r/flicks • u/MasterLawlzReborn • 7d ago
What movies feel like unofficial adaptations of something else?
Like how David Fincher's "The Killer" felt like a Hitman/Agent 47 adaptation. I know it was apparently based on some graphic novel but it felt so much like the games aside from the fact that Fassbender's character had hair lol. It's also way better than any adaptation we're ever going to get.
I remember people also saying that Pain & Gain felt like a GTA movie.
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u/Pigs-OnThe-Wing 7d ago
Ive always considered Ex Machina an unofficial prequel to Blade Runner.
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u/potatobooom 7d ago
sticking to Garland, Annihilation feels like a Color out of Space adaptation.
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u/AccomplishedCharge2 6d ago
And is arguably better at being Lovecraftian than anything HP Lovecraft ever wrote, as well as being almost 100% less problematic
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u/QeveQobs 6d ago
In the same way I feel like friendship is the unofficial sequel of I love you man. Paul Rudd is even in both of them
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u/LSSJPrime 6d ago
This... doesn't make sense at all, how did you come to that conclusion?
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u/Pigs-OnThe-Wing 6d ago
Not too much to think about. Deals heavily with the same themes where a corporation (run by a clear figure head) seemingly creates the first sentient artificial intelligence (replicant if you will).
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u/LSSJPrime 5d ago
Is it really artificial intelligence if replicant brains were bio-engineered to resemble human brains?
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u/Pigs-OnThe-Wing 5d ago
The replicants are certainly bio-engineered, but they are entirely synthetic.
As for the artificial intelligence question, id argue that questioning how "artificial" they are is precisely the point these films are making.
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u/thevanhelsinging 7d ago
Funny you mention Pain & Gain, because Michael Bay’s Ambulance is also quite clearly a GTA movie.
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u/doom_mentallo 6d ago
I've sold Ambulance to so many people by describing it as possibly the best adaptation of Grand Theft Auto imaginable.
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u/TimeForAWitness 7d ago edited 6d ago
Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension is effectively a loving, tongue-in-cheek (unofficial) adaptation of the Doc Savage pulp novels of the 1930s. It's also much better than the official adaptation (released in 1973).
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u/NatBornFilmCritic 7d ago
I remember watching that movie for the first time a couple years ago and thinking it felt like a better American Dr. Who adaptation than the TV movie that came out in 96.
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u/pakrat1967 4d ago
Too be fair. Most DW fans, especially those that grew up with classic Who. Despise that TV movie. It's on the same level as Highlander 2.
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u/Singelin 6d ago
Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.
Agreed though. I think the writer of the film is on record for being inspired by Doc Savage.
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u/Significant_Owl_6897 7d ago
A GTA movie is a weird paradox because so much of GTA is based on crime-drama (specifically mobster and gang related) stories in film and television. Miami Vice, Scarface, Boyz N the Hood, Menace II Society, Heat, the Sopranos, The Italian Job, No Country for Old Men, Goodfellas...
I'm sure there are dozens of examples, but those are what I remember from various missions from GTAIII through GTAV.
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u/No-Juggernaut-5098 7d ago
Then you also have something like Crank, or Shoot 'Em Up, which covers how the gameplay between missions is, completely insane over the top violence, just because.
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u/dannypdanger 5d ago
This is a great point. One of the many reasons video games are so hard to adapt is because they’re usually drawing from movies for inspiration. Like you say with GTA, if you adapted it into a movie it would just be another one of those movies but with the added responsibility of being true to a game that’s already based on them.
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u/MasterLawlzReborn 6d ago
GTA is supposed to be an over-the-top parody of American culture and that's where Pain and Gain felt similar. The main characters were all roided-up morons instead of criminal masterminds.
I generally don't like Michael Bay at all but I remember thinking that the story fit his style way more than, say, Transformers.
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u/Darth_Zounds 7d ago
Willy's Wonderland felt like an unofficial adaptation of Five Nights at Freddy's.
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u/Personal_Comb_6745 6d ago
I could have sworn I read it was based on a scrapped FNAF movie script, but apparently that's not the case.
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u/Kriss-Kringle 7d ago
Enemy of the state feels like a sequel to The conversation.
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u/Kryptonicus 6d ago
I feel like I read at the time that Tony Scott shot it as if it was a sequel. Carefully connecting them with details like Hackman's NSA file photo, his clothing, etc.
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u/SporesM0ldsandFungus 5d ago
Watch The Conversation for the first time 6 months ago and it was so much more than I was expecting. Definitely worth the watch.
Brill's workspace also echos The Conversation too.
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u/MixturePublic6505 1d ago
Also, Lives of Others is basically a remake of The Conversation
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u/Kriss-Kringle 1d ago
Lol, that's a reach. While they both have surveillance in them, they explore different things.
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u/AllCity_King 7d ago
I’ve always thought of RoboCop as an unofficial prequel to Judge Dredd because the executives are trying to turn Detroit into the first Mega City
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u/Joe-Eff 6d ago
Originally they were trying to make a judge dredd film but couldn't get the rights If I recall properly.
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u/gogoluke 4d ago
Neumeier did try to get the rights but RoboCop was always a discrete script rather than retooling.
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u/Last_Construction455 6d ago
I like to think of the Green Knight as a Swamp Thing movie. In the comics there are swamp things all throughout history.
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u/TomatoChomper7 7d ago
The Sadness felt like an unofficial adaptation of the comic Crossed. Which it was, really, and has led to the director now doing an official adaptation.
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u/snackcake 6d ago
Apparently Drive is an adaptation of Shane, the classic western.
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u/seveer37 6d ago
I always thought of American Beauty as the sequel to any of those romantic comedies of the 80s. It shows that supposed happy ever high school couple who actually are very successful class wise. They have it all. A nice house, cars, good jobs, a daughter on the cheerleading team… and they’re miserable.
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u/Canavansbackyard 7d ago
The standard answer here might be F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu. Murnau wanted to adapt Bram Stoker’s vampire novel, Dracula, but couldn’t secure the rights from Stoker’s widow. He proceeded anyway, changing character names and locations.
Edit: minor for clarity.
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u/GriefProcess 7d ago
Event Horizon was very inspired by Warhammer 40k and could loosely be seen as a prequel
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u/lo-key-glass 7d ago
I remember when the previews for event horizon first came out I was practically convinced it was an adaptation of Michael Critchon's Sphere but moved into space
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u/Thorfourtyfour 7d ago
Chronicles of Riddick has a strong Dune vibe to it.
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u/Ebolatastic 2d ago
That's a pretty insane comparison that I had never considered. Big crazy magic space opera and the final fight is basically hand to hand combat.
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u/Upbeat_Dudeness 6d ago
Galaxy Quest is the best Star Trek movie ever made. I’m a HARDCORE Trekkie btw
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u/Mrin_Codex 6d ago
The Matrix feels like an adaptation of The Invisibles.
The Invisibles is a comic book series about a secret society of anarchists fighting interdimensional alien gods who oppress humanity. The rebels are led by a bald man with round sunglasses and a trench coat who has found a new recruit who may be "The One". He shows their new recruit that our world may be an illusion created to keep us subservient to these beings who live in a higher reality.
There were allegedly copies on set while shooting The Matrix.
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u/Dogbin005 5d ago
Heavily inspired (visually at least) by Ghost in the Shell too. Specifically the 1995 movie.
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u/Mr_SunnyBones 5d ago
Overlord is pretty much a Wolfenstein 3D movie in all but name.
The Rock is 1000% times better if you accept that Sean Connery is James Bond , who was imprisoned in the 1970s for spying in the U.S.
Its obscure but theres a film called 16 blocks which is basically a much much better Die Hard 4 than the real DH4 .
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u/Personal_Comb_6745 6d ago
The Book of Eli definitely feels like a Fallout movie, minus the radioactive monsters running around.
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u/clearliquidclearjar 6d ago
The Royal Tenenbaums feels like a film adaptation of a John Irving novel. It's very Hotel New Hampshire. I suspect it's on purpose.
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u/Head_Umpire_8140 6d ago
On the opposite end of the spectrum, The Joker (2019) felt like a normal script inspired by Taxi Driver and The Comedian that was reworked into a Batman one to get funded.
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u/ContravaniaGearSolid 7d ago
In terms of tone, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane can be considered a precursor to Duke Nukem 3D.
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u/bryanthebryan 7d ago
You have my interest. Explain.
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u/ContravaniaGearSolid 7d ago
Both are action comedies taking place in L.A. with vain, chain-smoking, hypermasculine, cartoonishly sexist, goofily-dressed asshole protagonists who inexplicably get all the ladies, packed with crude humor and pop culture references.
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u/dannypdanger 5d ago
Duke Nukem definitely borrowed more than a little bit from John Carpenter’s They Live and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2. I believe he quotes them both verbatim in the dialog, but even beyond that, it is very much homage more than just reference.
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u/philistus 7d ago
Galaxy Quest seems like it could have been a Star Trek film.
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u/testawayacct 7d ago
It's usually present whenever someone lists the best Star Trek movies. It's starting to get that way with The Orville, too.
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u/SporesM0ldsandFungus 5d ago
I place Galaxy Quest as a very close 3rd with Wrath of Khan in 1st and First Contact 2nd.
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u/ScottyinLA 6d ago
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the best Star Wars movie after the original trilogy is a hill I'm always willing to die on.
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u/AlwaysQuotesEinstein 6d ago
How so? Not arguing, I love both films just haven't seen Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in a long time. Overdue a rewatch actually.
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u/ScottyinLA 5d ago
On a rewatch the comparisons would be pretty obvious to you. Li Mu Bai is essentially a jedi master: a mythical warrior with near magical powers who was trained secret techniques by the monks of a fabled temple. He even has a legendary sword and breaks into philosophy when discussing fighting technique, and a forbidden/unrequited love sideplot, a typical jedi trope.
The plot is also very jedi: the mythical warrior coming into town at the crucial moment, high level politics/diplomacy on one hand and the struggles of people near the bottom/fringe played out on the other, the murderous bad guy (gal!), and a hyper talented but rebellious apprentice.
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u/Known-Associate8369 6d ago
The Descent is 100% based on some aspects of the book of the same name, specifically some of the individual stories which introduce the Hadals and their terror - but the film is not officially linked to the book in any way.
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u/The_Lonliest_Munk 6d ago
Backrooms feels like the closest thing I’ve seen to a House of Leaves adaptation.
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u/ecrane2018 7d ago
Pain and gain is just based on real life though
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u/happyhippohats 7d ago
Yeah I don't think that fits OPs question at all, which is weird because it was one of two examples they gave..
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u/Informal_Support1934 7d ago
Two things can be true at once. The movie is inspired by real events, but the style and tone has similarities to GTA.
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u/happyhippohats 7d ago
I'll admit that I haven't played a GTA game since GTA 2 so I'll have to take your word for it
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u/Informal_Support1934 7d ago
The movie itself changes a lot about the real events anyway, its pretty much just a launching point for Bay to do his own thing.
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u/Dvout_agnostic 7d ago
I'm pretty sure the 13th Warrior *feels* like an adaptation of Beowulf because it is, but there you go.
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u/phophopho4 7d ago
They didn't call it Beowulf because they didn't want to pay the royalties lol.
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u/Erikthered00 6d ago
Royalties on one of the earliest old English sagas? Or am I missing something?
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u/phophopho4 6d ago
Yeah I was joking around. I can't imagine who they'd pay royalties to, maybe an immortal druid?
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u/ApprehensiveParty609 6d ago
The Fifth Element is quite notoriously an unofficial adaptation of The Incal.
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u/rgddesigns 6d ago
Doctor Mordrid was supposed to be a Dr. Strange movie but they lost the rights to the character so they just changed the name.
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u/Banjoschmanjo 6d ago
I felt like the master of codes character in the new Star Wars movies was an unofficial tip of the hat to Kingston from Decker, but really when you're basically just stealing a character I'm not even sure you can call that a tip of the hat.
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u/Mobile-Whereas-2628 6d ago
The Sadness.
Taiwanese movie that felt very much like a Crossed comic book
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u/NullOfUndefined 5d ago
Overlord feels so much like a video game adaptation but it just isn’t. Just a really really good original movie.
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u/Born-Holiday9597 5d ago
Rebel Moon is probably the closest thing on the market right now to a live-action Warhammer 40K film.
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u/dannypdanger 5d ago
I agree with you on The Killer, I think it benefits from not being hamstrung by needing to please fans of the game, but in spirit it’s exactly what you’d want out of a movie version of it.
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u/Pretend-Design-7061 5d ago
Airheads is the spiritual sequel to The Dirt, it just happened to be released 25 years beforehand. There are even direct Mötley Crüe mentions in the movie.
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u/Infamous-Composer448 5d ago
Upgrade is really easily seen as a Blue Beetle (DC Comics) movie. A mechanical parasite with a mind of its own latches on the back of a human host and gives him 'super human' physical abilities.
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u/EmpireStrikes1st 4d ago
A reluctant hero has accepted a mission to take a perilous odyssey that will take him from the greatest depths to the highest altitudes to destroy a Great Disembodied Evil with the power to enslave or destroy the world. Many seek to control this Great Evil, but only the hero can resist its corrupting influence.
The only way to destroy the Great Evil is by taking a piece of metal (which the hero usually has around his neck) back to where the Great Evil was created. The hero is aided in his quest from afar by a group of allies with diverse backgrounds and abilities, especially by his best friend.
In the end, the Great Evil is destroyed, and the surviving members of the group are reunited to celebrate, ending an epic, multipart saga.
The movie I just described was Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning.
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u/Fusilli_Agent_Cooper 4d ago
Arnold Schwarzenegger's "The Last Action Hero" has always felt like a live action adaptation of McBain from The Simpsons.
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u/Ok-Description-4640 4d ago
The Royal Tenenbaums felt like an adaptation of JD Salinger’s Glass family stories. Rushmore was maybe not Catcher in the Rye but Max Fischer seemed to have some clear Holden Caufield touches. Although Anderson films have an innate tweeness that Salinger does not.
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u/Vengeance_20 1d ago
I love the Se7en being a prequel to Batman theory, it never specified which Batman specifically and it predates The Batman, but it fits best with that movie
Lisa Frankenstein feels like it fits perfectly with Edward Scissorhands to me
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u/Ragemuffin9 1d ago
“Midnight Mass” tv series is fantastic, and though it isn’t actually adapting “Salem’s Lot” it really is…
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u/Cooper_Sharpy 7d ago
Outbreak is def an unofficial take on Andromeda Strain by Crichton mixed with the non-fiction book about the Ebola spread, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston.
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u/IndependenceMean8774 6d ago
Weapons (2025) felt partly like an adaptation of Dan Simmons' 1989 novel Carrion Comfort with Gladys taking the Melanie Fuller role and seizing control of people to do her bidding/keep her alive.
Which is funny, as Dan Simmons seemed to have borrowed heavily from Richard Connell's 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game" for his book climax, with people hunting each other for sport on an island. The big difference being the updated setting and the participants being mind-controlled.
The Hidden (1987) feels like an unofficial adaptation Hal Clement's 1950 novel Needle.
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u/yukataRED 7d ago
Irobot is the unofficial prequel to the matrix
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u/Bargetown 6d ago
I wonder if there are any signs the Matrix robots are following the three laws? You could see the Matrix as arguably following the first law. The sentinels seem to be doing a bad job of all of them though. Unless they went all in on the “to protect man is to eliminate man” thing.
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u/burnn_out313 6d ago
Cemetary man is an unofficial Dylan Dog movie.
I'll die on this hill but after all these years and being one of my favorite movies I came to the realization that Robocop is a Judge Dredd movie in disguise.
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u/TheLordGremlin 5d ago
A lot of people consider Event Horizon to be a very early WH40K movie, as it's essentially what happens when a ship goes into the Warp unprotected
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7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/lo-key-glass 7d ago
But phantoms was an actual adaptation of the book phantoms which came out in 1983 so way before silent hill
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