Comment by resoluteteeth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by resoluteteeth | Hacker News Reader

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> But when compared with some of his earlier “core” stories, such as the eerie “City of Brass,” the 1712 “Aladdin” comes across as lackluster and unexciting. Disney’s two screen versions, the 1992 animated feature and this spring’s live-action film, are actually much more satisfying.

It's also worth noting that regardless of the provenance of Galland's Aladdin, Disney's movie is basically a rip-off of the 1940 film The Thief of Baghdad, which combined the Thousand and One Nights elements with the plot of the earlier silent movie it was a remake off.

> Although it was a remake of a 1924 silent film starring Douglas Fairbanks, this film has been highly influential on later movies based on The Book of One Thousand and One Nights setting. For example, the Disney film Aladdin borrows freely from it, particularly the characters of the evil Vizier and the Sultan, both drawn with a marked similarity to the characters in The Thief of Bagdad. The villian Jafar is named after Jaffar. The thieving monkey Abu in the Disney cartoon is based on the boy played by Sabu.[12]

(from wikipedia)

Galland's Aladdin was set in China, so actually the entire middle-eastern setting comes from The Thief of Baghdad.

This comment is off topic and is not really directed at its parent's author, per se, though the parent comment inspired the question.

"Disney's movie is basically a rip-off of the..."

This is an interesting statement that not only includes the statement that the Disney movie is based on earlier works, but also a value judgement at the same time. At what point do we declare something a "rip-off" vs. an "homage" or simply be content saying it was "based on" or "inspired by" some earlier, original work?

Take for example the musical "West Side Story": it was based on "Romeo & Juliet", but I never hear it said that it ripped off Romeo & Juliet... never mind that Romeo & Juliet, itself, was based on an earlier story. Looking at some of the old posters and album covers (etc) for West Side Story, I see it was "Based on a conception of Jerome Robbins", but there's no mention of Shakespeare. The link was never disclaimed or represented as being otherwise, but apparently not really advertised either.

So how does the judgement aspect of this enter? Is it simply a way to emphasize a viewpoint that's really not so connected to the statement directly, but perhaps at the parties involved? Is the judgement more about who acted rather than the act being described itself?

Note that if someone were trying to remake earlier material while disclaiming that the earlier material existed, then I'd get the "rip-off" statement... but I don't think Disney tries to claim that kind of credit for many of its films.

I guess I just find it curious that we take such opportunities to inject our opinions where seemingly a more neutral statement of fact would suffice and be more informative.

> This is an interesting statement that not only includes the statement that the Disney movie is based on earlier works, but also a value judgement at the same time. At what point do we declare something a "rip-off" vs. an "homage" or simply be content saying it was "based on" or "inspired by" some earlier, original work?

Interesting you should mention this.

My guess is that there are possibly 'bad' factors in play. For example, these 2 I can think of (there might be more):

1) The newer version might not contain enough original quality content. So it took the good parts from the original, and did not add anything substantive to it.

2) Or the newer version isn't referring to the original at all, pretending being the original.

I suppose we can simply translate the terms "rip-off" and "homage" to "based on" or "inspired by" instead (for lack of better term). This allows everyone to draw their own judgement. In that sense, calling something a "rip-off" is akin to name calling.

(The irony being here that my comment is largely based on yours. I'm reusing the definitions you mentioned, word for word.)

> At what point do we declare something a "rip-off" vs. an "homage" or simply be content saying it was "based on" or "inspired by" some earlier, original work?

When it's done by a copyright hoarding, litigious company like Disney.

I believe the judgement is against Disney as they are the ones that have pushed copyright to the extreme it is today yet they are the ones that profited from copies.

This.

Up until recently Disney had very very few, if any, original works, and yet they are the most extreme in their pursuit of copyright and its enforcement.

You're not going to find the answer by looking for posters or explicit attribution.. it's a much softer concept than that.

Remakes, homages, ripoffs, reboots, mashups.. they are extremely common in film.

It's actually a rip-off of the Ducktales movie.

> Galland's Aladdin was set in China, so actually the entire middle-eastern setting comes from The Thief of Baghdad.

Wikipedia seems to disagree:

> The opening sentences of the story, in both the Galland and the Burton versions, set it in "one of the cities of China". On the other hand, there is practically nothing in the rest of the story that is inconsistent with a Middle Eastern setting.

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