No, in today's post we're addressing the major studios going head to head trying to copy each other verbatim. We'll do that by conducting a shoot-off between White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen while reminiscing about great copycat moments of the past. Now, there's another category of copycatting as well - that is copying great Foreign films and pretending they're American - we won't forget that today either.
First, we need to establish that plagiarism did in fact occur between the two movies somehow - now you might complain the following information represents spoilers - however in this case one movie was in fact a spoiler for the other...
| Plot Element | White House Down | Olympus Has Fallen |
| Secret Service Hero | Channing Tatum | Gerard Butler |
| Secret Service Traitor | James Woods | Dylan McDermott |
| Cute Kid the the White House | Tatum's Daughter | President's Son |
| Irrelevant Wife 1 | Travelling First Lady | Dead First Lady |
| Irrelevant Wife 2 | Divorced bimbo mom | ER nurse wife |
| Bad Guys | Right WingNuts | North Koreans |
| Initial Assault | Janitorial Explosion Congress | Hercules Gunship Whitehouse Assault |
| Goofy Vice President | Some guy who gets blown up | Some guy who gets shot |
| Speaker of the House / President | Evil bald guy | Morgan Freeman |
| Black President (Obamaman) | Jamie Foxx | Morgan Freeman |
| Ineffective Rescue Attempt | Delta Team FX Helicopter Assault | Seal Team FX Helicoptor |
| Nuclear Annilation | Blowing up the MiddleEast | Blowing up the US |
| The PEOC | much smaller room | pretty cool room |
| Comc Relief | The Tour Guide | The whole movie? |
| Secret Service subplot | Can't get hired | Stuck on a desk after letting Irrelevant wife 1 plunge to her death |
| Wiping out the Secret Service | Not so many | 100's are shot en masse |
| Blowing up the White House | averted by flag waving cute kid | indecisive Morgan Freeman, although half of the white house does blow up |
| Evil Genius Hacker | Lincoln's sidekick from Vampire Killer movie | Sexy evil korean hacker babes |
| Gratitous head smashing | provided by tour guide using an antique | Gerard Butler uses Lincoln's bust (poor Abe just can't get any relief) |
| Gratitous head stabbing | n/a | This is a Gerard only thing |
| Secret inside the whitehouse communications | Secret service phone, handheld | President's Satphone, with Blue tooth headset |
| Presidential Limo antics | Lawn job in the rose garden | driving off a bridge near camp David |
| Near World Collapse | everyone with nukes plus middle east | ditto |
| Cabinet Executions | Red Shirt Syndrome | Red Shirt Syndrome |
White House Down
budget 150 million
$205,358,737
Now there were other similarities as well, including the main Secret Service character's military background etc. But you get the picture or pictures. If you visit the wikipedia pages for each film you'll note that each spec script was purchased in March of 2012 (more or less the exact same time). There's no mention of whose script came first although the hint might the guy who got paid more - the one for White House Down earned $3 million. One gets the impression that someone else looked at the first script and decided - hey let's copy this entire concept and sell it to another studio. Another clue is that the second movie (or copycat) spent less than half as much money on their version (Olympus Has Fallen) and threw in some less than stellar leads (Aaron Eckhart and Gerard Butler as opposed to Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx).
But things don't always work out that way. Back in the early 1990's you might recall the movie Tombstone came out before Wyatt Earp and for less money yet it scored more int he box office. It turns out that Kevin Costner was involved in the original project that became Tombstone but decided to make another version on his own (a bloated, super-expensive 3 hour movie that no one watched and led to his eventual downfall as Hollywood guru).
Olympus Has Fallen
Budget $70 million
$161,025,640
Also, in the 90's we were treated to an Asteroid Duel; Armageddon versus Deep Impact, and a volcano shoot-out; "Dante's Peak versus Volcano." On the kiddie movie side of things we got Antz versus a Bugs Life. In the 2000's we got the Illusionist versus the Prestige. And let's not forget the foreign ripoffs with The Grudge, The Ring, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Hunger Games (yes it's a ripoff - check out Battle Royale - a Japanese flick made before [in 2000] the Hunger Games books came out [first one published in 2008]).
So getting back to the original question; which one was better - White House Down or Olympus Has Fallen. In our humble opinion, after watching one right after the other (on pay per view last night) we'd have to say White House Down was more entertaining on several levels:
- Channing Tatum's performance had more depth to it.
- The cute kid in White House Down did a great job.
- There was more fun and humor in the action scenes, Olympus was pretty grim.
- James Woods - need we say more.
- There was the flag waving versus the flag falling (something we should have included in the table above) - the waving was cheerful versus the falling one being a bit somber.
Neither was particularly believable but that's ok - entertaining will do. But seriously, doesn't anyone get an F for cheating in Hollywood???
Copyright 2013, Raving Reviews
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