Whenever something gets popular, there’s always going to be something knocking it off. Why get those expensive Justice League toys when there’s a dollar store with the Sense of Right Alliance? Like Sonic the Hedgehog? Then check out Awesome Possum! That’s not getting into the musical debate over which singer/band is a clone of another singer/band. The Beatles Vs The Monkees. Radiohead Vs Muse. Amy Winehouse Vs Duffy, etc.
The most infamous copycats come from cinema. Take a popular series, prefix it with a country, and fans will find a plethora of films that took ‘inspiration’ from another. There’s Turkish Star Wars (The Man Who Saved the Earth), Italian Jaws (Cruel Jaws), British The Longest Yard (Mean Machine), and more. It happens to other media too, as these films have copied video games to one degree or another.
5 Final Fantasy And My Final Fantasy
It’s been said surprisingly often that 2001’s Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within would’ve gone down better if it wasn’t a tie-in to the premier RPG series. The film had little in common with the games. Sure, some of them involved going to outer space, using fancy hi-tech gear, or other sci-fi tropes. But they were mainly fantasy games (hence the name), not dull predecessors to Mass Effect. Still, that film might as well have been canon compared to the Nigerian Final Fantasy and My Final Fantasy films.
While B-tier Western studios will usually make a similar film and change the title a bit (Transmorphers instead of Transformers, etc.), Nigeria’s Nollywood went in a different direction here. They made two romantic dramas and named them after the JRPG series. They’ve done the same with God of War (an African period drama) and Street Fighter (aka Street Fighters, an action comedy). Anyone in the know would check it out in the hopes of finding a Nigerian take on Chocobos and Summons, only to get something closer to Along Came Polly or Hitch. How disappointing.
4 Ek Tha Tiger And Indrajith
That said, there are more obvious copies out there. In fact, some games were so nice they were copied twice. India’s Bollywood produced two films that were very similar to the Uncharted games. The first one, 2012’s Ek Tha Tiger, was about a spy for RAW (India’s CIA equivalent) reclaiming nuclear secrets. He isn’t going through tombs like Nathan Drake, but his adventure is suspiciously close to Nate’s 3rd outing Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. What with the similar clothes, stunts, setting, and poster.
2017’s Indrajith went one further, as the film is about the title character joining an older man on an adventure to find a magical stone in the jungle before a set of rivals get to it. The makers said they were aiming more for Indiana Jones, though its youthful lead and older mentor bring Nathan Drake and Sully more to mind than Harrison Ford and Sean Connery. That, and the Himalayan stunt sequences and setting resemble those from Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Oh, and the posters where Indrajith poses identically to Drake on the Uncharted 1 & 2 covers.
3 The Avenging Fist
Originally, this 2001 Hong Kong film was going to be called Legend of Tekken. But producer Jing Wong didn’t get the license from Namco to use the fighting franchise. So, the film became The Avenging Fist and ended with a disclaimer saying the film was “not based on or related to any of the Tekken video games”. At first, it seems different enough as the plot is based largely around a set of gloves that give their user superpowers. But it drove one of its test subjects over the edge, leading them to go MIA.
Then, it all gets familiar 20 years later as that subject’s son Nova takes part in a fighting tournament to take down the big villain Combat 21, and his returning father Dark Thunder. The three are loosely based on Jin Kazama, Heihachi and Kazuya Mishima. While Belle (Xiaoyu), Iron Surfer (Hwoarang), and his unnamed tournament opponent (Bryan Fury) were much more blatantly Tekken-inspired. Shame they couldn’t get Jackie Chan to play a counterpart to Lei Wulong. Instead, they got his classic co-stars Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. It’s a nice touch, but they’ve been in better films, with and without Chan.
2 18.11: A Code Of Secrecy
Heading back to India, 18.11: A Code of Secrecy from 2014 is about a software engineer who develops a program that warns everyone within an area if a bomb is about to go off. This catches the interest of Captain Rack, who wants to buy the technology, only to get spurned. In retaliation, Rack frames the engineer for terrorism. It’s up to the plucky programmer to find a way out of this mess.
So, the film is about a baseball cap-wearing figure seeking revenge, using a weapon in one hand and a phone in the other to do tech wizardry with. While it's not completely identical to the game, it sounds like a close-enough copy to Watch Dogs and its original lead Aiden Pearce. The film didn’t have to worry about deceptive trailers, but it did have to worry about being bad. India Times said it was excessively preachy and “the songs are terribly placed”. Another critic said it would’ve been the perfect satire if it wasn’t totally serious about its subject.
1 Bonsam Besu
Finally, it’s back to Africa. Only instead of returning to Nigeria, the next film comes straight out of Ghana. This take on Devil May Cry caused a stir when its trailer hit the web back in 2011. It’s a bizarre collection of events as people yell “Bonsam Besu!” (“The Devil Will Cry” in Akan) and "Devil May Cry" intercut with bad CGI demons and monsters running amok on the streets. They can take human form, randomly attack people from behind, and terrorize the streets as the locals look on in shock. Or at least the ones in close medium shots do. Everyone else just minds their own business.
It rivals the DMC5 live-action storyboard cutscenes in its surreal nature. Yet little else seems to be known about this film. Unlike its Nigerian equivalents, it does come close to the Devil May Cry games, as one hero tries to fight the demons with a mock sword. The director/producer Ninja did release a video commentary on the film on his YouTube channel Ninja Official TV, but it’s not in English. So, viewers will have to brush up on their Akan knowledge to learn the full plot behind this bizarre little film.