Copycat movie – Filmmaker denied knocking off Pixar’s “Cars”
What is the difference between the new cartoon movie “The Autobots” and the Chinese version of “Cars”? If you say there is not much difference between the two, there will be many people in China who will agree with you.
Critics and disappointed movie goers have said that a newly-released Chinese animation, “The Autobots” is a copy of Pixar’s hit film franchise “Cars”. In the movie poster of “The Autobots”, the race car protagonist closely resembles that in the 2006 and 2011 “Cars” movies. The Chinese title of the movie is similar too, to that used by “Cars”.
Angry and frustrated viewers took to the Internet, saying the movie “shamelessly copied ‘Cars’”. Released on 4 July, “The Autobots” scored an average of 2.1 points on a five-point scale on Douban, a Chinese social media website.
One Douban user commented,
“Many innocent movie goers took their kids to the movie theatre, believing it to be “Cars”. The animation was so poorly made that it is no match for the average domestic cartoon series, and far worse than its not-so-good poster.”
However the filmmaker and production company have denied the accusations, insisting that “The Autobots” is an independently produced and original film. According to Zhuo Jianrong, the movie’s director,
“I know of the movie ‘Cars’, but I have never seen it. I don’t even know the names of the characters.
Zhuo further mentioned that the cars in his movie were imitations of toy cars and have been copyrighted. He asked,
“Aren’t the cars you see in the street similar? If somebody else looks like you, does that person violate the laws?”
With “The Autobots” being his first animation work, Zhuo added that the critics are too harsh on a domestic film production.
“We hope people can be more tolerant, as Chinese animation just started not long ago, and is nowhere near the Hollywood productions. I can only say that we learnt from Disney, but we would never copy.”
Zhuo said that his company had received legal letters from the Walt Disney Company, which owns Pixar and responded with evidence that “The Autobots” isn’t a copy cat. One reason was that the main storyline is completely different – “The Autobots” teach children about thinking and innovation.
Judging by all the comments given, I’m afraid watching “The Autobots” will not be very high on my list of things to do!
(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)
