Many Hollywood Films You Know Are Inspired By Anime Posted Aug 9, 2019
Money makes the world go round and it is a well-known fact that Hollywood doesn't shy from rehashing the old material or "borrowing" someone else's idea if it looks like it can be popular and bring in the profit. Now, we don't often know the whole story and it would be hypocritical from me to judge, considering I, and many others I know, have thoroughly enjoyed many of the Hollywood movies, but the fact remains. Not to say there aren't new and original movies, but many argue they "keep dwelling on the past" a bit too much.
They are remaking old Disney animated classics (some of which were based on other stories even way back then) into modern, live-action movies. Also, there have been reboots and revivals of old franchises like Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Terminator, etc, which, again, spark a lot of controversies. Some can't wait to see the new movie while others think it's all for money and the quality suffers, ruining even what was made before. Spin-offs, sequels, prequels, reboots, and remakes became an everyday thing and, whenever a movie does particularly good, you can expect more of it to be on the way. And when a foreign film becomes popular worldwide, high chances are a Hollywood remake is to be released in a few years. Because of all of that, it's no wonder that some of the most popular and mainstream Hollywood movies have been influenced and inspired by anime.
While anime may still be a niche genre with not even remotely enough followers as the mainstream film has, it has an influence on Hollywood, and hardcore anime fans have spotted that a long time ago. One of the most infamous cases is Inception. Inception is a rather interesting SF made by Christopher Nolan and there are high chances you have heard of it. Traveling inside people's minds, entering a dream within a dream, distorting reality are only some of the cool topics this piece works with. The infamy comes from the fact that a lot of the story and even whole scenes have been completely ripped off from Satoshi Kon's film, Paprika, from 2004. Just googling the two gives you a bunch of side-by-side pictures and references, as well as the matching in the story. Nolan never admitted to copying or paying homage, but it's undeniably there.
Another case involving Satoshi Kon is a bit more subtle and revolves around his Perfect Blue, which Darren Aronofsky "borrowed" from to create an amazing thriller, Black Swan. On a lighter note, the Wachowskis have created The Matrix after watching Ghost in the Shell and wanting to "do that for real." And now we even have a live-action Ghost in the Shell. The internet is filled with these cases. Search them yourself but make sure not to get held up on a bunch of best hentai sites while searching for anime, which you're sure to come across. There are a lot of interesting facts to be learned if you are not stuck playing cartoon porn games too long.
