I didn't see a Benjamin Button thread, so I figured I'd start a new one with my thoughts, or maybe I should say beefs about this movie. I saw this movie Friday, and my first thought was, "That was a pretty good movie." But I had this nagging suspicion in my head. The movie reminded me of something else. Then like a ton of bricks it hit me. It was just like Forrest Gump! Right down to every detail. What a rip off! After some research I found out that Eric Roth wrote Button, and he also wrote Gump, so it wasn't so much a rip-off, but a re-hash. Also after some research I found out I wasn't the only one who noticed the similarities. http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/1d76506803/the-curious-case-of-forrest-gump-from-fgump44 And this, which I found on a blog - Then I find out that Benjamin Button was originally a short story by one of my favorite writers of all time, F. Scott Fitzgerald. So was Gump a rip-off of Fitzgerald's story? I found the short story online. You can read it here - http://www.readbookonline.net/read/690/10628/ Upon reading I found the short story to be clever, hilarious, entertaining, and nothing like the movie at all. My conclusion, Eric Roth took a fantastic short story and Gumped it all up. If you plan to see Benjamin Button, don't read the short story first. You'll end up really dissapointed. If this movie wins best picture it will be a highway robbery. Anybody else have any thoughts on Button?
I saw it and thought to myself as well that this was just like Forrest Gump minus Ben meeting famous people and of course the age thing. I thought the film was alright, certainly interesting but I'll probably never see it again nor do I think it was the best picture of the year. I also found the hurricane subplot absolutely dumb with no payoff and it made no sense at all to the story. In fact I'm still trying to think of why it was there, it could have been a sunny day out and would have had the same effect. Also I thought the old woman's voice was funny as in it was so bad it was funny and very distracting. Someone in the theather yelled out 'just die already so we don't have to listen to your voice' and that got a bigger laugh than anything outside of the running lightning storyline which was pretty funny. I think Brad Pitt was pretty good but the lead actress was terrible, both acting wise and written as once she tried to whore herself out to Ben and was turned down and flipped out I was openly rooting against him getting together with her.
It was uncanny... I don't think however you can make the case that Gump was a rip off of Fitzgerald. My understanding is that The Fitzgerald story and the movie don't really have much in common (besides the idea of a man aging backwards) I don't know this for sure because I haven't read the story but for sure the two movies have similar things.
I agree, Gump is not a rip-off of the Fitzgerald story. What I think happened is that Eric Roth got his hands on the Fitzgerald story and wanted to make it his own. Unfortunately, what he did, whether he meant to or not was to take a very clever short story and turn it into Forrest Gump. The aging in reverse was completely irrelevant to the plot. I loved that fact that in the story the "baby" could talk and was already full grown right from the beginning. He was an old man, not just a prune baby. He aged in reverse in every aspect, from physical features right down to maturity. That was the heart of Fitzgerald's story and it was completely nonexistent in the story.
