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[krullstar]

  There was a good movie many years ago called Assassins starring Antonio Banderas & Sylvester Stallone.  The assassin character played by Antonio Banderas was especially memorable.  He was hilarious, the way he talked, his mindset etc...
The character Zevran is pretty much a carbon copy of that character, so much so that I consider it plagiarism.

Anyone who doubts this, just go watch the movie Assassins.  

Some may see no issues with this, but to me, I found it bothersome.  Having some similarities is fine but not so in your face obvious.

Anyone else notice this?

Modifié par krullstar, 22 décembre 2009 - 09:34 .

[David Gaider]

So today the plagiarism in question is that Zevran and the character from Assassins that Antonio Banderas played:

1) have a similar voice
2) are assassins
3) are funny

...and this constitutes plagiarism? I'll assume this stems primarily from #1 and #2... Jon Curry's (that's Zevran's VA, if I remember right) voice sounds eerily like Antonio Banderas, after all. How this leads to us "copying" his character from the movie Assassins is a bit more of a mystery.

No offense to the OP, but this sort of logic seems a bit common around these parts ("these parts" meaning the Internet). Step 1: Generalize a character or story. Step 2: Find commonalities between that generalization and another character or story that you're aware of. Ignore differences. Step 3: If one came before the other chronologically, label it as "rip off" (or in this case "plagiarism").

While I suppose the argument can be made that someone wants to see something more original, it seems like this method can be (and is) used on almost anything creative. I'm not sure what it's supposed to prove. Though I imagine at least a few people will be eager to theorize on that front.

Modifié par David Gaider, 22 décembre 2009 - 10:48 .

[David Gaider]

enderandrew wrote...
I did want to add that I am very disappointed that certain nations in Thedas borrow from Earth's nations in accents.

Orleans is an area in France. France is considered by many to be the fashion capital of the world. Orlesians in Dragon Age have French accents and fixate on fashion.

This was a failing of the Star Wars prequels. The original trilogy had aliens speaking in alien languages. Lucas wanted to make the prequels more kid friendly, and not require reading subtitles. So now aliens borrow accents from Earth, and it made many people uncomfortable, even screaming racism.

Well, I'll point out that Thedas is a fictionalized version of medieval Europe. None of the nations are directly analogous to European nations, but they all borrow heavily from our own history. The idea is that this is what our own world might have been like, if we had magic and elves and dwarves and so forth. You may not like the idea, but it was not done accidentally.

As for the criticism against the Star Wars prequels, I believe the racism you're referring to was with regards to the mannerisms given to the Gungan race -- which some thought to be too stereotypically "black". Nationalities such as French or Spanish are not races, and are available as a shorthand in the same way that elves or dwarves are (and certainly easier on our poor voice actors than making an accent up from whole cloth, let me tell you), and while someone may not like their presence such accents cannot constitute racism.

[David Gaider]

enderandrew wrote...
The French are a race. There were also complaints about Watto the Toydarian representing a Shyster, and evoking ideas of Anti-Semitism. There are entire books breaking down racist tones in The Phantom Menace.

But then again Lucas went on record saying Imperials should all have British accents to evoke feelings of Americans fighting against the British Empire, and I believe on one commentary track, he blatantly took the name Stormtrooper to suggest they were **** troops.

*I* certainly don't think of nationalities being the equivalent of races, but it seems the dictionary proves me wrong. Fair enough. Regardless, isn't the point you're making that the use of the accents in the Star Wars prequels was as negative stereotypes? I don't think we do that. Not liking the presence of real-world accents doesn't make them racist.

Modifié par David Gaider, 23 décembre 2009 - 07:26 .

[David Gaider]

enderandrew wrote...
I enjoy many aspects of Thedas. I went to a Barnes and Noble to try and buy the novels this past week, only to discover they don't keep them in stock in the stores.

Well that's too bad. I've seen the first novel in stores here, still, though you can get them from Amazon too (if you're not averse). The real-world parallels are still there, mind you, if not the accents (I don't believe in phonetically transliterating accents -- that's just silly-making).

But I was disappointed by the clear parallels to Earth nations. I feel they just take me out of the world, where I wanted more fantasy immersion.

Whereas I don't think such parallels are mutually exclusive to an immersive fantasy world. I often find that fantasy cultures end up being a series of traits, often exaggerated, and I lose the feeling of them being a culture. Do we need to use real-world cultures? Not always, no, but I think they can be a good starting point. I guess there we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Perhaps expansions and sequels can focus more on the contrast as opposed to the comparison. Perhaps we can learn more about the Qunari?

One of the advantages of making a world like this, one that we own, is that we can take it where we want to. One of the pleasures of building your own sandcastle, after all, is getting to kick it down. There's lots of places we can go in the future that might please you as being more markedly different to our world -- the Qunari are certainly a possibility.

[Stanley Woo]

None of which has anything to do with the topic you started.



End of line.