How Not To Steal Star Wars — Rebel Moon

Rebel Moon is a movie so focused on

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ing other stories that it forgets to be creative and be more than a pale copy of better movies before taking this scene from the beginning in which the protagonist looks longingly at a gas giant, even If you have never seen Rebel Moon before, you can immediately tell that this is taken from Star Wars, yes, it is visually stunning and yes, the music swells as if to underpin the incredible emotions the audience feels, only it falls flat and that dramatic music It looks even more like this. melodramatic because it's trying to reinforce a feeling that simply doesn't exist, the reason this doesn't work is because it's taken from A New Hope without the Creator first asking why it worked so well in A New Hope and, which is still More importantly, why does it have to be in my story?

The answer to the first is simple: the original scene works very well for Luke because it shows his contradictory feelings. He longs for the adventure of seeing this exciting galaxy, but that moment is bitter when he remembers that he can. He doesn't follow his dreams because he is too tied to responsibilities at home. It's such a universal feeling that Lucas is tapping into here, that of having your dreams crushed by the reality of Life, something we've all felt at some point and that is captured so creatively. was meant to become iconic, but Snider like he's pulling off a list of Star Wars stuff along with droids, blasters, bounty hunters, and the Smuggler pilot, who's fighting the protagonist, oh my god, and it

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ts on a farm , and the bad thing is being Very inspired by a certain faction in 1940s Europe, Snyder actually thought that if it worked in Star Wars it will work in my story, so he pressed Control C and then Control V.

It turns out that yes, that's not how it works. How art works. It is interesting to note that the creators are not hiding things here, they have proudly announced their influences for this film Kurt Johnstad and Zack Snider say that their two favorite films respectively are Seven Samurai and Star Wars and that is why they channeled that energy while collaborating on this film , so what we effectively got was a movie where the first half is very similar to New Hope with the farmer protagonist and the droids and Mosle and the second half is very similar to Seven Samurai in which it is about recruiting a team to defend the village that is about to be assaulted by Rebel Moon. clearly stole most of the plot points from other works, so that's why the movie fails well not because to understand the extent of how complicated this topic is we need to understand the 1958 film The Hidden Fortress because in this one we

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t by following two humble peasants who escape from war and argue endlessly with each other in this pathetic and comical way, but are then captured only to later reunite, meet an old fugitive general and a princess whom they then escort across a hostile land.

This story sounds familiar, it should because it's about squabbling New Hope droids instead of squabbling peasants, a fugitive Jedi Master instead of a fugitive General, and again there's a literal princess who needs to be saved, in There are many more parallels between both. between Hidden Fortress and New Hope, they extensively use the screen wipe transition in Hidden Fortress, their mission is to smuggle gold hidden in firewood, while in New Hope, their mission is to smuggle the Death Star plans hidden in R2 to the final, the princess. rewards our two peasants with a gold coin, while in New Hope the princess hands out a gold medal, this raises an interesting point because how is it possible that Lucas can lift as many elements of The Hidden Fortress as he wants and not receive more what praise for it?

While Snyder does the same thing for Star Wars and everyone calls it derivative, this is a very interesting question and let's not forget that Snyder wanted this movie to be in the Star Wars cannon. Disney said no, so they made her Rebel Moon while Lucas returns. On the day he wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie, they told him no, so he turned that story into a new hope. These two projects have a lot in common and, well, in all of Star Wars there are countless classics, often these come. in the form of special effects, but they also come in other forms, the cruel opening that was taken from Darth Vader's 1936 Flash Gordon helmet, all you need to do is look at a samurai helmet and it's pretty clear where that design came from. scene where Luke returns to find his uncles murdered, well that was a plot taken from the 1956 film The Searchers and we're far from done like Cloud City, well that's Flash Gordon's Sky City again, but I'd say that in this h of inspiration V debate about plagiarism the most dubious part of all of Star Wars is the climax of a New Hope and why do I say this?

Well, watch Dam Busters and then watch A New Hope and you'll see that Lucas didn't just

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. that beat-for-beat climax he also steals the dialogue from him, you should be able to see it by now. I think you should be able to see it by now standing, standing, standing, standing, look at the size of that thing, my God, it's big. But I'm going to cut through the shaft and try to draw its fire. I'll fly across the dam while you run and try to take the flag off. How many guns do you think there are five, let's say about 20 guns? on the surface, some in the tower, how many weapons do you think there are, Trevor, I say there are about 10 weapons, some in the field and some in the T, there are many more examples here, the list of things Lucas took from It's amazing, frankly, and you know.

Does it seem like there's a pattern emerging here because Snyder took hundreds of elements from just a few stories, while Lucas selected hundreds of elements from hundreds of stories like his? His inspirations are much more dispersed and, although I don't think it's like solving the whole problem, it's shedding light on one aspect of the plagiarism and inspiration debate. My English teacher once told me that if you copy from One Source, that's plagiarism, but if you copy from 10 sources, that's just called research and the way I like to imagine. It's every piece of art is like a brick wall, you have hundreds of elements, bricks that make up the wall, these are the plot, beat the character arcs, the editing options, all the good stuff that goes into it now, if you watch Star You war and you think, ooh, really.

I like the idea of ​​Moss Eely, this seedy crime filled frontier town that would be a brick in the biggest wall, so feel free to copy and paste it into your story, do it, you're absolutely fine, but when you go ooh, I really like it. I like the idea. by Moss Eisley and that the protagonist goes there to recruit someone for his mission and that person is a smuggling criminal, which is exactly what Rebel Moon does. You have taken three connected elements and copied them without any alteration, taking one big step closer to being a plagiarist.

It's debatable whether you're one at this point. I expect a lot of discussion about this in the comments section, but in the murky gradient of it all, you're now further from the point of inspiration and closer to the point of plagiarism, and if you were you'd go even further if we then had this pilot You will confront a bounty hunter looking to claim a debt you owe and then shoot him through the table and add two additional bricks to this stolen piece of wool. You've made such a huge leap towards being a plagiarist that most people would agree you are one, it's not just about how many solitary elements you copy, much more important are the connections between those elements, that's where it lies.

The problem when you boil it down, creativity is not having ideas that just pop up. out of nowhere that's not really how creativity works it's more like making connections between already existing ideas that no one has made before that's what creative thinking is if you ask me at least that's when you copy the connections between elements of another work of art in which you steal someone else's creativity in its purest form, so if you only copy solitary elements from other works, all the creative connections within your story are a result of your creativity, not someone else's, to be honest , as long as there is a There is a lot of meat to chew with that point.

I think this is a superficial analysis of the problem because sometimes you can copy almost the entire piece from another artist and it can work wonderfully. Movies are one thing and will brutally destroy Rebel Moon in just a second, don't worry, but the scope of this topic goes far beyond the narrative, so let's take a closer look at the world of music because I can't avoid thinking about Hurt by Johnny Cash, this was not an original song, in fact it is a cover of one written by Trent Resner it is a song about pain, depression and regret, the audio will be a little choppy here to avoid strike copyright, but the lyrics are identical between both versions, however, when Trent Resner made it, he was a young man where fame and drugs were. ruining his life, he channeled that energy into a song.

So when he sings at the end, it's to capture what their relationships are like. Hollow people are only his friends because of the benefits he brings them, but when Johnny Cash sings it, everyone I know leaves in the year those same words are imbued with new meaning he is an old man where all his friends and family They've died before him and he can only wait his turn those Trent words are not the same they have a different meaning coming out of Johnny Cash's mouth when you're 20 years old talking about regret it's heartbreaking but it's heartbreaking in a different way because you have your whole life to figure it out when you look back at the end of your life with regret, it's brutal, yes it's brutal, yes the music world is different, the covers are more culturally accepted, this is apples to oranges etc, but there's still a valuable lesson to be found here because stealing as an artist and doing it so well is more than just restricting the amount of things. you're copying, you can copy most of another work of art and still create something beautiful, sometimes more moving than the original piece you copied, but if you're going to do that, you have to put a new spin on what inspired it.

If you're worried that you can't copy something as-is from another work, then just put it in your story, not only because it's a little unethical, but also because it will probably blend terribly with the rest of your story as a great example of Rebel Moon, uh, clearly, Star Wars and Seven Samurai weren't the only inspirations for this movie because Snyder saw another movie and wanted to include that one too. I wonder if you can guess which one of the characters they recruit is in an area that has Roman architecture. This man was once a general but now he is a gladiator for those of you who haven't noticed yet.

The fact that he is played by Jimon Honu was not enough to steal the character. Snider also had to steal the cast of this movie. but I get it because Gladiator is cool and God knows what it's like to see something badass in someone else's story, then you start thinking, damn, that's cool. I have to steal that and put it in my story, it's just that it's a boost you need. hold off, this guy being a gladiator specifically adds nothing to the overall narrative or even the guy's character. I'd say if he can be said to have a character, we've also had a Warhammer aesthetic from Star Wars so far. having something that is not only inspired by ancient Rome, but has the exact same architectural style as ancient Rome feels unexpected, so why is it here clearly because Snyder thought it was cool and for no reason except that if Snider wanted to tell a movie about a Space Gladiator that could have been a really entertaining story, but only if he had managed to free himself from the shadow of the movie that inspired him to shed light on the most useful way to perceive this problem, many creators have expressed this . feeling over the years, I mean, Picasso had a saying that good artists copy, great artists steal now it turns out Picasso wasn't the first to say this before him.

TS Elliot said it, but wait, he wasn't the original guy because TS Elliot stole the quote from a guy named Davenport Adams who, as far as I can tell, is the original source of the quote. It's interesting that all these artists keep stealing this quote from each other. It's ironic, but this Mantra is the key to understanding the entire Rebel Moon fiasco. I think the best distillation comes from TS Elliott and he wrote in The Sacred Wood immature poets imitate mature poets they steal from bad poets to face what they take and good poets turn it into something small or at least something different, the good poet welds it into a hole. of feeling that is unique, completely different from what was torn apart, the bad poet throws it into something that has no cohesion.

It's a beautiful quote because it captures the theme so succinctly. That's why, despite both borrowing extensively, A New Hope is a masterpiece and a

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. Moon is a movie that almost all of us will forget in a few years because when Lucas made a new hope he had a different vision of what would be my original inspiration in this movie was to actually usemythological reasons to create. a whole new type of myth that was very up to date and contemporary, so I used Saturday MAA cereal as my vessel to put together this barrel of mythological motifs.

It is well known that Luke was a disciple of Joseph Campbell The Scholar who proposed the monomythical appearance here. are in the same room with Lucas giving a speech about how Campbell was a great inspiration to him, it's because he came across the hero with a thousand faces, this right here and he analyzes the trends within myths from around the world, it's a little dry reading, but there's a lot of gold in the storytelling here about creating myth-like stories and this deeply influenced Lucas, it's possible that if I'd stumbled upon that I'd still be riding Star War Horse today.

Lucas wanted to tell this modern myth with Flash Gordon and they said no, so he turned it into Star Wars. Instead, there was a real Vision behind what Lucas wanted to create and that broader goal unites all of its elements giving them a strong cohesion even though many of these things are directly stolen. Compare that to Rebel Moon and the difference is night and day, whereas Lucas intended to tell a modern story. myth in the form of a hero's journey Snider clearly thought what would happen if he made Seven Samurai but it had a Star Wars Warhammer aesthetic and it's rated R and that was his entire vision, it was the entirety, he wasn't taking Seven Samurai and reinventing it with a fun new twist and the idea of ​​it being super dark is dumb because Seven Samurai is already a pretty dark story anyway and let's also not forget that Netflix forced him to edit out all the sex and Gore, so the

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Moon.

He actually has less Gore than Seven Samurai, which means that the point of having an R rating is completely silent, it was literally the same story just with a new aesthetic look at Bug's Life. That's a movie that did exactly what Rebel Moon tries to do, but only succeeds. They are the Seven Samurai, but refreshing the formula, the supposed warriors he recruits to defend the city are actually a traveling circus who believes he is a talent agent and this creates a big misunderstanding since when they go to The Village they think they are just going to be. performing their usual circus act while everyone thinks their Warriors are there to save them and this changes the story significantly because how will the characters react when they find out the truth and how will they defend the city when these brave warriors turn out to be incompetent fighters? a monumental change, the influences are still clear, but it gets creative enough with its concept that it justifies its own existence because Rebel Moon lacked this unifying Vision.

We get a lot of elements that, frankly, shouldn't have made it past draft one coming back to TS. Elliot when he says that the bad poet or artist throws stolen items into something that has no cohesion, i.e. Rebel Moon into a tea, the worst offender is in the Middle, where for about half an hour we have the crew recruiting fighters who will be needed . to protect the village for a large portion of the movie, only they never actually make it to the village, as in an attempt to subvert things, the big final fight happens, it happens on a random space station, they make a pit stop , uh, now they've changed the climax, so at least it's not like you know a completely identical plot to 7 Samurai, but wait a second because you made this change, this now means that those recruited characters just don't do anything in the climax because they don't they have villagers to protect them, as soon as the sword master and Maximus desus Meridius appear on camera oh sorry I got confused there sorry and the general is shown briefly killing some thugs when the fight breaks out and then they are quickly forgotten as the camera exclusively shows Kora and the rebels for the rest of the climax, but hey, you know they could be worse, at least they have it better than the shirtless guy who doesn't show up at all in the finale like he's not there, look, he's here . in the drop action shot where everyone looks at Horizon after a tough fight, they just didn't show him doing anything in the ending because his character has nothing to do.

This raises an obvious question: why are these characters in the story why? Couldn't we just delete them? The answer for this movie is probably because Seven Samurai has a similar recruitment section, so it was copied and pasted without thinking first. Is it really necessary to the story we tell frankly? If we are reviewing this story there. There are only two ways to solve this problem: either you have a climax where these characters are much more relevant, for example, by copying the climax of Seven Samurai, which you know only makes the copying problem much worse, or you move the recruitment of these characters. in the sequel, where they're apparently going to have a lot more consequences when you're missing an Overview, you'll have meandering, redundant sections of your story and that kills pacing like nothing else.

I can't help but think of the pacifist robot that mostly pacifist robot um, the idea of ​​a robot that was once a mass killing machine but has developed a conscience in its reluctance to use violence and that sort of thing, is a good idea, the problem is that this is not an original concept, the killer robot. Diaries is an award-winning novel series that has the idea of ​​a combat robot who develops a consciousness as the protagonist, but you know, okay, this is the case as long as Snyder explores this idea from a new perspective. Who am I kidding, of course?

Didn't we see it extensively during the first 40 minutes of the movie? The movie shows us how this character could be super interesting later, only he wasn't because he didn't appear at any point after the first act. in the movie until just before the credits role, either he should have been massively developed as a major supporting character alongside Kora throughout the movie or he should have just been written out entirely. Great storytellers make each element fight for its life on the floor of The Cutting Room. and if it doesn't fit with the rest of the pieces, no matter how cool it is, they'll remove it anyway, this problem alone is bad enough but I think it's exacerbated by what I would say is the biggest flaw of Snider as a filmmaker.

One that is evident in most of his films, his strategy is not to offer themes or character arcs, it is to offer moments. The nerdy writer when talking about Batman v Superman 7 years ago said this point very well, many people talk about Snider as a great visual stylist. Well, of course they do, that's where all the attention is focused on creating moments, they say their characters lack motivation, of course they do, because all the characters' motivations are subordinate to the movie's own motivation to get there. the next moment, if I could ever give a comment. for Zach Snider it would be that he needs to stop zig-zagging into individually interesting things - a big shot here, a pacifist robot there - because he has a tendency to focus so much that he forgets to instill a smooth progression in the narrative and have these elements contribute. to something bigger, this is the biggest weakness in his approach, but this problem, when combined with the idea of ​​wholesale copying elements from other works, not only means that the story will have no theme, it will lack character arcs. convincing and with a tight and well-paced plot. the story can be labeled derivative because it's stealing all these ideas, but due to the film's desperation to cover as many interesting things as possible, as if the work suffers from some kind of ADHD, it can't stay focused for more than 1 minute , so quickly moving on to the next brilliant thing because of Snider's style, these copied elements are never given time to breathe to be explored and be more than the influences they come from, but I get it, I sincerely get it because writing This way it sounds something like this. funny, there would be no difficulties if you do it like all the time you have for Kill Your Darlings as a writer and it's amazing shit when you do it, you have that character, it's your favorite character in the entire story.

They are so cool and you need to remove them for the sake of your story. It sucks when you do it, but when you write a story like Rebel Moon, a story that doesn't have a theme or anything that ties the narrative together. it gives you free license to never delete any of your interesting ideas because, due to the lack of a Greater Vision, they are all just as valuable to the story as each other. Is this a recipe for great stories? Categorically not, but is it a fun way to write oh oh absolutely at the end of the day, copying from other artists is fine as long as you give new life to the things you copy and a great way to do this is to have experienced hundreds of great films to be able to extract small pieces from all of them they don't extract hundreds of fragments from just one or two films as George Lucas knew very well and then you have the other greats like Tarantino and you will see that he is also a big film nerd, as if there were a correlation here.

The movies you watch, the better your stories are, as an example, I recently saw an adaptation. It's about the writing process where Nick Cage is having a hard time adapting a fictional novel into film, only the film we are watching is based on the script. he's writing in the movie itself and it gets very meta and I loved it. It's such a creative take on the struggle of writing a good story and you can watch it right now on Mie UK. I still have Mobie back to sponsor these videos. because it is the best place for people who love good cinema and that is not just a marketing slogan.

My genuine opinion is that they have a lot of popular movies, but what makes them stand out is that their curators focus a lot on finding great movies with bad publicity. The kind I've almost never heard of before, when I watch them only to then love them as if the adaptation were one of those movies. Film is a fabulous place for you to apply what I've said in this video, a place to absorb all kinds of scene ideas and plot beats from great movies, then add these little bits of inspiration to your story, making it that much more delicious.

If you're in the mood for a great movie about the struggle of writing itself, check this one out, and if you'd like to try all of this out, all you have to do is click my link in the description and you'll get a Full month of free movies. You can cancel the trial at any time without problems, but I really don't think they will like it. I started watching movies a year ago and haven't looked back since. Click my link in the description and enjoy some great cinema today anyway. Thanks for watching, keep writing and we'll see you next time. time on closer look