This weekend sees the release of The Legend of Hercules — and then later
this year, we’ll see a second Hercules movie. This seems to happen a lot:
everybody gets the same bright idea at the same time, and competing films are
rushed into production. Here are a ton of cases where weirdly similar films did
battle.
This list focuses on science fiction and fantasy
films, natch, so feel free to name your favorite non-genre “dueling
movies” below. (Including Olympus Has
Fallen/White House Down or Top
Gun/Iron Eagle.)
Ninja/Ninja Assassin
The titles pretty much say it all — especially
since a ninja is basically a kind of assassin, making the second film a
redundantly named copy of the second. Ninja came about a month before Ninja
Assassin, but it went straight to video and couldn’t compete with Ninja
Assassin, which actually came out in theaters.
Underworld:
Evolution/Ultraviolet
Even though Ultraviolet ended up downplaying its
vampiric roots, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s about a badass
vampire-chick waging war against an entity that is inherently at odds with her
people. Replace the Archministry with werewolves, strip off some of the
futuristic elements, and you have Underworld: Evolution. That’s probably why
Screen Gems (which distributed both movies) downplayed the vampire stuff during
the month and a half between movie releases.
The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen/Van Helsing
Though the movies were released almost a year
apart, they were both all about crossing classic literary works with each
other. The League brings together the likes of Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo,
Mina Harker, Rodney Skiner, Dr. Jekyll, Dorian Gray, James Moriarty and others
in a bit of a messy combination. Van Helsing is a little thinner when it comes
to heroes, but it does bring together Dracula, werewolves, and Frankenstein’s
monster as enemies.
Robin Hood/Robin Hood:
Prince of Thieves
These two movies came down to budget. While the
first Robin Hood came out a month earlier and sported Uma Thurman, it went
straight to TV when it came stateside — but that decision was made to avoid
further competition. Prince of Thieves, which started Kevin Costner (who at the
time was actually someone people wanted to see) and had a much larger budget,
did much better.
A Bug’s Life/Antz
This was
the first time Pixar and Dreamworks squared off, but it wasn’t the last. Both
movies did well, but A Bug’s Life was
marketed better and brought in way more money. Antz suffered from not finding the right line, as it was too mature
to draw kids away from A Bug’s Life. Kids
may have been shocked that Antz had a
pretty intense war scene, and included someone saying the word “Damn.”
Finding Nemo/Shark Tale
The second
time Pixar and Dreamworks went at it, you’d think that the later would win
since their movie brought together a crazy cast for an animated flick. Not that
Nemo was filled with nobodies, but it
was hard to compete with Will Smith, Jack Black, Robert De Niro, and Angelina
Jolie in 2004. Dreamworks’ problem came down to the story, because a father
searching for his missing son resonated far better than the story of a shark
who doesn’t want to kill. After all, Nemo had that element too — and those
sharks had Australian accents.
Titan A.E./Treasure Planet
These
movies have the biggest time-gap between them, but the second Disney/Bluth
face-off (after Oliver and Company
and All Dogs Go to Heaven) has too
many similarities to ignore. They’re basically the same movie, even. Both star
a kid with daddy issues living in a post-Earth, interstellar community where a
space voyage with weird alien people looks to change their lives. Each crew has
a potent betrayal which threatens to screw everything up, but the villains all
redeem themselves at the last minute with a “take my hand” moment. Oh, and both
main characters were also the only people who could read a special map to some
giant, faux-planet macguffin. Both films tanked in theaters, but have since
been redeemed after the fact. Image via Blip.TV.
Despicable Me/Megamind
Steve
Carell had a decent lead on Will Ferrell when it came to releases, but that
wasn’t the only reason the former comedy about an evil-genius-turned-good
outperformed the latter. It came down to the three little girls Gru adopts,
infusing the movie with a dose of adorableness and heart that Megamind lacked.
Paranorman/Hotel
Transylvania/Frankenweenie
These three children’s animated horror films
dealt with young kids in supernatural situations. All three came out within a
month of each other and fatigued each other. Somehow only Adam Sandler’s Hotel Transylvania succeeded
commercially, even though the other two were better received by critics.
This is the End/The
World’s End
In classic United States-vs.-United
Kingdom fashion, these
two end-of-the-world comedies duked it out over the summer. But when Seth
Rogen’s crew squared off against Simon Pegg’s, the real winner was the
audience. Both movies were hilarious, but Rogen’s film did make a way larger
amount of money stateside.
Deep Impact/Armageddon
The apocalypse came twice in 1998 — both times
courtesy of a comet. Deep Impact was
considered the better movie, sporting the likes of Morgan Freeman, Robert
Duvall, and Elijah Wood, but Armageddon
made more money. It also had a larger comet. 7 miles is large enough to do
considerable damage to the Earth, but Armageddon threw out one the size of Texas. They might as
well have had the Earth facing an impact with Jupiter.
Dante’s Peak/Volcano
The late ’90s were a bad time for planet Earth,
because the year before two comets threatened things, two volcanos decimated
continental America
in these movies. Dante’s Peak did
make an effort to be scientifically accurate though, and that earned it more
money. Despite this, Volcano gets
more attention on cable these days.
The Matrix/eXistenZ/The
Thirteenth Floor
In 1999, there were famously three movies that featured
computer-generated worlds and a protagonist who questions the meaning of
reality. David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ
has gone on to be a cult classic, with its strange biomechanical imagery and
bone-gun. The Thirteenth Floor just
sort of sank without trace. But The
Matrix became one of the year’s biggest movies and spawned a trilogy,
handily winning this showdown.
Babe/Gordy
Amazingly, there were two movies about a talking
pig in 1995 — Babe, of course, features a pig learning to herd sheep in a
touching story that included James Cromwell’s singing. Gordy was a critically
panned movie whose advertising featured a pig wearing sunglasses. In the end, Babe
crushed his rival with one trotter tied behind his back.
Abyss/Leviathan/Deep
Star Six
Three different undersea adventure movies came
out around the same time in 1989. Leviathan
was basically Alien under the water,
with the crew being hunted by a dangerous mutation. In Deep Star Six, a crew of an undersea military base battles against
a giant monster. But neither of these films could hold a tentacle to a new
James Cameron film — despite being possibly Cameron’s least successful movie, Abyss still gave the
competition the bends.
The Prestige/The
Illusionist
One was Christopher Nolan’s lavish adaptation of
the acclaimed novel by Christopher Priest. The other was a strange saga of an
illusionist trying to win a woman far above his station, using his magic skills,
based on a story by Steven Millhauser, starring Ed Norton. Both movies did
insanely well, but The Prestige was
the bigger hit of the two.
The Truman Show/EdTV
These movies were a year apart, in 1998 and
1999, but they both focused on a guy who’s under constant surveillance and
whose fake life is a long-running reality TV show. Despite being based on a
1994 Canadian film, Ron Howard’s EdTV
probably seemed too derivative of the hit Truman Show, leading to it becoming a
giant bomb.
The Curious Case of
Benjamin Button/The Time Traveler’s Wife
Here we have two love stories involving men who
got the short end of the stick when it comes to the fourth dimension. It’s hard
to say whose ailment is crueler, though. Benjamin is born as a frail old man
and grew up (down?) into a baby, which turns out to be far sadder than aging
the normal way. Henry DeTamble, however, uncontrollably bounces around time,
but finds a way back to his love. While it’s not for us to say who had a tougher
life, Button did far better as a
movie.
Legend/Labyrinth
Both of these movies tried to define ’80s era
fantasy with a huge budget dedicated to cutting-edge special effects (at the
time), hammy acting, and otherworldly settings. In fact, the similarities could
be attributed to sharing a cinematographer — Alex Thompson. If both studios
hadn’t caught on in time, these movies might have even been more similar.
Neither did very well in the box office, but Labyrinth has become legend for giving the world more shots of David
Bowe’s crotch than anyone ever asked for.
The Descent/The Cave
Spooky caves with dangerous monsters were
apparently in during the summer of 2005, because both of these decided to be
about the same thing. When a group stages an expedition into a mysterious
series of caves, creatures emerge and start slaughtering everyone. Panic ensues
and nobody really wins. But if you were looking for a fun horror film to keep
your friends from going spelunking, you probably want to go with the Descent.
Paranormal Activity/The
Fourth Kind
Back when Paranormal Activity was in its infancy
(and was still something to get excited about), it almost had some competition
from The Fourth Kind. Sure, one was
about ghosts and the other was about aliens, but they were both spooky/scary
mockumentaries. Still, you never saw a Fifth or Sixth Kind, so the winner is
clear.
An American Werewolf in
London/The Howling
Both of these movies broke ground in 1981 by being
the first to show the actual transformation from man to werewolf — but neither
ever became more than a cult classic.
Dracula/Nosferatu the
Vampyre
There were at half a dozen vampire movies before
the genre exploded this past millennium, but only these two managed to compete
in a noteworthy way. But after Dracula getting all the love for so many years,
his movies had grown kind of stale. This time it was Nosferatu who came out on
top, and the late Roger Ebert had it on his greatest movie list.
Mission to Mars/Red Planet
The new millennium saw a bit of extra interest in
Mars, with two movies showing different takes on what the planet might
offer. The first and more successful movie had a much more positive vibe, with
humanity turning out to be descendants of Martians with the hope of joining
their creator. The latter is a bit of a horror film where everything goes wrong
on the mission and Martian insects and a crazy robot kills a lot of people.
Because people like a happy ending, the first one did better, breaking even at
the box office.
Delgo/Avatar
Remember when Delgo, an animated movie about one species learning to live like
another, lit up the big screen and wowed critics everywhere? Oh, of course you
didn’t — because hardly anyone knows that Delgo
is even a thing. A good reason for that is thanks to poor marketing techniques,
but the rest is because Avatar took
up all the attention. That’ll happen when you go up against what ends up being
the highest grossing movie of all time.
Battle Los Angeles/Skyline
These films were similar for a reason — the
directors of Skyline worked on the
VFX for Battle Los Angeles and arguably
used similar effects in their own movie. The similarities between these two
alien-invasion movies set in LA, which came out a few months apart, were
worrisome enough that Sony
took the Skyline directors, the Strause brothers, to court.
Oblivion/After Earth
The Earth was probably pretty lonely last year,
what with getting abandoned
in both of these 2013 flicks. Both were visually gorgeous movies, but
regardless of how good Oblivion was, After Earth was a Shyamalan film, coming
on the heels of Last Airbender. You
can imagine how little Oblivion had
to do to win the upper hand.
Thor/Green Lantern
Back in 2008, Iron Man and The Dark Knight
both tried to own the summer, with The
Dark Knight triumphing handily. A few years later, Marvel and DC did battle
again — with two CG-heavy tales about alien societies that protect the human
race. The main difference between them is that Thor was good and the Green
Lantern was awful. Thor probably didn’t even need the month-long head-start it
got because it won by a wide margin.
Mirror, Mirror/Snow
White and The Huntsman
Why the hell was Snow White worth two movies in
2012? At least there was some diversity, since Mirror was a comedy while The
Huntsman was a straight-action. Both did ok commercially — but The Huntsman managed to win, partly because
of a bigger budget.
Sources: Twisted
Sifter, Reddit,
11Points,
Vulture
, IMDB
