The Swell, the Awful, and the Hideous

Some people make movies for the fame, some for the money, and some for the accolades. Some even make movies just because it's what they love to do. And then there are the people who make movies for reasons no one can explain at all.

In the January 11^th issue of Entertainment Weekly, the article, “Attack of the Clones!” caught my eye. Josh Rottenberg tells of the film studio, The Asylum, which pretty much just makes what are called “mockbusters”, movies directly based off of other movies. And I'm not talking sequels, here. I'm talking big-budget films turned into measly rat-shack movies with crappy actors and a completely ridiculous purpose: basically to attract people who liked the real movie each mockbuster is based off of because that totally makes sense. Or, I guess, in the words of one of The Asylum's partners, Paul Bales, “Our audience is people who want something they don't have to think too hard about.”

Yeah, sure. I mean, why watch Samuel L. Jackson in Snakes on a Plane when you could watch some D-list actor in Snakes on a Train? Why watch sexy Chris Hemsworth in Thor when you can watch some dude named Cody Deal in Almighty Thor? Why show your kids High School Musical (or maybe that's your type of thing; I don't know) when you could show them Sunday School Musical, which, believe it or not, actually makes HMS look half-way well made. Then there's Battle of Los Angeles, which the people at The Asylum were so lazy about that they only replaced the colon in Battle: Los Angeles with a preposition.

Of course some law suits have arisen because of the eerie similarities, which really only caused The Asylum to change their films' names slightly, like from American Battleship to American Warships (off of Universal's film, Battleship). (Wow. Well didn't that fix the problem!) Isn't this some sort of plagiarism, though? I mean, seriously, but Bales stands by the movies, saying, “It's an honor to be mockbusted.”

The Asylum is no longer the only studio making mockbusters, though, or being sued for completely ripping off popular movies. This past year, Brightspark Productions, Ltd. was had to pull one of its movies, Braver, after Disney took legal action against it.

But don't say that The Asylum is never creative, because they have released the very imaginative 2-Headed Shark Attack, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, and Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus which are all from the minds of the studio itself. They've also put out Rise of the Zombies, which I'm pretty sure I've actually seen, unfortunately. (Another way other studios are mockbusting is actually against The Asylum itself, making movies like Sharktopus and Robo Croc. (And just when you thought a movie couldn't get more ridiculous and low-budget than Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus.))

Frankly, this whole thing just proves that the phrase “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” is complete and utter bull crap. Imitation is really just the sincerest form of laziness.