Movie Sampling

Most movies have similar things in common; however some movies go too far to the point where they are directly copying from another movie. There are certain movies where you are watching and there are specific scenes where you feel like you are watching a scene from another movie you have seen. This is due to the fact that movies usually have similar story lines. We can see this a great amount in the movie “Iron Man 2”.

Many movie story lines have the amazingly good looking girl that all the guys are after or the dysfunctional family with a missing parent. There is also the typical horror movie with the not mentally stable psycho killer, or the typical action movie with the good guys chasing the bad guys for one reason or another. Although most movies have similar story lines, there are the exceptions that are completely different from anything anyone’s seen before. We can see this in the psychological thriller “Silence of the Lambs”. With its captivating story of the cannibal killer Hannibal Lecter it really is unlike any other movie made.

I recently saw “Iron Man 2” and although it was a pretty good movie over all there was one scene in particular that was more or less a copy from the movie “Silence of the Lambs”. It was during the middle of the movie when they take the psycho killer from jail and bring him to am airport pad to meet with someone. They had a fancy table set up for him with a luxurious meal because they wanted to make a deal with him to build robot suits in exchange for him getting out of jail. This was copied exactly from the scene in “Silence of the Lambs” where they take Hannibal Lecter out of jail and fly him into an airport pad in order to meet with someone that wants to question him. The setting was exactly the same with the fancy dinner table set up for him so that he would cooperate. There was also another scene where they take away all the killer’s possessions and lock him in a room because he is not doing his job properly. They have two guards watching over him and the killer ends up killing both of them. In “Silence of the Lambs” there was a scene where he was locked in a secluded cell that was being watched over by the government because he was being bad and two guards came to give him dinner and he ended up killing both of them.

I don’t think that these scenes were intentionally copied; however I recognized them right away because they were very similar. I think that movie directors should be more careful when planning a movie to avoid having similar scenes from other movies and to make their movie unique.