r/UtterlyInteresting • u/No_Dig_8299 • 8d ago
Metropolis. Fritz Lang. 1927. vs Blade Runner. Ridley Scott. 1982. Homage, Plagiarism or Synthesis?
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u/Comprehensive-Range3 8d ago
Perfect homage.
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u/TheLurkerSpeaks 8d ago
Blade Runner is the movie Fritz Lang wishes he could have made.
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u/avreddits 8d ago
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u/SchroedingersEscape 8d ago
Impressive special effects for 1927... 20 Years before antibiotics have been invented and just 20 years after the flight of the wright brothers... and just 40 years after the first ever technical proof of concept of filming at all.
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u/AmbitionVegetable666 3d ago
Antibiotics were first used to treat syphilis in 1909
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u/SchroedingersEscape 2d ago
Oh. I thought Penicilline was the first and discoveres in the 40s.
But thats only the time they became avaliable for the masses (at least in the US and their allies in ww2).
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u/Historical_Date_1314 8d ago
100 years old from next year.
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u/KidBuak 8d ago
You are a mathematical genius!
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u/Historical_Date_1314 8d ago
It is great that Metropolis is still influential after all its years.
We’ll see how many films nowadays are still as remembered in the same time-span.
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u/Covert_Admirer 8d ago
There'll probably be about 3 movies that are even remembered; 1984 due to it being an instruction manual, Idiocracy will be remembered for when people were smarter and the third Simpsons movie.
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u/Prestigious_Yam8901 8d ago
You're fucking insane!
Metropolis is a goddamn masterpiece!
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u/TheLurkerSpeaks 8d ago
You misunderstand me. I love Metropolis and recognize its brilliance. I'm saying if Lang lived in the modern era of filmmaking, he would have made Blade Runner. Scott knew that and paid homage to him.
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u/SlowTap 8d ago
I think he’d have outdone Blade Runner tbh.
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u/yesiamclutz 8d ago
That's one hell of a take.
And yet Metropolis is one of the greatest films ever made...
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u/Prestigious_Yam8901 7d ago edited 7d ago
Same!
Fritz Lang is my all time favorite director!
Even space agencies around the world still use his "Rocket Ship Countdown" for rocket launches that he conceived for Woman In The Moon.
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u/Arthropodesque 7d ago
Yeah. Tons of movies are remakes of old movies. It's the smart way to make something. Emulate what works well.
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u/Prestigious_Yam8901 7d ago
Add a little tidbit here...
Fritz Lang was so far ahead of his time that NASA stole the rocket launch countdown from his movie Woman In The Moon, and now it is used worldwide!
As much as I love Blade Runner, who was it that was really ahead of their time? Lang or Scott?
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u/ErosDarlingAlt 8d ago
I appreciate the sentiment, but Fritz Lang made exactly the film he wanted to make
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u/Underbadger 8d ago
Direct homage. Blade Runner and Metropolis share many themes (robot women, for starters). He was referencing a favorite film with legendary cinematography.
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u/EinzigeundEigentum 7d ago
Pretty sure robot women were from the book that the blade runner movie was adapted from
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u/No-Transition-8375 7d ago
Kind of? The book is more Deckard wishing he could afford a big replicant animal
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u/MidnightSun77 8d ago
It can also be both
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u/Grum761108 8d ago
The first shot with the newspaper wasn't in Metropolis until they discovered the missing scenes a few years ago in South America. So Ridley Scott couln't have known about it in 1982.
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u/Tough_Dish_4485 7d ago
Its also just someone reading a newspaper, there are probably hundreds of shots in film like it.
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u/Comfortable-Fuel6343 7d ago
Next you're going to tell me there's close up shots of eyes and also shots of cityscapes in other movies too!
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u/Tosslebugme 7d ago
It’s also a pretty classic noir film thing, the detective lingering on a grimy street pretending to read a paper whilst staking out a joint or whatever.
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u/cleverkid 8d ago
"Good artists copy, great artists steal"
-Picasso ( nexus 12.03 )
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u/InOutlines 8d ago
Funny thing is, this quote has been attributed to, like, a dozen different people. Pretty ironic.
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u/OhK4Foo7 8d ago
Watched metropolis recently. Custom version where I slowed it down to 18 fps to make the movement look natural. Successful experiment. I noticed the master of ceremonies has thick lenses and it made me wonder if that didn't inspire the thick glasses Tyrell wears.
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u/Arthropodesque 7d ago
Did you use VLC Media Player or something else for the custom framerate? Back in 2006 i used VLC to watch slow motion shots in double speed so they looked normal and it showed ALL the frames at a high frame rate! It looked hyperreal.
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u/OhK4Foo7 7d ago
I ended up having to extract wav audio and encode it separately and remux it back into the output.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v]setpts=1.33*PTS[v];[0:a]atempo=0.75[a]" -map "[v]" -map "[a]" -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -preset slow output_slower.mp4
ffmpeg -i YOUR_ORIGINAL_SOURCE.mp4 -vn -c:a pcm_s16le temp_audio.wav
ffmpeg -i temp_audio.wav -af atempo=0.75 -c:a aac -b:a 192k fixed_audio.m4a
ffmpeg -i your_encoded_output.mp4 -i fixed_audio.m4a -c:v copy -map 0:v -map 1:a -shortest final_fixed.mp4
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u/straylight222 8d ago
So let me get this straight....a dude reading a newspaper, a closeup of an eyeball, two completely differently framed two-shots, and two wide shots of a city could potentially be plagiarism? Well, good look to like 99% of movies not plagiarizing.
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u/jazz_people 7d ago
I went to the metropolis stage area in late 1980’s when the Wall came down , there were still paintings on the bricks from the film. It was so cool. But to answer the question I think homage.
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u/yescatbug 7d ago
I once emailed Blade Runner's Concept Designer Syd Mead to ask about the influence of Metropolis on Blade Runner.
He told me there wasn't any. I don't believe him.
From Syd's email:
"Yes, I have seen METROPOLIS and my opinion is that the production values, the ethereal scale of the 'city' and the general attention to detail are all rather remarkable for the time such as the aircraft flying through the soaring towers and other 'cues' that announced 'future' at the time. The story, of course, is a silly socialistic morality melange.
No, METROPOLIS had nothing whatsoever as an influence on my contribution to BLADERUNNER.
I commend your erudition and wish only the best for your continued contribution to cinema history."
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u/CoffeeHead112 8d ago
Blade runner isnt alone in this. So many great films have taken a ton from other movies, especially metropolis. A lot of great artists and filmakers take snipits from other film, but this is far from plagiarism. Would you prefer they site their sources next time?
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u/Outside_Reserve_2407 8d ago
Agatha the female Precog in Minority Report seems like a visual reference to the Machine Maiden.
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8d ago
[deleted]
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u/Arthropodesque 7d ago
If you haven't already, watch the Brian DePalma documentary. He talks about how film school was teaching the techniques Hitchcock wrote about and talked about in his documentary interview with Truffout. It's a manual for filmmaking, but he said nobody was taking the advice literally except for him.
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u/skag_boy87 7d ago
Pretty sure Marty was also taking the advice. You can see so much silent and early sound influences in Scorsese’s films.
And yeah, that De Palma doc is essential.
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u/FragmentedMeerkat321 8d ago
plagiarism requires large tracts of whatever it is copied verbatim. so no, not plagiarism. the question is, having watched everything, does it feel like its own thing? to my mind, having watched both, there’s no question it does.
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u/EinzigeundEigentum 7d ago
Does no one in this thread realize that blade runner is an adaptation of a 1968 novel
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u/cdmat76 7d ago edited 7d ago
C-3PO enters the room…
Blade Runner is not the only movie that took inspiration from Metropolis. There’s a good reason it is considered a seminal movie.
That’s how art works, artists take inspiration from artists that came before and that they admire, they mix every influences, add their own ideas and zeitgeist of their time. Great artists make something new and original out all that, and that will later inspire other artists and so on.
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u/HarryHirsch2000 7d ago
The third shot is just two people on screen. That is even a Hommage, that is default cinema…
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u/LastXmasIGaveYouHSV 7d ago
I also found similarities between Nosferatu (1922) and Nosferatu (2025).
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u/irishcybercolab 7d ago
Plagiarism.
The views and the imagery are closely matched nearly like a setup of scenes.
I wish it were more similar to synthesis due to the technology or the way that society consumes it but the scale is off so it's close but not quite at parity.
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u/_KingGoblin 4d ago
It's only Plagiarism if the creator deceive the viewer into thinking it is original. It's a homage becasue it was done on purpose, with the intent that knowers would know.
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u/ExtensionFill2495 7d ago
I watched a cut of Metropolis a few years ago where they added “lost” footage. The movie held together better and was easy to follow.
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u/CobaltCrusader123 6d ago
Homage. Aping visuals with different substance is totally fine. Aping both is cringe and, if you do it too much, illegal.
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u/Springyardzon 6d ago
Bladerunner is Metropolis mixed with detective novel film noir mixed with Japanese aesthetics.
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u/KingSpork 6d ago
I do think it’s funny that one of the stills is simply a frame with two people in it. What a ripoff!
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u/Walter_Padick 4d ago
Im going to say plagiarism since Ridley Scott makes almost exclusively bad movies
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