THR has a great interview with John Carpenter up on their site, and tucked away neatly in one corner of it is some interesting stuff about a Metal Gear lawsuit that never was.
While discussing an old lawsuit between Canal+ (co-owners of Carpenter’s classic Escape From New York) and Luc Besson ‘s 2012 film Lockout (which lifted heavily from EFNY’s plot), Carpenter reveals that the French studio “wanted to also go after the video game Metal Gear Solid, which is kind of a rip-off of Escape From New York, too, but I told them not to do that.”
“I know the director of those games, and he’s a nice guy, or at least he’s nice to me.”
Presumably a lawyer somewhere down the line would also have pointed out that Metal Gear’s Snake is simply a homage to EFNY’s Snake Plissken, and that the convoluted paramilitary storyline of Metal Gear has almost nothing in common with Carpenter’s vision of a dystopian United States.
But hey, Kojima being a nice guy to John Carpenter can help head that problem off at the pass!
Comments
17 responses to “Studio Wanted To Sue Kojima For ‘Ripping Off’ Escape From New York”
Fair enough, Metal Gear is full of homage* to cinema.
*coughripoffcough*
YOU LEAVE MGS ALONE!
Don’t make me get started on what Persona rips off!
(Really, don’t make me… I might have to actually play it for reference.)
Hey, I’m down with derivatives (I don’t think there’s been an original idea since the stone age), but give credit where credits due.
And for the record, I only don’t like sandbox gear v. 1-4 & port ops were all great fun.
Persona is a spin off of Shin Megami Tensei which is a reworking of Digital Devil Story Megami Tensei which is a video game adaptation of an anime adaptation of the original pulp novel.
The novel itself being a sort of mish mash of 80s computer hacking & religious/folk tales & legends (sorta like Harry potter does with the classic school tale & myth).
The gameplay is a derivative of Wizardry which we all know was inspired by tabletop RPGs such as dungeon & dragons. They were the earliest depiction of monster training I’ve seen, we wouldn’t have Pokemon etc without Megami Tensei.
I had to re-read that first paragraph almost three times. I didn’t finish the third attempt in case that’s the ritual which summons a misanthropic, Japanese, teenage world-saviour.
Book> cartoon > game > game removing ties to the inspiration > spinoff off.
Gonna have to call you up on misanthrope there, socialising is an important part of the Megami Tensei series, starting with demon negotiations in the original series (as well as your usual quest & story stuff) right up into the development of Social Links in Persona.
In fact, Social Links are Persona’s bread & butter (think Shepherd trying to bang a blue alien minus the sex & setting)=
(lol, teenagers not having sex.)
That’s what Catherine was for. 😉
Although, I’d kil for them to set a Persona in a drug fueled, sex crazed college setting. They dance around the cool stuff a bit too much.
‘Abstinence’ as the norm is not how I remember high school, but a significant amount of the anime I’ve seen seems to indicate that Japanese teens are terrified of it, so… makes sense.
Man, you want to get some fucked up personalities into the mix, College/Uni is where it’s at.
@transientmind Yeah, cultural differences. You answer a question correct in class or get the top score in a test & you’re the most popular kid in school. Unlike here where you’d probably get a wedgie & a flushing.
The positivity during the day was lovely & refreshing, unlike my memories of high school which Life is Strange reminded me too much of.
Snake even goes so far as to call himself Plissken in MGS2
Shhh, let’s not make it worse 😛
Don’t know why this is being reported on now. When I did a games report on Kojima at uni for an assignment 4 years ago, I found this exact same quote from Carpenter.
I hear Kojima is alright
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