9 Movies That Blatantly Ripped Off Video Games
I think I've seen this before.
Video games are often looked down on by the movie industry. Hollywood has often labeled video games as not a "legitimate" an art form as motion pictures for decades. It doesn't help that some games lean into this label by constantly stealing scenes and set pieces from popular movies though, making the gaming industry come off as an annoying little brother trying to hang out with its cooler older sibling.
To counter this, many games have began to strive for originality. PlayStation 4's Spider-Man tells the best Spider-Man story to ever grace a screen, and titles like Disco Elysium show that games are superior to film when exploring complex themes such as moral conundrums and political philosophy.
Movies have began to take notice too, stealing some of the best ideas in video games and applying them to filmmaking. The increase of first-person POV shots, side-scroll style fight scenes and all of John Wick are clearly inspired by video games.
It is not just style that movies are shoplifting from video games, though, as some movies are guilty of blatantly ripping off scenes, sequences and sometimes whole plots from popular video games.
9. Brightburn Ripped Off Injustice: Gods Among Us
Brightburn is a movie that asked the question, “What if child superman was innately evil?”
The answer to that is he kills people and animals using his crazy superpowers. There is a scene in Brightburn where the Superman-esque preteen, Brandon, decides to kill his “Pa” Kent stand-in, Kyle, in a manner that seems all too familiar.
After Kyle has his suspicions confirmed that mini Bizarro Superman is in fact murdering fools in cold blood, he sets up a fake hunting trip where he plans to kill Brandon. When Kyle finally pulls the trigger, the bullet ricochets off the adolescent Man Of Steal's head.
In retaliation, Brandon uses his laser vision to burn through Kyle’s skull.
Lovely.
It is a creative fatality-style kill, but if you played Injustice: Gods Among Us in 2013, you'd seen this exact scene when Superman killed Shazam.
In the game, Superman killing Shazam is a shocking moment that illustrates just how far gone this alternate universe's Superman has gone. In Brightburn, it is like Superman killing a crappy stepdad.
One clearly carries a bit more emotional weight.