Merit Coba

“There are fine lines between referencing something, borrowing from it and beyond that: by duplicating the original.” Kristl said.
“Hm? Where are you going with this?” Henry sort of woke up mid sentence..
“Take this line for instance, it consists of letters.. and these are hardly original..as we only got twenty six of them and virtually nobody adds any new ones to them. So you have seen these letters a trillion times and you will see them again a trillion times.”
“Yeah.. although…I understand some Asian languages have tons of them. Maybe even new ones?”
“For the sake of the argument I stick to the language I know..”
“Ah. Fair enough.”
“So we combine letters into words.. which are not really original in themselves as most are being reused again and again. But sometimes people make up new words, but that is rare.”
“Like fabbleak..” Henry said.
“Fabbleak?”
“Just thought of it.. it sort of expresses a state between being flabbergasted and feeling weak.I added an extra b just so you don’t make a mistake with fableak.. which sounds more like a word you use for a famous person who needs to go.. toiletside.. you know.” Henry made a vague gesture with his right hand.
“Right.. but unless fableak..”
“..fabbleak..”
“..fabbleak takes off as a new word used everywhere, we will not see it being used much. Unlike words as..”
“Much?”
“Much is a wordt that is used much”
“So words are combined into sentences and there you might even get something original. And then there is the next level… where sentences are combined into paragraphs and  the next where paragraphs are turned into stories and bigger stories have even things like chapters or sections or even books.”
“Right. So what?”
“Well.. the whole point is that reusing sentences from someone else does not make a new and original story and neither does the reusing of ideas from other movies make a new original movie unless you add something to it yourself or arrange them into some unique way.”
“Ah.. I see where we are going.”
“Doomsday explores the line between referencing something and just piling other peoples ideas onto each other and adding nothing to it. So this movie borrows from Resident Evil 2, then steals from escape from New York, then is inspired by Aliens then turns into Mad Max, then becomes some kind of knight movie and so on. Actually they even added in V for Vendetta with the government bad guy Canaris looking and acting like that Creedy from V for Vendetta.”
“I guess. It is just a movie to entertain. Not something that should make history..”
“Right.. but it does not even do that very well. You see, the major problem is that you then require some group of charismatic characters spouting one-liners. Maybe these are not people you like, but at least people that catch the attention.. but nobody seems to actually stand out.. I mean McDowell and Hoskins almost seem to reach that point, but the main lead certainly does not. It is as if they are deliberately held back.”
“Well Rhona Mitra stands out: she is attractive and muscled enough to make her fighting believable?”
“But her Eden character simply fails to stand out somehow.. she is not Alice from Resident Evil, nor Snake Plisken from Escape From New York, although they try hard to imply the link with her one eye. Nor does she stand out like Selene from Underworld.. even though her dark complexion and English accent sort of seem to point that way. “
“Well.. I think it was entertaining in some way, but nothing to write home about. Kinda strange that they kill of that weird looking chick that is on the front of the advertisement so soon. I think she was only in it for like five minutes.”
“That perhaps that illustrates the point. When they have something that stands out, they kill it off…just to avoid having something that might raise your interest.”
“I was a bit befuddled about that whole knight scene. Suddenly we were in the middle-ages.. it just needed some grey bearded wizard and a little fellow to turn it into lord of the rings…”
“Yes.. well.. if they had added them, it might have even amounted to something..” Kristl said.
“Also strange that the people turned to cannibalism while the group runs into a enormous herd of cows and well. You can eat cows… ”
“And while they have no gun they do have cars as if getting or making fuel is easier than making gunpowder. Let alone keeping a car operational..”
‘Well, perhaps it is time to stop trying to see reason in this one and just say: another hot chick flick that is pointless…YAY..” Henry said and he laughed at his silly joke.
“Pointless chick flicks!  Let’s hope there won’t be a sequel or at least not one made in the same fashion.” Kristl said, “Pointless chick flicks.. very funny.”
Henry ducked into the corridor to head over to the kitchen to make some coffee. This way he avoided a confrontation over his joke.. for the moment.