Now that he's been accused of plagiarism again, I reminded of the quickly muted controversy with The Village over a decade ago.
With Old, he's clearly willing to openly make an adaptation of something else. So, is it all really coincidence? Does he just not realize his inspirations, and refuses to own up to them later?
edit: Apparently I was reading a number of one year old articles about something that was already dismissed lol.
What's the accusation? I'm told that Old is based on a graphic novel called Sandcastle. It doesn't seem that this is a secret.
As for The Village, he may have taken some ideas from the book, but I've read the synopsis of the book and it's clearly a different story.
Oh, when I mentioned Old, I meant that that is clearly advertised as an adaptation of the graphic novel, sort of as a counterpoint to the idea to the notion that he is a serial plagarizer.
Some new apple TV show:
https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/01/15/apple-m-night-shyamalan-sued-accused-of-plagiarizing-servant
Regarding the Village, oh okay, I admit I hadn't actually read the novel myself, so I can't comment on it with any firsthand knowledge. Superficially, it did seem very concerning to me. Orson Scott Card commented on it briefly too in an article. And even if it were clearly a different story, the elements that seemed similar/borrowed seemed a bit too distinctive to me to not at least have been inspired.
At any rate, I was only a bit iffy back then, but with this news, I'm now wondering if this is enough to consider a pattern.
Reading the post from warrior-poet, I guess the Servant lawsuit has already been dismissed. I was never aware of it, even though I was aware of the show (but had not seen it).
And it would not shock me if M. Night DID take a couple of ideas from that YA novel. He may have. But if he did, he spun those ideas into a very different story. I guess the question then becomes: How different does a property have to be to avoid plagiarism charges, even if the creator was inspired by something else?
How different does a property have to be to avoid plagiarism charges, even if the creator was inspired by something else?
Ha, I haven't listened to Evanescence in MANY years but I used to back in the day, so that's an interesting story. I have heard some similar things in the past about these kinds of "unintentional plagiarisms." I can see how a person might hear something, read something, or see something and it finds a way into a person's subconscious, only to come back up in their mind again later and they think it's an original thought.
If I may quote the Bible, one thing we have to remember is this: "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
Artists will always be inspired by other artists and similar themes, and ideas will continue to be explored over and over. So I think that the bar for plagiarism charges needs to be relatively high. Of course there is a point when a person is just straight up being an asshole and copying someone else's work, but before calling someone a plagiarist we need to make sure that's what's happening.
Yeah you make a lot of good points there. I definitely agree about the bar needing to be relatively high. I think that goes with a lot of things actually. I think people are quick to judge and make attributions on very little information. And of course, there are injustices in the world...but you can't really just make leaps of judgment before making conclusions about certain scenarios.
shareThat lawsuit a year ago over "Servant" was dismissed:
https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/m-night-shyamalan-servant-copyright-suit-dismissed-1234619229/
As well it should have been. The only similarities are a disturbed mother who thinks a fake baby is real, and who hires a nanny to look out for it. That's a storyline I saw on "Scare Tactics" 20 years ago, and is an even older concept, probably emerging from folklore about "changelings". So no one else can ever write a story concerning a delusional mother who thinks a lifelike doll is their lost child? As a side, note, there was also a movie with Elizabeth Sue (can't remember the title, and it was pretty mediocre) who does the opposite and thinks her living child was a possessed doll and buries the baby in the back yard, unknowingly killing her child.
But more importantly, M. Night didn't create, nor did he write "Servant". He was just a producer (i.e. his name was used to help sell the show, and he may have helped network a few connections to help get it going). Interesting, if he was the focus of the lawsuit.
Have to agree with PrimeMinisterX. That young adult novel is nothing like "The Village". They just share a few themes.
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Never believe. Always question. Rebuke belief, a.k.a. bias, a.k.a. groupthink, a.k.a. ideology, the bane of skeptical, logical reason.
Well, I feel like a dunce; I thought the articles I was reading were recent, not from last year. Thank you for clarifying all that background as well. I kinda just stumbled on a rabbit hole of articles while googling about Old and The Village. This explains where there wasn't any existing threads too lol.
shareI commend you for searching for articles on The Village just because that is perhaps M. Night's most underrated movie.
shareNice!!! I actually quite considered The Village to be my favorite of his films for quite some time. (In recent years, I think I may be favoring Unbreakable more.) But yeah, thinking of catching Old while it's still in theaters, which made me think about The Village suddenly, and then that led me down the google/wiki/moviechat spiral XD
shareI liked Old well enough. I gave it a 7/10. If you tend to like M. Night's movies then you'll probably be entertained by it.
The Village is great though. I remember a lot of people were disappointed in it when it was released because they wanted it to be the horror monster movie that the trailers sold it as, but I was happy to accept it for what it was. The ending is a little disappointing but the rest of the movie is great, and it makes me really want to participate in a similar experiment where I go off into the middle of nowhere and live as if it's the 19th century with a group of like-minded people.
There was actually a PBS show called Colonial House, which was a reality show that followed a group who did something very similar, except they went farther back in time to the 1600s. It was an interesting show.
I quite enjoyed "The Village" as well. James Newton Howard's score really helped it (there are some superb moments in that soundtrack), but I really like M. Night's ability to shape more subdued, understated performances from his actors in a way that always draws me in emotionally. Some people found the twist of "The Village" asinine, but I thought it worked quite well (if it can even really be called a twist). I also see it as a very small part of the whole.
_________________________________________
Never believe. Always question. Rebuke belief, a.k.a. bias, a.k.a. groupthink, a.k.a. ideology, the bane of skeptical, logical reason.
Indeed. The cast was phenomenal as well -- William Hurt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson. . . That is some good clay for Shyamalan to work with.
As for the twist, I am of two minds about it. On one hand, it DID take me off guard. I didn't see it coming, and furthermore I empathized with the villagers who had grown tired of this world. I often feel that way myself. But on the other hand, I do remember watching the movie and expecting something grander.
Your description was correct for me. As an M Night fan, I very much enjoyed Age, but I don't think it's one of his better films by any stretch. I feel like it was a bit sloppier than normal, in regards to his filming and some of the acting. I feel like he was perhaps doing something a little bit out of his comfort zone though so maybe that's part of it. I mean, the movie feels like an M Night movie...but I can't help but feel that he was being more creative and trying to things differently here.
Yeah, I remember a lot of the negative Village backlash was due to people not liking the twist, but I personally liked it a lot more because of that. I think it cemented some of the themes good/evil and nature/nurture questions that would be otherwise absent without the reveal.
lol I can't say I would have any interest in the experiment but that's neat that there was a reality show on it.
In my opinion, The Village was his last great movie.
He started with what I call the Big 4--The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village--and this was an epic run characterized by stories and a filmmaking style that I'd call Spielberg-meets-Hitchcock. All of these films are great.
Then he did Lady in the Water and things started going to shit. From Lady in the Water through After Earth--another four-movie set I will point out--things were very shaky. I did not outright hate any of the films he made during this period, but at the same time I don't go out of my way to watch any of them either.
The Visit was something of a comeback film for him. It was well-reviewed and very profitable. All of his films since then have been, not great, but pretty good. However, I feel like something is missing from his newer work that was present in his earlier films. The Hitchcock is still there, but the Spielberg has faded away.
I continued to enjoy his later films (though I never watched After Earth or Avatar) but I admit yeah, the Village was the last of the great films. I will rewatch The Happening, and a large part of that is because I find the premise absolutely horrifying, so a few of the shots continue to be effective nightmare fuel for me. But I'm glad you draw the line at Village cause I think most ppl draw the line at Signs, and I'm always like...Village was pretty awesome too lol.
The Spielberg observation is a nice one.
Indeed, I thought The Visit was a good solid horror film, but it certainly fails to reach (or try to reach) the levels of otherworldly awe that his first few films managed to do. They had a very grand feel about them imo, in the way our leads found themselves in a strange, enigmatic world.
I very much enjoyed Split, and I liked Glass a lot more than many ppl I think, but yeah, they're enjoyable thriller/dramas, but they don't exactly hit in the way Unbreakable hits. Man, all this talking makes me wanna do an M Night marathon now lmao
To be fair, I'm not the only one to link M. Night to Spielberg:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51HBH9dIDyL._SX377_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Some even say that cover helped to turn opinion against him, or that it at least caused him to inflate his own sense of self-importance.
The Happening was sort of okay. I didn't hate it like many people did, but I don't think it's a particularly good movie either.
The Visit was at least something different and felt unique and it was impressive that he made it for only $5 million.
Split I thought was a little too dark. Glass was better and, while it wasn't a GREAT movie or on par with Unbreakable, I thought it was pretty good and better than the critics' reviews would have you believe.
BTW after our discussion yesterday I decided to go buy The Village on Blu-Ray. And that is how I learned that The Village is not on Blu-Ray. In fact, it is the only M. Night film to never be released on Blu-Ray. What the fuck?
I bought the DVD since that was the only thing available. (Well, you could also buy old copies on VHS.) But for a film like this, with Roger Deakins' cinematography, DVD is just not good enough.
lmao. I would say that all the hype of being called the next spielberg not only inflated his ego, but inflated everyone's expectations as well.
Yeah The Visit and Split were far darker than his usual fare. Split was basically a twisted serial killer movie at the end of the day. It caught me off guard how brutal that ended up being at the end.
And lol! That's awful. I don't actually have any M Night films on bluray (I've been contemplating buying the unbreakable trilogy, but that's it). That's really disappointing to hear about, but yeah I'm not particularly picky about DVD.
I am sure that you're correct. No doubt that designation of "The Next Spielberg" ultimately hurt him. There is just no way to live up to that, especially when just a few films later he'd be making The Lady in the Water and The Happening.
As for the Blu-Ray issue, it is super fucked up that ALL of M. Night's other films are on Blu-Ray but for some reason The Village has been overlooked. This does not make sense at all. I am really hoping that the studio rectifies this and issues the film on 4K Blu-Ray.
As I said, I did buy The Village on DVD. I also picked up Signs on Blu-Ray. And I watched both films over the last couple of weeks. This just served to solidify my feeling that The Village is my favorite M. Night film and Signs comes in at 2nd place.
BTW I created this thread with links to a couple of video essays on The Village. You may be interested:
https://moviechat.org/tt0368447/The-Village/6121539854b08d4a6aee0e00/Two-Video-Essays-on-The-Village
If you are, watch them and chime in and bump that thread.
Ha! Understand. It's easy to slip down those rabbit holes.
It's also still an interesting circumstance, in my view, even if just as an example of our current lawsuit-happy society.
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Never believe. Always question. Rebuke belief, a.k.a. bias, a.k.a. groupthink, a.k.a. ideology, the bane of skeptical, logical reason.
Korn Popz and Rise Crispys
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