[Weekly Update] Happy Year of the Dragon

For those of you who celebrate Lunar New Year, I wish you the best and most badass year ahead! And if you don't celebrate Lunar New Year, consider you invited!

CHANNEL UPDATE

It has been a frustrating month, because after our last video complaining about copyright abuse, two of our videos (Mahjong and Crazy Rich Asian + Brief Overview of J-Horror) have been copyright claimed. Dispute for the former has been rejected, and the latter is still pending. It shouldn't really impact the channel financially in a significant way, but it still sucks.

Work on our next video has begun. It'll be about the worst movie from Japan: Devilman. It'll be delayed slightly because my schedule doesn't line up with the sponsors, but shouldn't be a major problem. In the mean time, feel free to watch the movie without context. One IMDb review calls it "THE Shame of Japan". I think it was written by a Japanese viewer, doing gods work to warn us English speakers to stay away.

Afterward, we have our video on... I can't believe you voted for this, "Memes from Chinese Movies". I already picked out a few memes, and will be explaining the origins, context, and usage. Let's see how weird this will be.

No other update right now. I'm not sure what to do with our bonus video of the month just yet. Let me know what classic or recent movie you'd like to see a review of.

MEDIA TALK

Looking back, I'm kinda regret not bringing Hollywood into our last video a bit more. The purpose of the video is to show case how copyright wasn't omnipresent, which is why I didn't talk about US films all that much. But including Hollywood rip offs would really drive home just how common the practice is, and how little we actually cared.

We already mentioned how Hollywood took heavy inspirations from foreign films. But more often than not, US studios would just rip each other off, either directly, or simply cash in on the hype of one successful project.

For example, The Fast and the Furious is often said to be a direct copy of Point Break. From the set up to the characters to the plotting of the story, it matches up. Mac and Me and, to a slightly less degree, Short Circuit, were both movies made to directly cash in on the success of E.T., following very similar structures. It's hard to tell if these are true rip-offs, or if Hollywood produces movies with such predictable formulas, that they ended up looking the exact same. Either way, originality is not the word for them.

Speaking of movies following a formula: The Lego Movie is the exact same chosen one plot as The Matrix, down to the "the prophecy is wrong" fake out. Did it mean to copy The Matrix? Probably not. Instead, both movies likely draw from the same common story narrative. Either way, the Internet took notice, and videos were made on this topic.

Beyond the large studios, rip-offs become even more blatant. Horror is a good example of this. The entire phenomenon of "horror cycle" came about because studios would copy each other's horror ideas. The slasher cycle began (mostly) with Halloween, which is followed by Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elms Street, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Child's Play, etc. It's hard to say they are exact copies, but you can't deny that many of these films were just Halloween with same extra shenanigans tossed in.

Down another layer is mockbusters, lead by the one and only Asylum. We've talked about this company enough, so let's not dwell on it, and keep our sanity intact for just one night. The more interesting example, however, is Roger Corman. The legendary producer is infamous for low budget (yet oddly competent) rip-offs of trendy films. Battle Beyond the Stars is a cash-in of Star Wars. Galaxy of Terror is a cash-in of Alien. Creature is a cash-in of... Also Alien. I guess it's not any more or less shameful to milk it twice.

If copyright is meant to be there to protect the rights of creators, and encourage more original works, then clearly it's not working nearly as well as we'd like, as it doesn't really deter people to stealing ideas in roundabout ways. But it does hinder starting artist from exploring. Heck, it even fails at protecting artists. If you work in the film industry, you know how often studio steal scripts. And there isn't a damn thing you can do when you got cheated on.

In truth, however, this is not really a copyright issue. Whatever the system is, those with money has the power. At the end, like many legal issues, it is a wealth problem. But that is beyond my area of expertise. Not that I'm an expect in anything to begin with.

So that's the update for this week. Hopefully I can get the video out in a week. If not, I'll see you in our next update!