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Lethal Weapon issues

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 1:33 pm
by Marc
Do you think if Konami ever wanted to release this game outside Japan it would run into copyright issues over the characters' likenesses to the Lethal Weapon characters?

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:09 pm
by Charlie Johnson
Hm, Konami never had trouble with the MGS Characters (Solid Snake = Rambo, Snake Plissken - Colonel Roy Campbell = Colonel Trautman.) so why with the Policenauts characters? Sure, there are similaritys, but as long as they're not using there names, there exact looks etc. no, they definitly won't have any problems with that, I'm sure of it.
If you look at how many plagiarism exists in the movie industry, 1000 movies from one genre, but basically most of them are the same...at least Policenauts doesn't have the same setting as Lethal Weapon or did I miss Lethal Weapon in space?

By the way, wasn't there a Lethal Weapon parody? Loaded weapon or something. If they didn't get sued, why Policenauts?

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 3:19 pm
by Marc
It's my understanding that parodies are generally exempt from copyright infringement.

The thing is, Snake doesn't really look like Kurt Russell (John Carpenter loves MGS anyway), but at the very least, Ed Brown is a direct copy of Danny Glover, and if Jonathan's hair wasn't blue, he'd also look a lot like Mel Gibson. That's what I was getting at. I remember there was an issue with Mission Impossible for the N64 where they weren't allowed to use Tom Cruise's likeness for the main character.

In the case of Snatcher, Gillian looks slightly like Harrison Ford, but that was also back in 1994, when it was easier for companies to get away with this type of thing. They did change the Snatcher's eyes from red to green, though (presumably for this reason), even in Japan, but that was again because it was a near-exact copy of the Terminator robots (I'd say the face is slightly different, more rounded and less menacing in Snatcher).

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 4:00 pm
by Snake700
Charlie Johnson wrote:Hm, Konami never had trouble with the MGS Characters (Solid Snake = Rambo, Snake Plissken - Colonel Roy Campbell = Colonel Trautman.) so why with the Policenauts characters? Sure, there are similaritys, but as long as they're not using there names, there exact looks etc. no, they definitly won't have any problems with that, I'm sure of it.
If you look at how many plagiarism exists in the movie industry, 1000 movies from one genre, but basically most of them are the same...at least Policenauts doesn't have the same setting as Lethal Weapon or did I miss Lethal Weapon in space?

By the way, wasn't there a Lethal Weapon parody? Loaded weapon or something. If they didn't get sued, why Policenauts?
They don´t own the copyright in Japan. Only in the west. Same reason you can´t find Starsailor´s Way to fall, can´t be found on the european MGS3 soundtack

Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 6:14 pm
by seraphssavior
I noticed something, also. In Lethal Weapon 3, when Riggs is chasing the villians in the subway, the music sounds eerily close to Embarassment. (track number 5 on the OST) There were also some similarities with the music in 4, I think. So it really comes down to which was released first. Policenauts, or LW3...

Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 7:37 pm
by 87th
seraphssavior wrote:So it really comes down to which was released first. Policenauts, or LW3...
Wikipedia is your friend-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policenauts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_Weapon_3

(hint: LW3 was first)

Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:21 pm
by seraphssavior
Yeah, so that could have also been a prevalent issue in all of this...the tracks are really similar though. Anyone know if LW3's soundtrack was an original composition, or if that song was around before the movie?

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:52 am
by Kaz
Hmm, dunno. They changed Metal Gear 2, which had character portraits that looked a lot like real people (Big Boss = Sean Connery, Dr. Madnar = Albert Einstein, Snake = Sylvester Stallone etc.) but then, Snatcher had no problem with its Terminator ripoff models and Randam looking like Sting.

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 8:18 am
by 87th
Kaz wrote:They changed Metal Gear 2, which had character portraits that looked a lot like real people (Big Boss = Sean Connery, Dr. Madnar = Albert Einstein, Snake = Sylvester Stallone etc.)
I think that was because they wanted to tie it to the Solid series, since Sylvester Stallone looks nothing like MGS Snake.

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 8:55 am
by Snake Plissken
Uggg I’m a little noxious, so pardon my grammar...

I highly doubt it (PN and Lethal Weapon’s contrary) anymore these days, due to that when you look at the entertainment business everything seems to be a burlesque mirror image of past entertainment icons, or trademarks (buddy cop movies, this, that, yada yada). If Warn Bros was to sue Konami for PN's Lethal Weapon image likeliness then Universal should have sued Rockstar Games for almost 80% of Miami Vice's image, culture, and character-image/personality likeliness. Not to mention 100% of the production art for Vice City was a direct homage of artist Patrick Nagel's graphic design work. If PN was to be rallied out in the US market today, it would be considered an homage-worthier, other than a direct royalty enquired lampooning.
seraphssavior wrote:Yeah, so that could have also been a prevalent issue in all of this...the tracks are really similar though. Anyone know if LW3's soundtrack was an original composition, or if that song was around before the movie?
All of the incidental music which was used in Lethal Weapon 3 (scored by Michael Kamen) -and it's cues; were composed exactly for that movie, or recycled un-used cues which were never heard, or released within existence to be heard from Kamen until the qualification of his production permissions. I'm going to be writing a thick segment about this within the website's "music" section, and the other inspirations Tappy had homaged from Euro-Jazz- Synth directions.

Tappy’s PN score is gathered amongst a large combination of many borrowed score-cues, although this would not cause any damage as it is a common thing for movie composers to sample or borrow beats and sounds. (As Hans Zimmer did with True Romance with the theme to Badlands. Also, MGS2 practically raped 80% of the cues from Hans Zimmer's Black Rain score.

Everybody just borrows these days and nobody cares half the time lol...
Kaz wrote:Hmm, dunno. They changed Metal Gear 2, which had character portraits that looked a lot like real people (Big Boss = Sean Connery, Dr. Madnar = Albert Einstein, Snake = Sylvester Stallone etc.) but then, Snatcher had no problem with its Terminator rip-off models and Randam looking like Sting.
This drastic change actually had nothing to do with Martin Sheen (Snake), and Connery's (Big Boss) image likeliness, but rather that the creators of the mobile phone edition (which then became the post-Subsistence port) wanted players to have a fresh-image -so that they didn't have a hard time telling sprites apart after previous play with the other con-current "Solid" additions to the series. It was just an average case of patronized modernization.

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 9:25 am
by Ghaleon
Almost all the MG2 character portraits are pretty obvious, but I've heard people describing Snake as looking like about five different actors. WTF.

-Michael Biehn (Terminator 1)
-Kurt Russel
-Sly Stallone (first time I read that is in this thread)
-Martin Sheen (also first time I've read that is just now)

The PN score does seem to be pretty inspired by Lethal Weapon 1-3, which is cool by me.

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 9:35 am
by Marc
Ghaleon wrote:Almost all the MG2 character portraits are pretty obvious, but I've heard people describing Snake as looking like about five different actors. WTF.

-Michael Biehn (Terminator 1)
-Kurt Russel
-Sly Stallone (first time I read that is in this thread)
-Martin Sheen (also first time I've read that is just now)
Don't forget Mel Gibson (original MG2's intro).

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:13 am
by 87th
Ghaleon wrote:Almost all the MG2 character portraits are pretty obvious, but I've heard people describing Snake as looking like about five different actors. WTF.
In the first two games, Snake doesn't really have a set appearance. It changes from the boxart to the instruction manual art, to the tranceiver art. Snake's image is never based on Kurt Russel, though (at least not until his MGS2 haircut). The character is based on Snake Plisskin from "Escape From New York", but he doesn't look like him.

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:05 pm
by Henry Spencer
Yeah, in the game and on some artwork contray to popular belief, Snake's hair appears to be spiked, NOT in a mullet style.