Friday Five – Identical Movies

Today, Mirror Mirror, a comedic retelling of the Snow White fairy tale opens (which looks pretty awful).  Interestingly enough, another Snow White movie, Snow White and the Huntsman (which looks pretty cool), opens in a month and a half.  At first glance, it seems odd that two movies based on the same story are being released around the same.  However, given that different movies have different development timeframes, sometimes two very similar movies are released at the same time.  Most of the time (as I suspect Mirror Mirror/SW&TH is) it is purely coincidence.

For this week’s Friday Five, I thought it would be fun to look back at identical movies that happened to be released around the same time.

Deep Impact/Armageddon (1998)
Released two months apart, these disaster flicks both featured an asteroid slamming into the planet, a surprisingly all-star cast, and a nearly identical point-by-point narrative outline (including a hero sacrifice).  Both films also contributed to a brief resurgence to the disaster genre in the late 90s.  It is very doubtful that anyone was ripping anyone off here since the idea of an asteroid hitting the planet is hardly that original.  However, the stars aligned for these two films to be put into production at the same time.  I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if there was some internal rush by the filmmakers to get their movie out first.

As an interesting side note, Deep Impact was the more profitable of the two movies, but I’d argue that it is largely forgotten now, whereas Armageddon is still popularly remembered (though, I suspect that has much to do with it being directed by Michael Bay and revitalizing Bruce Willis’s career).

Dante’s Peak/Volcano (1997)
Before asteroids were going to kill the Earth, the Earth was going to kill the sky.  These volcano films (both featuring a scientist who knows better than all, his love interest, and a threat which is never solved) are best left forgotten.  Hell, they flopped at the box office, so it is unlikely anybody saw them.  I will grant the movies this, while Volcano took the ID4 route and had their threat destroy LA (yes, the movie actually proposed the idea the LA was built on a giant volcano), Dante’s Peak had its setting in a more rural, mountain town environment.  However, different settings are not enough for it to be a different movie.

The Losers/A-Team/RED/Expendables (2010)
In summer of 2010, we had a barrage of tongue-in-cheek action films about a rag-tag group who get framed by their employers.  All of them were fun in their own way, and each had their own twist to them to make them stand out.  In fact, I’d be willing to bet that the filmmakers knew of the other movies, and didn’t fully realize that the core subjects are basically the same.  However, when looking at the movies, it is hard not to notice the glaring similarities.  In fairness, these films all began development at very different times and, like The A-Team, some were in development hell for a long, long time.  I bet some of the filmmakers looked at the other movies and thought that they’d have the year to themselves.  Oops.

Then again, Stallone, probably saw those movies were coming and said, “Eh, who cares?  I want to make a movie with my friends.”

The Prestige/The Illusionist (2006)
Because 2006 felt that one film about turn-of-the-century magicians wasn’t enough, two came out within a two month timespan.  Since the Internet would burn me alive if I suggested that director Christopher Nolan ripped someone else off because his film came out second, I won’t go there (in truth, he didn’t).  This is another one of those strange coincidences that happens.  Honestly, given the subject matter, I’m surprised that one studio didn’t position their movie further away.  Perhaps they figured that if the success or failure of one would hinge on the other if there was a longer gap.  In the end, both movies were very entertaining with a fairly engaging mystery (although The Prestige takes a bizarre left turn into science fiction in the third act, and The Illusionist completely Source-Coded).   Both films were modestly successful at the box office and are largely forgotten now.

Antz/A Bug’s Life (1998)
The first time Pixar and Dreamworks go head-to-head…and it is the same movie.  This looks bad for everyone.  Honestly, the two movies are not that alike.  The plots are very different; they just happen to both feature insects as their protagonists.  I suppose, it is a little stranger in hindsight considering that Pixar and Dreamworks are the biggest names when it comes to animated family films today and that they would make a similar movie at the same time.  Both are now power-horses and don’t need to spy on each other.  Back then, though, they were still “start-ups” with their animation department and happened to hit on a similar idea.