The History of the Mockbuster
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2024
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Where there are Blockbusters, there will be imitations trying to cash in on an a popular cultural trend. Explore the history of the mockbuster film, from the roots in studio B-pictures, to sound alike films of the digital era, foreign remakes and the legalities of making movies to ride on other movies.
Take the full Filmmaker IQ course on the History at the Mockbuster with sauce and bonus material at:
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This is a re-upload due to some content claims made on Turkish Star Wars.
If you have any further questions be sure to check out our questions page on Filmmaker IQ:
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It is a re-upload. I was suspicious. But maybe it is a Mock-Buster version of the first upload!
"CONTENT CLAIM by TURKISH Star Wars"
What an irony.
Why do I now have a strong desire to watch all these mockbusters?
Just watch Mystery Science Theater 3000. Many of these movies are featured and you might get a laugh or two out of it.
@@rbailey1240 I agree. Most mock busters are terribly boring with occasional laughable moments. I wouldn’t recommend watching these movies by themselves unless you have a group of drunk friends. Then again, that’s what MST3K is for.
This is so clearly explained and elegant. Thank you for making this.
9:57 - "these films and many more, which we won't list...." No, that's not fair. You have to list.
FYI for those lazy ones not reading the info.
This is a re-upload due to some content claims made on Turkish Star Wars.
You're welcome internet.
wasn't there at the very start I think (I prety sure I checked and didn't see anything)
is that the one that used stock footage from episode 4??
I am addicted to this channel! Keep up the good work.
Dawn of the Rise of the Return of the History of the Mockbuster: Back 2 Da Hood
(Electric Boogaloo)
Absolutely CRAZY informative! One of the BEST sharings of one's knowledge on the internet. Entertainment AND Education. WOW!
I'm in the International Baccalaureate program at my high school, and I gave an oral presentation on Mockbusters, how they borrow from original texts and to what effect, and the original upload of this video was VERY helpful. It was a large portion of my class grade, and though it would have been even better had this stated online, it was a huge help regardless. Thank you!
Awesome!!! Glad it helped!
I have a feeling I already seen this whole video in the past
is it at 17:40 that was copyrighted in the previous uploaded video?
Yep - we had an issue over some claims on that video
We have a copyright one in the till, but TH-cam copyright and the way DMCA works (or doesn't) is still a topic that's changing. Basically, you end up with these bizarre claims (like the Turkish Star Wars) which make no sense unless they see a courtroom... but that's really really expensive.
We'll talk about it maybe in a different format one of these days.
I'll be curious to see what ol Mickey things about the Star Wars rights rofl. Maybe you can get in contact with somebody or just make a fuzz in social media and people will notice. Even Polaris has a huge presence in youtube (well probably the most, since pewdiepie belongs to them) and Polaris belongs to Disney.
I think Mickey gets a bad rap. Ultimately the whole extension act really had little to do with corporate pressures, it was really keeping up with the Europeans - we'll get into that in another course.
Mr Hess,
It's great to see you still posting GREAT videos about the history of film. I love your work and please be assured that their are people out here who love what you are doing!
Thank you again my friend.
SBF
There's also Sharknado: The 4th Awakens & Sharknado 5: Global Swarming
This may be my favorite episode yet :) Thanks for making this!
13:06 one of the producers for Iron Sky works at my uni now. Lots of interesting stories from him about that movie.
So great to see you back, making mockbusters great again!
I guess Nosferatu (1922) was not technically a "mockbuster" since it used source material from the book, but it did not ride a wave of free marketing from a Dracula movie of the time...
I remember seeing “Mary Poppins” and was a double feature with “The 4-D Man” “4-D Man “ was an independent produced horror film. Mary Poppins was a Disney major film.
False copyright claim sucks man. Still I watched this again and again hehehe cheers!!
In order to help get the original _Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope_ (1977) into more theaters, Fox forced theaters who wanted to buy and exhibit _The Other Side of Midnight_ (1977) to buy and exhibit the former as well. Ultimately, _The Other Side of Midnight_ was the "A" picture that flopped and the so-called "B" picture _Star Wars_ became BOTH profitable and a cultural touchstone and handshake.
Pretty Good to know Brazil is internationally recognized by its Mockbuster animation Company. Video Brinquedo > Disney Studios
Except you mispronounced it. It's pronounced brin-KEH-doo (in Brazilian Portuguese).
10:53 such a shame to see Brazil being mentioned for such monstrosities.
I hope to see my beloved country mentioned again in this channel, but for great stuff like central station, city of God, Ice age, 300, etc
Before he became half of Laurel and Hardy, Stan Laurel dabbled in mockbusters. Two examples were Mud and Sand (a mockbuster of Rudolf Valentino's Blood and Sand (1922)) and Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pride (a mockbuster of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde starring John Barrymore (1920))
There’s been a lot of great episodes. This ranks in my top 3 if not than the best.
I'm from Brazil and I laughed loud when you mentioned Video Brinquedo, I didn't know that this company and the creppy animations they made were known outside of here lol
Paul Rudd was fantastic in Mac and Me.
Always nice seeing a new video from you, cheers John
Finally, something on this channel is both educational and fun to watch (for those of us who aren't film school students). I remember movies as far back as the 1960s.
Awesome video John. I realize each video you produce is a HUGE effort, but there seems to be one distinct genre missing from your history series, and that is the History of Animation. I realize how much work this involves, but it is such an important part of motion picture history. What do you think?....
For a video, how about doing a video on how world building (live action of course)has changed from a simple background to an entire city being realistic and able to be seen. You could use examples like The Wizard of Oz, Blade Runner, and older examples like The Birth of a nation and more examples.
I remember cinemas were you had 1 big screen and maybe 1-2 very small screens which were not much bigger than modern tv in living room :F
I need to check that Indonesian terminator lady :D she is better than original T3 movie
Red Letter Media "reviewed" it on one of their Best of the Worst episodes. It's...interesting.
My daughter wanted to say: Now i want to go to the the movie theater
All movies now seem to be mockbusters, but with ridiculously high budgets.
A Danish mockbuster?!! I have never heard of such films, although we in Sweden have a film shot in Stockholm that closely mirrors the plot of “The French Connection” but is named “Mannen på Taket”, literally “The Man on the Roof”. So far it is the only Swedish film I know of that has a helicopter crash in it.
The film’s most dramatic scenes were shot within 300 meters from where I live.
Very informative, I appreciated the historical long view.
I always learn something from your films, thank you
Why Jetlag productions? I think its films are actually truer to the original text than their Disney counterparts. Some of their films were distributed by GoodTimes entertainment.
What about the legendary Cannon Films Group? would you also call them a mockbuster studio?
No, they're a B-movie studio. Mockbusters are made to ride a wave of another big movie. Cannon was more genre exploitation in some of their films.
Very cool, thank you so much for making this.
Awesome video!!
The earliest mockbuster I'm aware of was Rocketship X-M which was a rip off of Destination Moon in 1950.
How about Nosferatu?
pedazodeboludo Nosferatu was a film ripoff of the Dracula book.
Some of these movies I have never even heard of!! Not that I want to watch them...but honestly there are some that just seem "silly" at best!! My second wife used to rent some of the stupidest movies back in the 1980s and early 1990s!! She would pick films by their cover and say "This looks like a good movie" as she was into horror films!! BUT then when she'd watch them sit there are complain about "how stupid this movie is", while ignoring things about the cover she constantly over looked!!
And those things she would over look is first stuff like "who produced it" or secondly who starred in these films!!
In fact I got to the point where I was telling her, "You rent a stupid movie, then bitch about it, but you never actually READ who stars in it or who directs it!! And you can only watch some many movies titled "Zombies of Witch Island on Starbase 5" until you have seen the last of the "made on a budget movies" that you know it took the company only $250 to produce this piece of crap and a couple of cases of beer to distribute it, before you have "seen them all"!!! And every weekend she'd find some crap movie starring people you have never heard of, that simply wasn't worth the $5 rental fee to even watch it anyhow!!
And she never looked at those things like I said about WHO starred in the movie or WHO directed it!!! For me I "followed" certain people.....if I saw a movie starring Bruce Willis then it was probably a good movie! If it was directed by Stephen Spielberg then it probably was a good movie!! And she never seemed to understand that!!
Ahh, Good Times...
Disney sued Good Times over "Aladdin."
Pretty bold move, considering that Disney's "Aladdin" was itself "inspired by" (some would say "Ripped off") Korda's 1940 version of "The Thief of Bagdad."
Not really. No one was going to confuse Disney's animated Aladdin with that live action movie.
@@FilmmakerIQ True enough...Also, fifty years or so had elapsed between the one and the other.
Right, the main argument wasn't about plagiarism which isn't a legal argument anyways. And the case was a loss for Disney showing you just how far you can go with mockbusters. Where as the Hobbit title showed where you could go too far.
Just listing the names of mockbusters side by side with the originals would be an entertaining video 😅
I actually have the GoodTimes Hercules on VHS. I didn't know they were mockbusters back then of course. 🤣 Also surprising how Golden Age Hollywood had mostly B Movies though. 😯
B and C movies were a staple of Golden Age Hollywood.
IHE's whole new slate of videos right here
But, i've to say it, Z Nation is not bad at all. I've seen only the first season and it was very entertaining!
Z Nation was afraid to take itself seriously. I looked forward to it more than Walking Dead. Then they had the weed zombie..
I worked as a soundie on Grimm‘s Snow White!
I'm surprised you didn't mention the Italians, the best ripoff merchants in cinema history.
I didn't know Mac and Me was a mockbuster! did any mockbuster do better than the film it mocked?
That's a great question and one that I struggled with. Basically the issue was trying to narrow down the term "mockbuster" because there are a lot of films that might be in the same genre, same kind of characters, but aren't necessarily mockbusters.
Generally I decided that mockbusters HAVE to be low budget and they have to trying to copy and ride the wave of a popular movie. It's much easier to define with those animated films and films from Asylum - going back before VHS, the definition gets sort of murky.
Beast from 20,000 Fathoms 1953 came out before Gojira in Japan in 1954 and Gojira was altered and released as Godzilla king of the monsters with new footage with Raymond Burr as a TV reporter in 1956 to American audiences. Gorgo British monster movie came out in 1961. Gamera about giant fire breathing turtle in 1965.
Nigeria actually has a pretty thriving film industry. Creatively named Nollywood.
In all fairness, tho, _Princess of Mars_ techically beat _Avatar_ to the punch because it's an adaptation of a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who also penned _Tarzan of the Apes,_ which was adapted to the screen more than once. James Cameron pretty much made a retelling, of the original Burroughs novel, I love how the movie poster made it clear that they _Avatar_ came in second, throwing shade at Cameron lol
Edit: about Ben-Hur, most know about the epic 1959 version. Most don't know that Ben-Hur that was remade enough times put modern Hollywood to shame, also based on a novel
Can we get a History about the comedy movies made over a blockbuster like Space Balls and Scary Movie? THANKS!
I was expecting this video to be put that genre.
Wasn't disapointed with this though lol.
They may have thought they could get away with the duplicate of the "Frozen" typeface because typefaces, in themselves, aren't copyright-able. (The name of a typeface can.) You also can't copyright fashion styles and colors. (You can copyright the name of a color.)
Great video!
I thought Princess of mars was a mockbuster of John Carter, not Avatar.
and 9012 Doomsday was the Roland Emmerich film 2012 (although it could have been both that and the Nil Marshall film)
Princess of Mars said it was an Avatar mockbuster on the poster besides John Carter wouldn't come out for 3 years. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_of_Mars
2012 Doomsday was released after Doomsday but about 10 months before 2012... But that whole Mayan 2012 thing was big then.
Fer de lance movie had snakes on a Submarine in 1974, years before Snakes on a plane appeared in 2006.
Is Drafting Opportunity the reason why we often see 2 very similar studio movies appear at the same time? (eg. Dante's Inferno v. Volcano, The Martian v. Interstellar, The Prestige v. The Illusionist). Cinematic Synonyms if you will.
sometimes that is just coincidence.
They’re twin films not MockBusters though.
still a great video!!!
That was aactually entertaining.. good job...
Another interesting example is Roger Corman movies of 1960s who somehow obtained some Soviet sci-fi or epic films, then edited and dubbed them finally resulting in some trash movies without any political or social message at all.
P.S. The scenes from "Mac and Me" and "Lady Terminator" were really funny, I've never heard of these movies before :-)
Also Golden Films: Pinocchio (featuring Jim Cummings as Geppito who was the only good thing I can say about GF's take).
I guess that is why they named that animated film "The *B* ee Movie".
Great video, really interesting !
Forgot to mention the turkish film G.O.R.A which copies ideas from several US films. But still remains original film.
It definitely also copied the Saiyan Hairstyle for its aliens. Funny indeed.
What about "The Movies" like The Disaster Movie and The Epic Movie. Are they concidered Mockbusters or do they fall under Parodies.
That genre would be considered Parodies - The "Mock" in "Mockbusters" makes "Fake" not "Ridicule" - they're trying to pass themselves off as the real thing. But Parody films are pretty upfront - you know you're going to see a parody when you go something like Airplane! or Naked Gun.
That's great history ,good work
I actually liked Avengers Grimm.
And here I was thinking The Asylum or one of those other more mainstream companies complained! I wasn't expecting this twist!
I wonder if this content network who filed the complaint actually does represent the original creator of the film or is fraudulently claiming ownership. If it's the former, then there's been an upshoot in interest in these old Turkish films (think like what happened when the Internet got hold of, say, Troll 2 or The Room), which I guess is a good thing??? (shrug) My only real exposure to them is via The Cinema Snob's riffs of some of them (including the one in question), but those aren't exactly new. (Of course, if this is the case, I do know there are just as many Turkish films that aren't ripoffs, so...) On the other hand, if it's the latter, then... TH-cam view revenue :S
Here's hoping the original upload survives in some other format though.
My primary comment when I saw the original video would have been: woah wait, The Asylum mockbusted a Harmony Korine film?! This one definitely needs to be explored further...
It's funny because the channel Cheddar straight up ripped off this video. This video has its own mockbuster.
Well it didn't me rip off, they did their own research (and maybe this video was part of that research)... Just as I did my research...
Movie 42 comes to mind.
You missed the superhit Bollywood 'mockbusters' on Godfather and Magnificent Seven.
Besides the Italians from the 1950s till the 90s, Bollywood is probably the biggest Mockbuster merchant in history.
loved this
I'm very surprised you didn't touch on the Italian "Poliziotteschi".
Or the Cinepannettoni for sure.
I love the B movies. So bad, but so awesome in so many ways.
12:49 Sherlock holmes with Dinosaurs I'm gonna have to watch that
please, take a look at a group of comediants in brazil named "os trapalhoes" they have a lot of movies that are ripped of (in the best way possible) they have one name "os trapalhoes na guerra dos planetas".
Great Videos like always.
Question: Is that (iclone toon), animation at the beginning of your videos ?
they are custom made in 3ds Max
IQ, I'm not sure if this is the same vid, but I recall you sharing about how the film production companies were found to not be the "press" because they were a commercial enterprise. I was curious if that also applied to television news outlets. I know many have press passes but because the networks run programming for ad revenue, is there a solid determination whether majors like CNN or other TV news / local etc are press or are they never allowed press status?
That was the thinking of the U.S. Supreme Courts in the 1915 decision: Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio. We discussed that briefly in our Censorship video. Ironically, it was really over newsreels which were getting hampered and delayed having to go through all the state censorship boards. Since then however, the courts have pretty much reversed their thinking on this (overturned in Joseph Burstyn, Inc v. Wilson 1952) and recognized all motion picture as a form of free expression.
So CNN and other TV news sources, regardless of funding, are protected under the freedom of the press clause of the first amendment.
Mr. John Hess, Thank you! You are one of the most fun producers to watch as you're so informative and bring so much joy to your videos. Not only do your videos make us feel fearless they make us feel like we plugged into the Matrix and downloaded decades worth of data. Thanks for being that Matrix for so many people.
great video!
Very enjoyable
So what you're saying, I could make some crappy Gmod Machinima (with my own assets of course), get it pressed and release it as long as I don't false advertise and make it different enough from the thing I'm ripping off? *boots up Garry's Mod with malicious intent*
Great vid. Love how laughable the mockbusters were. :)
Also not mentioning the countless Road Warrior knockoffs? its practically a genre in its own
Star Wars was copied after Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon from the 1930's. Even scrolling scene at beginning was copied from Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers originally called Anthony Rogers was frozen in magazine in 1929, and Flash Gordon in 1939, while Han Solo was in The Empire Strikes Back in1980.
_Warrior of the Lost World!!!!!!_
like if you heard the wilhelm scream in his intro.
3K in 1927 is 41,783.73 today, according to some internet thing I found.
brilliant
NOLLYHOOD IS BOOMING MY BOY!!
Keep'em coming John.
9:28 Is Paul Rudd promoting a movie?
I found out about your channel today and I am going through an intense binge watching, your stuff is AMAZING... but for the love of what is tasty and spicy, please work on your spanish pronunciation. Puhrana? ayyy :(
4:21 Fox is now a division of Disney
Someone actually won against Disney? Alright!
PongoXBongo GoodTimes Entertainment. But it got defunct in 2005 due to liquidation and lack of budget.
*Atlantic rim*
I can't stop laughing
Hmmm I believe Netflix is proving that history repeats itself. Quantity over quality.
I had never heard of most of those mockbusters and those I have heard of is mostly thanks to IHE (I Hate Everything).
Glim Glam Yet your icon is of Twilight Sparkle...?
Seems you don't hate EVERYTHING... lol XD
*yep, I'm a brony...XD*
IHE is a famous TH-camr and if you were indeed a brony, you'd know this was Starlight Glimmer, not Twilight Sparkle.
Glim Glam My... mistake...
Time to re-familiarise myself with the ponies, methinks... Perhaps Discord's playing with my mind again... :S
Where do films like Scary Movie and Meet The Spartans fit in?
Those are parodies. People expect them to make fun of their subject matter.
Filmmaker IQ Sounds like a topic for your next vid... The History of the Parody Film... :)
That would be a good one!
Filmmaker IQ That would be a vid I would LOVE to see! :D
I remember watching Mel Brook's 'Silent Movie' and thinking 'Oh, so THIS is where Scary Movie got it's idea from!'... Wonder if the idea of parodying entire genres goes back further... :S