--- "d.brin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> My friend Paul Preuss probably won't be suing the guys who made THE
> CORE. Still, the possibility glimmers as we stack up comparisons and
> things stolen from his book CORE. (Oh, and several scenes and thing
> clearly borrowed from EARTH.)
>
> It makes me wonder if someone sometime should set up a whistleblower
> site - akin to some of the urban legends sites - that simply posts
> point by point comparisons between movies and books. Do any of you
> know of such a site already in existence?
>
> A comparison is below. WOuld any of you care to hunt up Paul's book
> and do your own comparison?
>
> db
>
>
>
>
>
> =================
>
> Comparing Core, a 1993 novel by Paul Preuss, with The Core, a
> Paramount picture released in April 2003, Directed by Jon Amiel,
> Produced by David Foster, screenplay by Cooper Layne et al.
>
>
> In both the novel and the movie, Earth faces sudden peril because of
> an extraordinarily quick collapse of the planet's magnetic field.
>
> In both book and film, plucky scientists propose to penetrate deep
> into Earth's core, setting off "bombs in the core" to restart the
> field-generating dynamo.
>
> In both book and film, a hermit-like innovator works alone to invent
> the superhard, refractory material essential to withstand the heat
> and pressure of the deep Earth.
>
> In both the novel and the movie, nefarious government agencies spy on
> these efforts because of their schemes to use earthquakes as weapons.
>
> The producers of the film chose to make the delivery system of their
> nuclear bombs a deep-diving ship carrying a human crew. While this
> makes for colorful drama onscreen, the utter impossibility of the
> approach is a groaner that may have helped defeat the film at the box
> office. Preuss's novel is intended as plausible fiction and does not
> use a crewed vessel. Nevertheless the extrapolation from his deep
> drilling project is blatant.
>
>
> Some specific points:
>
> … The unnaturally rapid collapse of the Earth's magnetic field is
> original to the novel and copyrighted.
>
> … A specific kind of hard, refractory material is original to the
> novel and copyrighted. The screenplay uses terms from the novel
> relating to this material, but takes them out of context and renders
> them senseless, indicating that the idea did not have a common,
> independent origin.
>
> … The entire sequence of a dive into a deep trench in the Western
> Pacific, including underwater earthquakes, whale sightings, etc., was
> taken from the novel in a way that cannot plausibly have had a
> common, independent origin.
>
> … The proposition that the Earth's collapsed magnetic field can be
> restored by setting off bombs in the liquid core is original to the
> novel and copyrighted.
>
> … Both novel and screenplay have as subplots the military use of
> earthquakes as weapons; in both cases spies for the military are part
> of the drilling operations. (In both, the spies are even of Slavic
> origin!) This strains coincidence.
>
>
>
> The producers of "The Core" appear to have attempted to spread out
> their "borrowings" in order to take the best ideas wherever they lie,
> and possibly to disperse any actionable similarities. Another blatant
> source of appropriated copyrighted material is described below.
>
>
>
> Comparing Earth, a 1991 novel by David Brin, with The Core, a
> screenplay by Cooper Layne et al.
>
> This novel and the movie share the notion of the planet's core
> becoming a threat because of human meddling.
>
> In the Preuss novel, the initial calamity was natural. In the Brin
> novel, and in the movie The Core, catastrophe was triggered by a
> human-made object dropped deep into the Earth, requiring human
> intervention to correct and eliminate the first cause.
>
> There are variances in The Core between the initial script, the
> released version of the film, and the story told by publicity
> previews, but all three are relevant. Previews tell of a mission to
> eliminate the deep manmade object object causing disaster on the
> surface.
>
> The most blatant borrowing from Earth is a pivotal dramatic sequence,
> early in both the book and the movie, in which a woman space-shuttle
> pilot, pondering her failed marriage, must suddenly turn her
> attention to saving her ship after the vessel is crippled by the beam
> or field of influence of some human-triggered calamity in the core of
> the planet. Every last detail mentioned in the previous sentence is
> specific to the novel and copyrighted. Every detail appears
> miraculously in the script of The Core.
>
> Also overlapping is the shuttle pilot's subsequent role as the
> co-protagonist, co-survivor, and love interest of the male scientist
> lead.
>
> The novel Earth partly involves the unprecedented and innovative idea
> of interacting with the planet on the level of software. In
> publicity for The Core - though not in the released version of the
> film - a character relates that he is "going to computer-hack the
> Earth".
>
> Other overlaps with Earth include the theme, at the end of both the
> novel and the movie, of fighting the fallacy of government secrecy by
> releasing all information onto the internet.
>
I was personaly supprised that credits were not given in the movie.
I acutlay went to the movie thinking that it MUST BE a movie version of
EARTH. The trailiners were simply too similar for it not to be.
Once in the movie I realized that it was not, but after about 20 minutes
remembered CORE. I watched the next 10 minutes or so thinking that it was
this book that I was watching. Then I finaly realized it was a ripoff of the
tho books.
How can they get away with this? Can't the screenwriter et. al. be held
responsible? Can they not be taken to court?
It's theft becouse now neither CORE or EARTH can be made into a movie without
the public at large believing it to be a "copy". It significantly reduces the
value of the movie rights to either book.
=====
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Jan William Coffey
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