this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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As someone who hasn't watched FernGully (but should), I'm increasingly skeptical of these types of "plagiarism" comparisons between movies. Lindsay Ellis recently broke down the "Aladdin was stolen" narrative and compellingly showed "it's complicated", and more obviously, YMS five years ago fucking eviscerated the then-popular argument that The Lion King was a ripoff of Kimba the White Lion.
(Edit: I'd say this especially goes for someone like James Cameron who clearly takes immense pride in his work and setting himself apart. That's circumstantial, of course, but it seems totally out-of-character.)
As someone who had FernGully on VHS, there are marked similarities, though it's not exactly 1-to-1. The main conflict is resource extraction, although instead of a gung-ho colonel we get Tim Curry as literal pollution. The protagonist gets transformed to fit in with the locals, but it's an accident by one of the locals instead of deliberate choice. Instead of a cranky Sigourney Weaver, we get a spastic Robin Williams as a bat.
Overall, Avatar is closer to FernGully than to a lot of other going-native movies. Environmental conservation is the driving theme of both films.
Was Kimba also based on Hamlet or something? As far as I'm concerned that plotline is in the public domain. Or is it just using lions to tell the story that was supposedly stolen?
Also, how could Aladdin be "stolen" when it obviously takes direct inspiration from several stories in 1001 Arabian Nights? Are people claiming that it was stolen from some other story that was inspired by the same book?
And now people are accusing the upcoming Disney movie Hexed of being a ripoff of Owl House because apparently Owl House invented the idea of a hero being transported to a magical world.
I understand Owl House fans are mad that Disney canceled the show prematurely and made the ending rushed. I agree that Disney shouldn't have done that. But I'm not going to fault Disney for making another story where a character is transported to a magical world. Heck, Disney did it decades ago with Alice in Wonderland and with Peter Pan. They also did it with the Chronicles of Narnia and there are many more examples, both Disney and non-Disney
I see. From wikipedia:
So it seems the Thief and the Cobbler was based in part on the Arabian Nights, and the original plot was also from Arab folklore.
So in other words, Aladdin is merely based on the same work of classic literature, which I believe is public domain. So allegations of plagiarism are foolish, unless all references to Arab folklore are now off the table too.
That's pretty funny. I might watch the video another day. From your comment I gather enough to conclude that the main premise of the accusation is "Shakespeare told by animals," and I concur that that's laughable.
It's somehow baser than you suspect for the accusations against The Lion King – but more complex for Aladdin. I'd highly recommend Lindsay Ellis' video for a history lesson exploring the nuances. I'll at least spoil that Kimba has nothing to do with Shakespeare and that whatever level of tepid, token generosity you're willing to grant the plagiarism accusations, it's dumber than that.
So the plot wasn't even similar, and people were just upset that the characters were lions? That is indeed even more laughable.
Some people must really get off on hating on the Lion King because I've also heard it called racist for the following reasons:
The characters have African-sounding names. (Um, what, would it be somehow less racist to name them "Steve" and "Nancy"?)
They didn't employ black voice actors in enough main roles. (Mufasa was voiced by a black man).
The hyenas were allegedly depictions of racist tropes. (As a kid watching the Lion King, I never made this supposed connection that the hyenas were ostensibly caricatures of black people; they were just hyenas. The critics who apparently perceived that connection are racist for doing so).
I've also heard people criticize it for ostensibly promoting monarchy (it's a fucking story, and it's based on a plot by shakespeare about a monarchy. I don't think the intent was to make a political statement about the advantages of monarchy)
Anyway, I read the backstory behind The Thief and The Cobbler and it sounds like all the nuance has less to do with Aladdin and more to do with Nasrudin. It's not Aladdin's fault it took the producers 40 years to put out a subpar film. And it's not like Miramax owned the rights to Arabian Nights or even the "Arabian aesthetic." It might be complex, but none of that complexity is Aladdin's problem.
The Aladdin bit is that there was another project in the Disney pipeline by a famed director that also had a lot of Arabian aesthetics, and I think a lot of the people upset are bitter that the other one just didn't turn out very well.
You should watch the Lindsay Ellis video, it's pretty good.
TIL that the Arabian aesthetic can only be one person's intellectual property /s
And yeah, I just read about The Thief and the Cobbler. The reason it didn't turn out well was because it was in production for 40 years, changed plots/themes/characters multiple times, was started and finished by different producers, and there was a falling out early on with the owners of the original story it was supposed to be based on.
So that had nothing to do with Aladdin incidentally also borrowing themes and tropes from 1001 Arabian Nights.
You can't just take 40 years to do a shitty job at something and then blame someone else for taking less time to do a better job at something only vaguely similar...
I don't remember the director himself instigating this feud.
I mean, I'm sure it reached him. Maybe he felt bitter, maybe he got over it. I think the plagiarism thing was pushed moreso by fans and Disney haters, though.
I didn't mean to imply that he did, just the fact that the critics try so hard to make something out of nothing.
I saw both. Avatar is a marvel of VFX, but the story is definitely ferngully.
I haven't seen ferngully so I can't comment on that, but at it's basic level the plot of Avatar is so generic and bland you can take any story where a character representing the viewers culture interacts with some native, a more natural setting inhabiting people, and find multiple similarities