A Tale of 3 movies

Bollywood- Well isn’t the name itself copied (oh sorry, “inspired”) from Hollywood?

Ever since the 90s, Bollywood has remade a lot of movies from hollywood, kollywood, tollywood, malluwood,sandalwood and god knows from how many other woods ! Just in this year, top grossers of Bollywood- Bodygaurd and Singham are remakes of South Indian movies. And before that movies like- Ghajini, Garam masala, Hera Pheri, Wanted were all quite successful remakes. Then movies like Humraaz, Murder, Naqaab were all remade from Hollywood movies. Well it is definitely not a bad thing to remake, not at all! But copying someone else’s work and taking the credit for themselves?

As we saw in the list above, these are all remade/ copied from movies. But I’m going to talk about 3 movies which are copied from TV series and not really many are aware of them.First in the list is the movie NEWYORK 2009 directed by Kabir khan and written by Aditya Chopra.The movie was a hit and was praised for its ‘fresh’ story. But no one realised that it’s a blatant copy from the TV series LOST.

The story is about a taxi driver (Neil Nithin Mukesh) in New York who is arrested by the cops and they ask him to go undercover, because they suspect his college buddy (john Abraham) is a terrorist now. So Neil is forced by the FBI agent to catch up his old friend and track his activities. Then he realises John is actually a terrorist and he tries to stop him. But in the end, John’s bomb plan is stopped and he dies.

LOST is my all-time favourite TV series. It is escapist television at its best! New York is copied from the 21^st episode of Season 1 of LOST.

 In the show, Sayid jarrah is captured by a CIA agent and she asks him to go undercover because Sayid’s friend when he was studying in Cairo University is a suspected terrorist now. The story is same as I described above for New York. Here also in the climax, Sayid reveals to his friend that he is an undercover , when his friend is about to bomb a building and he stops him. It ends up with his friend's death and mission is aborted. To clear the doubts, this episode was aired in 2005 and New York was released in 2009.

There is also a particular scene in New York which is copied not from a Tv series, but from the movie Crash. The scene is like two police officers stop a car and they molest a lady while her helpless male friend watches. That is a rip off from the 2004 movie CRASH.

Let’s move on to the second movie in the list which is I hate Luv stories. If you hate Love stories, this is the movie you should skip first. It is a cheesy love story written and directed by Punit Malhotra. So is the story of this movie also copied from a TV series? No... Why? Because the movie has got no story!

But most of the scenes from this movie (including the climax) are copied from the popular sitcom HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER.

First one I would like to mention is HOT BADTAMEEZ scale mentioned in the movie which is purely copied from the HOT CRAZY scale of Barney Stinson.

Then you have so many small things in the movie like, a wingman; pickup lines which are all lifted from the TV show. Especially the “I’m watching you” sign portrayed by Barney is copied here.

They even lifted a joke totally from HIMYM.  Check out the conversation below.

Robin: My father was a cigar fanatic, it was the only way to get his attention.

Barney: Father issues. Hot.

Robin: I know... I was this close to being a huge slut.

Barney: Slut would have been better, but I'll settle for bro. Especially now that Ted's with Victoria and can't drink. Because he's pregnant. Cause he's the girl.

Robin: Oh, come on, Ted can't be pregnant. You need to have sex to get pregnant.

Barney: What up! Freeze frame high five!

The same joke is copied and that is self-explanatory in the image below:

At last there is the Climax scene in “I hate Luv stories”, where in Sonam kapoor is watching a romantic movie and in that movie, the hero is running across the streets to meet his girl and propose to her. At the same time, Imran khan in real is running down the roads to theatre to meet sonam and propose. So both the scenes are shown simultaneously. This concept is a rip off from HIMYM season 5 episode 23. It is the same thing what Ted does.

Moving on to the last movie in the list: Game (2011) written by Althea Delmas Kaushal and directed by Abhinay deo (yeah the guy who made Delhi belly). The movie is not really a total rip off, but the crux of the movie is. It is about a murder mystery. And that is exactly the same from the TV series MONK from the episode “Mr.Monk is underwater”.  

In the movie, Everyone believes  Mr.Malhotra  killed himself by shooting in the head, because everyone heard the gun shot when it happened and the door was locked from inside, so there is no way anyone could have entered. But what actually happened is his maid went and shot him first with a gun fitted with silencer and then she places a firecracker inside and lit it ans as she comes out , she locks the door from outside. When the firecracker bursts, everyone thinks that it is the gun shot sound and they break open the door and go inside to see him dead. At that time, the maid secretly slips the door key into the dead body's pocket. The scene is exactly the same in MONK except for the characters.

To read more about the monk episode you can visit : http://monk.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Monk_Is_Underwater

To conclude, why are our writers so much depended on others works? Are they seriously out of ideas? I don’t understand, because if you take the case of MONK, it is a TV series where each episode has a unique murder and it is solved by the end of the episode and there are more than 100 episodes of it. So if they could think of 100 such stories, why can’t our writers think of one story properly?! Well let’s just hope at least in 2012 we get some really good and original movies in the country.

Thank you all for liking my first post J and I wish you a Merry Christmas!

Why Mission Impossible : Ghost Protocol is not the best of the series?

Let me start by saying this: “I Loved MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 4 – Ghost Protocol” 

All I’m going to talk about is why it is not the best MI movie till now.We all know, Mission impossible 1 was a movie based on Mission Impossible TV series which was telecasted in the early 80s. But when they made into a movie, it had a very little to do with the TV series. Only the characters and theme music was borrowed (Yeah the famous MI music is from that TV series). The fans of the series didn't like the movie. But for the rest, it was the best thriller/action movie of the year.

When MI 1 came out, even though it got mixed reviews, the movie went on to become a rage hit. It was heavily criticized for having an overly complicated plot. But so what?! When I saw it as a kid, I didn't care about the plot because I was mesmerized by the way Ethan Hunt and his team carried their operation to recover the data from some computer.

After 4 years came MI2, a movie which was a disaster at all levels.  An attempt to show Ethan Hunt as some Casanova with his long hair and tons of scenes where he flexes his muscles, and adding to it he has a thief as his love interest!!!

Come on! A spy falling in love with a thief and every third scene has a slow motion with both looking at each other with some Spanish background score. It had none of the good parts from MI 1. Here, our Ethan hunt is not an intelligent guy. He is just another long haired guy who beats up the bad guys and saves his girlfriend and moves around on a flashy bike. Who wants to watch a lover boy Ethan Hunt saying "Oh God… you look beautiful" in a MI movie?!

After a long gap,came MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3

Directed by JJ ABRAMS – The Genius behind LOST, ALIAS FRINGE, PERSON OF INTEREST, SUPER 8 (Also wrote Joy Ride)

He re wrote the franchise.  He made the best MI movie of all time and possibly one of the best action/thriller movies in the last decade. Everything about it felt right!
The movie starts with Ethan Hunt tied up in a chair and the bad guys are asking him for “rabbit’s foot”. He replies he already gave it, but they keep asking him the same question and countdown to ten and fire a bullet in her brain while Ethan watches.

Scene Cut to black -famous Mission impossible theme music with titles

*GOOSEBUMPS* 

It was an edge of the seat thriller pumped up with so much adrenaline. 

It was written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci ( The guys who wrote transformers series and FRINGE- best sci-fi show on T.V right now ) along with JJ. It won’t be an overstatement to say the script was brilliant! It talked about a “Rabbit’s foot”. The bad guys want it and Ethan-who has it- is trying to stop them.

So what is rabbit’s foot?

All we will ever know that Rabbit’s foot is a form of “Anti god” and in wrong hands it can lead to world destruction. Basically rabbits foot is just something that is referred to move the plot forward and as an audience it doesn't really matter if we know what it is. The technique used here is similar to the suitcase in the movie PULP FICTION. In how many movies you think this technique is successfully used? Also we have always had one ghastly villain, that we all really wanted Ethan Hunt to beat him up. The VFX was brilliant (still it is) and the movie had so many twists and turns that made the price you paid for the ticket, very much worth it!

So after 5 years comes MI 4 directed by Brad bird- Another genius who made animated movies like The Incredibles and Ratatouille. He was basically PIXAR’s poster boy.

After watching MI 4 first hour, I have to admit, it was much better than what I expected! It surpassed the third part in its action scenes and this one had more intelligence applied to the movie. The scene where Hunt climbs up from 124^th floor in Burj Dubai with bare hands is simply too exciting.  Added to that there is a sandstorm coming up and it all ends in a car chase in midst of the sandstorm which is the first I have seen in any movie.

My favourite scene is where TomCruise and Simon pegg join together to make a “projection impression” to fool a guard and steal the suitcase. You will know what I’m talking about, when you watch the movie. The first half had everything going perfect for it. Even the small role of Josh Holloway (though I wish he had more screen space!- He was awesome in LOST as sawyer and trust me guys, that guy can be the meanest villain on screen) was impressive.

But as it moved to second half, the movie becomes just another action movie with the usual stunts and chases. The scenes depicted in India are just a waste of resources, because the fact that it is happening in India, doesn’t really add any value to the movie! It is because all the scenes happen inside a building. Rather they could have shot the Indian cities or something like how TomCruise swifts through the Indian traffic using his brains. But all we get to see here is a BMW concept car, a funny Anil kapoor and a lot of cleavage in scenes!

Is that what you expect from a MI movie really??

So what went wrong? Brad birds fault? Hell NO! He did a fantastic job as a director. Then? It is with the writing. Third part was written by the usual JJ Abrams team, but here he only served as a producer. After the third part, I think I got spoilt. I expected so much from the team this time. But it is like the writers thought so much for the first half and after some time they were like “hell it is only for an hour! Let’s shoot some action scenes now and wrap this movie fast!”

Mission impossible is not a mindless bham bham bham action movie. At least it is not supposed to be.It is about how the agents of IMF use their brains and highly futuristic tech to carry a mission which is humanly impossible. It is not about a bad guy going in a SUV and TomCruise chasing him and just firing guns.

I hope in next part we get more of intelligent action scenes, just like in MI 3.

So Mr. JJ Abrams, please.. Next time write the movie with your usual team. Or you can team up with Jonathan Nolan ( Yeah Christopher Nolan's brother and Jonathan is the one who actually writes the scripts for all Chris movies), because already you are doing PERSON OF INTEREST TV series with Nolan. Well then that will be a darker version of Mission Impossible!