Interesting, to say the least, article by Alex McCown regarding the above:
http://www.avclub.com/article/praise-artistic-theft-214962
I’ve grappled long and hard with the line which separates artistic “inspiration” from outright “theft.”
In the above article, poet T. S. Eliot is quoted in what I believe is one of the great descriptions of artistic works, and what distinguishes a good artist from a bad one regarding their “inspiration”:
One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.
Let me repeat the quote’s most pertinent lines: “A good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn.”
The term “poet” as mentioned above can easily be replaced with artist, film maker, script writer, novelist, musician, etc.
When Star Wars came out in 1977, and as I’ve mentioned many times before, I wasn’t all that impressed. I believe this was at least partly due to the fact that many of the tropes within the film were recognizable to me. Even on that first viewing I detected elements from, among others, Flash Gordon, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the cliffhanger serials of the 1940’s, and Jack Kirby comic books. Yes, I was a nerdy kid, one who had immersed himself in these various works. Later on, with the advent of the home video market, I came to realize Star Wars also lifted ideas from films by Akira Kurosawa, in particular The Hidden Fortress.
Having said all that, and while acknowledging (once again!) that Star Wars never did much for me, I will now come to the movie’s defense and say that what Lucas did was take elements of many works and, as Eliot notes, “weld(ed) it into something better, or at least something different.”
The same, to my mind, could not be said for the immensely popular Guardians of the Galaxy, a movie that, unlike Star Wars, I wound up loathing. For Star Wars, the inspirations were from (no pun intended) long ago and general audiences were not as familiar with the sources (A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest). Add to that the fact that while Mr. Lucas appropriated elements here and there, the story presented within the movie, of an evil Empire with a fearsome planet-sized weapon threatening innocents, was relatively original.
So for me Star Wars, flaws and all in my eyes, was a film that nonetheless did well with its inspirations. Guardians of the Galaxy, however, stepped over the line of inspiration and into, in my opinion, outright creative theft.
The bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.
This was exactly my feelings regarding Guardians of the Galaxy. They took the plot of Star Wars, changed only a few elements, and essentially re-created that film but with far less cohesion (again, in my humble opinion and, obviously, I was in a VERY big minority).
So, what can we conclude with all this?
That it is all about opinion.
For me, personally, I recognize the influences of other works on my novels. I will come right out and say that they were inspired by many things. But I will then go on to say that I try very hard to take those elements that inspire me and make something new and interesting with them. Sure, the end result may not be completely original -you’d have to look far and wide to find any work of art that is- but I can at least look myself in the mirror and say that I’m trying to create something that may use familiar (or not so familiar) elements and make something relatively “new” with them.
At least I hope so!