I was surprised to see that someone was bold enough to actually try to sue Disney. As I read the article, I realized that the Disney movies mentioned were actually movies that my sister had watched before. I remember being forced to watch them with her. Really, the movies are just one of those childish nonsense movies that you cannot help but love. I have never even heard about Harter, Kearny, or Corno, or the movie "Santa Paws: The Story of Santa's Dog." Clearly, they are not really well-known in the industry. If I recall, my sister and I watched the two Disney movies a few months ago. I wondered why the plaintiffs barely even tried to sue Disney. As soon as the movie was even released, they should have already sued Disney. Because they did not, it leaves me to think that they only sued Disney because of its movies' success; the success that the plaintiffs believe they should have achieved. I feel like their lawsuit against Disney was more of a result of jealousy and obviously anger.
As a student, this leads me to the issue of plagiarism and cheating. I know that if I wrote a long essay, only to have someone plagiarize and take credit for it, I would be livid. Plagiarism is an issue that has never been tolerated in schools. As a student, plagiarism could cause expulsion. As a future filmmaker, a situation like this could easily happen to me. There are millions of people in the world and more likely than not, someone's idea is not as original as they think it is. Somewhere, someone else in the world could have the same idea but they do not have the same capability to actually put their idea to use. All I know is that if something like this ever happened to me, I would fight for my idea. I am not just going to back down simply because someone else did not have the connections to pull through with a movie, script, etc. As a consumer, this article brings Disney is somewhat of a bad light. It makes Disney seem unoriginal, that they get their ideas by stealing it from other people. The titles of the movies are clearly nearly identical. Perhaps the content of the movies were not identical, but Disney could have at least switched up its a title.
This article raises a few questions from the industry. If a filmmaker comes up with an idea and makes it into a successful movie, can't anyone just simply rise up to the occasion and claim that they came up with the idea first? Are filmmakers really as original as they seem to be? Or could they be taking their ideas from other people? I know that I would hate it someone took an idea that I believe is originally mine. Then again, just because I had an idea, it does not necessarily mean that I am the only person in the world who has ever come up with such an idea. This specifically applies for many filmmakers as well. If a filmmaker has a successful movie, and another filmmaker believes that they had the same idea, the other filmmaker should just drop it. The successful filmmaker just happened to produce the movie at the right time. The two filmmakers may have just coincidentally came up with the same idea without the knowledge of one another.
