then I assume you don't have any awe for Gene Roddenberry? just checking because he "essentially cribbed" the basics of TOS from Forbidden Planet. he even gave it credit.
writers (and all artists) all over the world have derived inspiration (or, as you so delicately put it, "cribbed") from sources prior to their own creation. it's nothing new and it's not plagiarism.
now, if you can point to plagiarism in this case, I'd be interested.
There is a huge difference between "this inspired me", "it's a similar idea to...", "it's the same premise as X, but here's how it's different...", and huge pieces lifted, whole cloth, from work someone else did.
I am an amateur writer, I know a lot about how people exchange ideas, use similar characters, plots, etc while still managing to create a story that's uniquely theirs. That, I don't take issue with, that's a natural part of the creative process.
But, to use entire scenes straight out of someone else's work, that's bullshit.
And no, JJ and crew making a Trek flick doesn't bother me. What they did with it pisses me off. They paid to be involved, Paramount let them, that's there business decision to make as it's their property. Crap like
Wicked and the
Looking Glass War really sets me off though, because those hacks are basing their entire careers on the property of long dead authors. Sure, it's still public domain, but those guys are still unoriginal hacks.
There's a difference between a reference and cribbing. When Scotty mentions Admiral Archer's dog, that's a reference; when entire chunks of dialog, costuming, and scenes are taken (with very minor changes), that's cribbing.
Sure, it's all Trek and it's not the first (or last) time something like this will happen. But come on, the genuflecting for how brilliant this film is, and by extension JJ and the writers are, is getting a bit tiresome.
They're not brilliant for mashing a bunch of other peoples' words and ideas into a script and writing maybe 10% of their own stuff for it.
