Sonyman, Harry Potter is a rip off of Tim Hunter from The Books Of Magic from DC.  Tim Hunter was a british teen wizard from a working class background who looks EXACTLY like Harry Potter.  I showed my friend a picture of Tim Hunter and she thought it was Harry Potter.  Hunter even had an owl as a familliar.

Of course, The Books Of Magic had no equivilent of Hogwarts, Tim Hunter learned his magic on the streets of London.  So the storylines are very different.

 I like all the references, although I think the Robocop and Dark Knight  are nothing simillair.

 They have their own story and and plot line, After Robocop 1, and then RC2, the story line is the same for all 3 film. some how he get disembodied in 2 and 3 three movies and then come back and kick some ass Where as Batman never had been disembodied and all kicks ass where ever he goes where there is trouble if he feels it needs it which is 95% of the time. Sure he come out with a few bruises, although you have to remember that he is human after all, and has trained his body and mind to be a weapon against crime.  

The other films I have seen, I have not read War Gods, I bet it is a great comic(s) not sure if there is more than one.I will have to check it out. Good article, 

Harry Potter isn't original at all, but whatever, Rowling made it work for the masses. Although it isn't by a comic book publisher, Rowling is currently being sued for plagiarism. Also, the genre of boy / teen wizadry already existed in the late 80s.

Excellent article! Thumbs up on subject matter and research.

I agree with all of them except Robocop and Dark Knight. As pointed out above the major themes are very different despite similar superficial looks.

I also disagree with the constant use of "ripoff" among some of the commentators. There is a difference between someone blatantly and intentionally stealing major elements from other works and being inspired by them to do something of your own.

Ridley's Scott's Alien for example. "Man that's just Jaws in Space! Plus he just ripped off all those old 50's space monster movies so he and his movie sucks the big one!!!" I'm sure most of you don't think that way about the movie. Why? Because clearly Scott and the writers were inspired by those other stories but brought their special something to them to create a great original work.

I feel the same for George Lucas and the first Star Wars films. As Shadowprime pointed out some story elements, especially Hero mythology repeat an archetypal theme that's been repeated sense a caveman drew on a wall. What make something great out of it is execution, execution, execution. 

And on the Blade "bullet-time" thing. I had thought about that after seeing the movie Remo Williams years earlier. I thought it would be cool to see Remo and Chuin dodge bullets in slo-mo and somebody ought to do that. Would that have been a rip-off or would they have been inspired to do something more?

"Bullet time" is certainly a descendant of slow motion, but the texture (the ripples) and angles used in the effect are what make it distinct. That was first displayed in Blade and mimicked in the Matrix.  There's an article online which mentions some earlier films, but since I haven't seen them I can't really comment.  As I said earlier, while I'm a bit leary about Wikipedia, I think their statment that Blade was the first film to use b.t is worth noting.  Matrix was a bigger budget film and they were able to be more elaborate with their effects and their b.t probably looked more impressive, but it was the same thing as was iin Blade.

JAWS IN SPACE? Really When did Jaws pop out of anyones chest when being born or hatched?

Who was the android in Jaws?

People can leave the water to avoid JAWS. YOU CANT LEAVE DEEP SPACE TO ESCAPE ALIEN.

And the original War of the Worlds movie not the radio program, was one pf the worst pieces of shit ever filmed. THEM and The Thing from outer Space were good but saying ALIEN is a rip off of any of those is clueless yapping.

SONYMAN, quoting  the wiki entry on Alien that quotes screenwriter Dan O'Bannon:

In writing the script O'Bannon drew inspiration from many previous works of science fiction and horror. He has stated that "I didn't steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody!" The Thing from Another World (1951) inspired the idea of professional men being pursued by a deadly alien creature through a claustrophobic environment. Forbidden Planet (1956) gave O'Bannon the idea of a ship being warned not to land, and then the crew being killed one by one by a mysterious creature when they defy the warning.Planet of the Vampires (1965) contains a scene in which the heroes discover a giant alien skeleton; this influenced the Nostromo crew's discovery of the alien creature in the derelict spacecraft.O'Bannon has also noted the influence of "Junkyard", a short story by Clifford D. Simak in which a crew lands on an asteroid and discovers a chamber full of eggs.He has also cited as influences Strange Relations by Philip José Farmer (1960), which covers alien reproduction, and various EC Comics horror titles carrying stories in which monsters eat their way out of people.

They also say O'Bannon and co-writer Ron Shusett pitched the idea as "Jaws in Space." Now you can think of this as evil guys who "ripped off" a bunch of movies and stories to make their movie, then as everybody has been saying here it must naturally be a sucky stolen movie. But since alot of people think the movie is far greater than the sum of it's parts (meaning, most people think it's a classic) I think this is one of those instances where the creators where inspired by things they liked to make an original workl.

 Alien was a ripoff-of Wild Kingdom. Yes, my friends, there was an episode about the wasp that lays eggs in tarantula tummies and the larva burst out and become killer wasps. We, yes we, are the tarantula.

Damn you Ridley, you thief.

 Alien was a ripoff-of Wild Kingdom. Yes, my friends, there was an episode about the wasp that lays eggs in tarantula tummies and the larva burst out and become killer wasps. We, yes we, are the tarantula.

Damn you Ridley, you thief.

There's a thin line between rip-off and loving homage.  Matrix rips right and left so it becomes a homage to many subjects.  Alien rips fewer elements but the change of rhythm and sensibility gave it another direction (the HR Giger concept art was influencial to everything afterwards, including Matrix) Robocop was not a rip-off of RDK, it was blatant rip-off of Judge Dredd (so much that when the Dredd movie came out it felt outdated): Almost emotionless cop/executioner deals with threats bigger than himself in a place where justice has been forgotten because of poverty and corruption.

I actually have shown Books of Magic to my friends and I'm affraid the cover artist for Rowling's books is to blame here.  Even if the young magician was a common subject for children's lit  in the 80s, the artist gave it the look of Tim Hunter.  Books of Magic is by no means a children's book.  The story for the future in particular, with the blind guy from the Trenchcoat Brigade.