DigitalBattle.com

It’s hard to be original these days when creating a story. Unless you’re willing to embark on wild flights of fancy and fashion entire universes from the fabric of imagination, chances are your circle will overlap several others in the great Venn Diagram of the media world. When it comes to the science fiction and horror genres, many archetypes and ideas have been repeated endlessly throughout film, print and electronic mediums such as video games. Sometimes it’s difficult to discern whether someone is unknowingly repeating an idea someone else already had, stealing their idea or including it as a loving homage to its creator. With the existence of copyright law this gets some people in sticky situations. Most recently, Capcom has stepped into a legal quagmire due to Dead Rising. A movie producer who holds the rights to George Romero’s film ‘Dawn of the Dead’ is suiing Capcom due to the fact that both depict people attempting to survive in a shopping mall filled with zombies and that both depict sensationalist violence. Although there is no doubt that both contain an element of dark comedy, their assertion that Dead Rising provides the same level of ‘insightful social commentary’ as Dawn of the Dead is questionable. While I will admit that I haven’t completed the game and that there might be some plot elements or dialogue that do in fact probe the sociological meanings and associations with mall culture (beyond the simple ‘zombies in a shopping mall’ redundancy idea) it seems that for the most part the game was attempting primarily to create an atmosphere of horror, suspense and mystery as opposed to one of thoughtfulness and reflection. Fans of the original game should follow this news as the possibility of a sequel is likely tied to the outcome. Regardless, it’s likely that if this lawsuit goes anywhere there’ll be some delays in production as it’s unlikely any company will invest time, money and effort into a product the future of which is so uncertain. It’s sad that lawsuits like this happen, where it’s not even the creator objecting to a possible infringement upon their intellectual property. While it is possible this producer is a huge fan of Romero’s and is actually bothered by what he or she views as a theft of the man’s work, much more likely is the fact that this is motivated by the great lord Dollar and his hord of grubby green minions.