falls in love with another college student, James
(Mark Blucas). James ends up being an
undercover agent. The same love story
with the same characters. The only
difference is that it is in a different setting.
This whole situation made me want to go back and look at
some of the other instances in which two movies came out at around the same
time with similar concepts. These aren’t
simply movies of similar genres, though in many cases they share a genre. These are movies, such as Chasing Liberty and First Daughter, where there are big similarities in the
movies. The stories line up in strange
ways. There are details that seem
conveniently the same. Those are the
movies I’m going to be looking at throughout this post.
Armageddon
and Deep Impact
In 1998, Michael Bay directed a movie called Armageddon about a group of oil riggers
sent into space to blow up an asteroid the size of Texas that is headed toward
Earth. That year also saw the release of
Deep Impact, a Mimi Leder directed
movie about an asteroid seven miles wide that is headed toward Earth. A group of astronauts is sent to blow up the
asteroid before impact, while the people of Earth prepare for the destruction
that is likely to happen.
This pairing is one of the most popular pairings when people
talk about similar movies being released around the same time. The late nineties were big for pairings like
this, but none lives in infamy in the same way as this pairing. Perhaps it’s because the two movies were both
popular. People remember them both
fondly. This love and adoration may be
the reason that this pairing is a go-to whenever two similar movies get
released. It is practically the tip top
of that kind of release.
Olympus Has Fallen
and White House Down
The asteroid double feature isn’t the only action pairing to
ever be released. In 2013, there were
two movies released that were about terrorists attacking the White House. The first was Olympus Has Fallen. The
movie followed a former secret service agent that comes to the aid of the
President of the United States of America when the White House is attacked by
terrorists from North Korea. The movie
was successful enough to spawn a sequel set to come out next year titled London Has Fallen.
Less successful, but more beloved by fans is White House Down. It came out a few months later. This movie followed a man who hopes to become
secret service. When the White House is
attacked by terrorists, he is the only man who can protect the President of the
United States of America. It is the Armageddon to the Deep Impact of Olympus Has
Fallen. White House Down manages to have a bigger scope to its action,
which I would attribute to director Roland Emmerich. That guy knows how to go big when it comes to
his action.
Antz and
A Bug’s Life
To be quite honest with all of you, I haven’t seen Antz.
I can tell you so much as these two movies are both animated movies
about ants. And they both involve some
sort of romantic feelings between the main character and the princess of the
ant colony. This duo of dueling movies
made for one of the most interesting duos not because of the movies
themselves. It was instead because of
what the development of the movies sparked.
If I had to sum this up really briefly, there was a feud
that erupted between Pixar, who made A
Bug’s Life, and Dreamworks, who put out Antz. Pixar claimed that Dreamworks stole their
idea. Dreamworks scheduled their movie
to be released a month before A Bug’s
Life because A Bug’s Life was
coming out at the same time as The Prince
of Egypt. The two companies fired
back and forth at each other over the scheduling and similarities. It became one of the most well-known feuds between
movie companies. It was all because of Antz and A Bug’s Life sharing story elements.
Scary Movie 5,
A Haunted House, Paranormal Whacktivity, and 30
Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo
For whatever reason, filmmakers have decided that there is a
large need to spoof the Paranormal Activity
movies. Scary Movie 5, the 2013 installment of the biggest franchise in
spoof filmmaking was obviously going to take on the Paranormal Activity franchise due to the fact that it is one of the
biggest horror franchises currently churning out movies (the last having come
out last month). The 2013 film A Haunted House comes from Marlon
Wayans, one of the people behind the original Scary Movie.
Then we end up in the land of other spoofs from people not
involved in the Scary Movie
franchise. 2013 also saw the release of Paranormal Whacktivity, which I haven’t
seen. I can’t tell you much about it,
but it’s definitely a spoof of the Paranormal
Activity films. And finally, there
is a fourth 2013 spoof of Paranormal
Activity in the overly long titled 30
Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo. I have seen that one. I have loathed that one. I have written about that one for this
blog. It comes from the guy behind The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah
Marshall and Felt Superbad About It.
Also not a good movie.
I don’t know why four different movies were made spoofing Paranormal Activity. There isn’t a whole lot to be mined from the
material, as far as I know. It is hard
to find jokes within a static camera shot.
I can say that we’re lucky Friedberg and Seltzer didn’t jump in on this
one. Though, they were busy releasing The Starving Games which might be worse
than any of these, so I don’t know. I’m
just glad it stopped at four. Unless it
didn’t.
Honorable Mentions:
Volcano and Dante’s Peak
Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman
Hercules and The Legend of Hercules
Observe and Report
and Paul Blart: Mall Cop
Infamous and Capote
The Prestige and The Illusionist
The Raid and Dredd
Before I finish, I want to bring up a pair of movies that
have yet to come out but both have similar stories. There are actually two Jungle Book movies set to come out within the next two years. One is being produced by Disney and the other
by Warner Brothers. It will be a duel of
the Jungle Books. This isn’t the first time that this has
happened. Between 1994 and 1998, there
were three separate Jungle Book
movies that came out. For some reason,
studios love to make movies based on The
Jungle Book.
There are surely many more examples of movies that come out
at the same time and share more than a few aspects of their story. It is something that frequently happens for
whatever reason. Perhaps the writers of
the two movies saw something in the news that sparked them to write the movies
and pitch them to two different studios who thought the ideas were good. Shared inspiration type of thing. Or maybe, as seems the case for Antz and A Bug’s Life, one studio heard the idea from the other, thought it
was good, and decided to make it themselves.
This is a topic that I’m likely to come back to in the
future. It is a topic that, with more
time to write (I admit I started this post very late and wrote most of it in
the past 24 hours), I could get deeper into it and really figure some things
out. That’s the dream. As for now, let’s just take a good look at
the movies we watch and try to figure out why so many of them are similar.
Or we can read the notes.
It might wash away that terrible post ending. Yikes!
Here they are:
- A few movies I’ve previously covered came up during this post. I discussed A Haunted House and 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I quickly mentioned The Legend of Hercules.
- Chasing Liberty was suggested to me by @up4anything2.
- There are surprisingly no actor or director connections in the movie to other Sunday “Bad” Movies, so… Yeah.
- Have you seen Chasing Liberty? What did you think of it? Is it that similar to First Daughter? What do you think about other movies with similar stories? There is a comments section below if you want to discuss this kind of stuff.
- The comments section is also a good place to suggest movie for me to watch in the future. If not there, you can always find me on Twitter and tell me what movies you want me to see.
- Next week’s movie is going to be An American Hippie in Israel. No idea what the movie is going to be like, so I’ve got nothing to say right now. See you next week when I do have something to say.
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