recurring themes in movies released in the same year.

[Kalo]

This has bugged me for a while, why is it that whenever there is a certain theme used (usually in a larger movie) there is another movie with almost exactly the same theme released that very year, sometimes even the same story. and 2016 is more clear of that then ever. 

 

for example, not only is the large amount of superhero films releasing in 2016, but half of them are basically the same theme: Hero vs hero.

 

Batman V Superman in March, Captain America: Civil War, and X-Men Apocalypse all have super heroes pitted against one another to one extent or another. also Deadpool and Suicide Squad share similar traits (Super villain and anti-hero, and both appear to have a large about of dark humor as well)

 

something else I noticed about 2016 films, almost every animated film is about animals, in fact aside from Moana pretty much all the major animated films are:

 

Norm of the North, Kung Fu Panda 3, Zootopia, Angry Birds, The Secret Life of Pets, and now Sing. all have animals as the main characters. even sausages party is about well food coming to life which also non-human. 

 

in 2012,  there were 2 Snow White films released mere months apart.

 

not quite the same year, but 2 Jungle Book films are in the works releasing less than two years apart. 

 

anyways there are other instances of this coincidence, and pretty much every year this seems to happen, so my question is what is the meaning behind all this? did everyone get together and decide that animals were going be big for kids in 2016? is there some copycatting involved? or is it purely coincidental? 

 

 

 

Edited February 15, 2016 by Kalo

[filmlover]

Back in the 90s there many years where everything came in twos. 1998 was a year that saw two films about the end of the world (Deep Impact, Armageddon) and two animated bug movies (Antz, A Bug's Life), and two acclaimed movies about World War II (Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line). The year before that (1997) saw two volcano disaster pics (Dante's Peak, Volcano).

[grey ghost]

Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down in 2013.

 

Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman in 2012.

[chasmmi]

I think there are a range of reasons this can happen.

 

Sometimes it is natural progression which I feel is the case with BvS And Civil War. Civil war has been building up to this film for about 5 years so you cannot really argue that they copied DC. At the same time, if you are DC and you want to follow up Man of Steel with something that everyone takes notice of in order to kick off your DCU, the natural best idea is to bring in Batman.

 

Other times, there are film concepts or genres that just become in vogue. Independence Day made every studio scramble for disaster movie ideas. Once you take aliens off the table, you are pretty much left with natural disasters and within that what is there? Volcanos, Tsunamis, Earthquakes and asteroids really. So for two volcano films to turn up both about 2 years after Independence day, sort of makes sense.

 

Then of course there is blatant copying of ideas. I believe Antz only ever existed because Katzenberg was released by Disney and decided to torpedo Pixar's Bug Movie out of spite with his own Bug based movie. Same plan also with Pixar's fish movie (Shark Tale). It's to be exactly sure how many film pairs fall into this section, but when you see two films about North Koreans taking over the White House in one year...

 

Finally you just have pure coincidence. Two people can have the same idea at the same time. It happens. I believe one example of this would be Book of Life and Coco. Book of Life was a fantastic and underrated animated film about Mexico's day of the dead. Kind of a musical and pretty original too. Sadly for Pixar this kind of sucked because they were mid way through planning their own Mexican Day of the Dead musical animation. It actually led them to cancel production for a couple of years I think too. Now it is back on the slate and when it is released will likely be completely different to Book of Life. However if it had come out when Good Dinosaur did, it would have looked to some like they were copying a smaller studios idea.

 

 

That's all the theories I got

  

[BadAtGender]

 

On 2/19/2016 at 1:58 PM, chasmmi said:

 

Finally you just have pure coincidence. Two people can have the same idea at the same time. It happens. I believe one example of this would be Book of Life and Coco. Book of Life was a fantastic and underrated animated film about Mexico's day of the dead. Kind of a musical and pretty original too. Sadly for Pixar this kind of sucked because they were mid way through planning their own Mexican Day of the Dead musical animation. It actually led them to cancel production for a couple of years I think too. Now it is back on the slate and when it is released will likely be completely different to Book of Life. However if it had come out when Good Dinosaur did, it would have looked to some like they were copying a smaller studios idea.

 

Yeah. One notable, and unfortunate, example of that sort of coincidence is The Raid: Redemption and DREDD. Both had a similar "get to the top of this building" plot and over the top violence. However, DREDD got knocked around by the comparison and I think that was part of the reason it suffered at the box office (not the entire reason, but part of it). Which is a pity, because it is a pretty great movie in its own right, even if it's not as innovative.

[filmlover]

On ‎2‎/‎19‎/‎2016 at 4:58 PM, chasmmi said:

Then of course there is blatant copying of ideas. I believe Antz only ever existed because Katzenberg was released by Disney and decided to torpedo Pixar's Bug Movie out of spite with his own Bug based movie. Same plan also with Pixar's fish movie (Shark Tale). It's to be exactly sure how many film pairs fall into this section, but when you see two films about North Koreans taking over the White House in one year...

  

I'm not sure about that since Katzenberg had his own idea for an animated bug movie while he was at Disney, years before A Bug's Life came about. There was a feud between him and Disney though because Antz was originally going to open in the spring of '99 and was suddenly moved up to October during that summer in '98 because Disney wouldn't move A Bug's Life off of its Thanksgiving slot where they had already placed The Prince of Egypt (which had to move back a few weeks as a result), so Antz moved up to compete with their rival and get out the gate first.

 

Another interesting pairing of somewhat similar projects around that same time: Godzilla and Mighty Joe Young. The latter was going to open in July that summer and the marketing campaign sold it as a gorilla-centric action film, but after Godzilla's disastrous reception, Disney decided to bump it back to Christmas and completely changed the marketing around to sell it as a family movie instead.

[department store basement]

Here's something no one mentions that's such a funny coincidence: There were 3 big 2000 films about Satan (Bedazzled, Little Nicky, The Ninth Gate) and they were VERY different in tone.

[Ethan Hunt]

Despicable.Me and Megamimd