fantastic! A 2 page debate. I only haven't come back sooner as it took so long to get a single response. I enjoyed 28 Days/Weeks Later but there are influences of other works at play, nobody can deny that.
I wasn't trashing Garland as someone pointed out, all writers are influenced by one thing or another, but few with as much consistency!
Cambridge man you know. His uncle Bertie and I used to break wind for our college.

mecfc Its easy to play the unoriginal card, it can be used on any writer, someone could say night of the living dead is not original because Romero took the concept of zombies from vodu tales, I think Garland is a very good writer, 28 Days Later helped revamp the zombie horror genre.
It is not possible Alien and Solaris borrowed aspects of 2001 a space odyessey and developed them further. I respect your opinion but I do not agree with it.

Garland is a one-hit wonder novelist who got lucky riffing off other materials and being clever enough to put a topical enough spin on the ideas of others to pass them off as his own. So the satire of Romero becomes the blunt force of 28 Days Later, the claustrophobic isolation of Alien and Solaris (and, to a lesser extent, Outland) becomes the cliches and stock structure of Sunshine. That's not to say they're bad films, my opinion is that Boyle irons in the subtleties, where the screenplay often - being seemingly on rails - only sketches.

If you are going to trash Garland, at least learn to spell greater right.
http://www.imdb.com/board/22604794/

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I thought the coma was brilliant. It's short. Best to read it all the through in sinlge sitting than splitting it up.
"we should've brought the stones"

another idiot who makes a comment then doesnt contribute agai to the discussion, as somebody said previously every movie is influenced by other movies/stories, just look at the mess that hollywood throws out these days ad you will see.

Exactly! Lord of the Flies and The Beach have very few things in common. People say that because some critics compared the two books, so now everybody acts like they read them both.
In any case, I see nothing wrong in being influenced by great novels or f2000ilms.
.Brain is a muscle. Use it or lose it.

I don't find any of his work tedious and I don't care if he borrows from others. His prose is enjoyable to read and I've found all of his books thought provoking. I wish he wasn't focusing on screenplays. I think he's more talented as a novelist. Then again, I think Danny Boyle is one of the best out there, and if he needs Alex to partner with, then so be it.

I seriously doubt any of you have read LordoftheFlies and the beach. They have similarites but rip off is a ignorant thing to say.
i'll admit the coma was tedious due to lack of caring about hte character
and tesseract wasn't that great
but the beach was amazingly brilliant. It was succint and thought-provoking. There wasn't a sentence in there that didn't belong.
If you only read the book once you missed alot. I suggest you read it a couple more times, it's worth it.

that is a little harsh, for 1 i can't see any steal at all with lord of the flies and the beach only the fact that they're isolated on a island. The beach is a highly original and awesome read and i think Garland one of the best authors out there. To be influenced something means to have similarities in some ways and no way has to me stealing or ripping off a film. 28 days later wasn't meant to be a highly original film anyway, just a decent and genuine film of its genre.

At least in his introduction to the published screenplay of 28 Days Later Garland admits to and identifies exactly what his influences were, which include Day of the Triffids, Romero's Dead Trilogy as well as the early films of Carpenter and Cronenberg. This doesn't excuse his liberal borrowings from these films but he isn't the first and he certainly won't be the last to steal certain themes and elements from other works. 28 Days Later was a briliant film and Garland's script is an extremely good, rollicking and frequently terrifying read.

George Michael likes werthers originals.
Dick, this is nuts.

Every film is influenced by something else.
Jesus. Stop beep whining.
"Every word written is a victory against death." -Michel Butor

Sunshine: Solar Crisis (rip off)
Ye gods, he's not even plagiarising good material now.

damn you guys come across retarded. 4CHAN proclaims the fact that "everything original is only original for the short time it takes to be copypasta."
basically, as soon as you even hear about something completely new, it becomes used, and therefore, no longer original. your mind works from it, you can't stop it.
Originality is an abstract idea. Get the beep over yourself and get the beep off my internets.
Oh wow. What? Did I say something? Never mind.

Amen Brother! cough CHECK WIKIPEDIA "Mithras", "Christianity_and_Paganism" etc. cough

Chipping away at a mountain of pop culture trivia,
Darren Dirt.

the bible is not original. it borrows from older religious and mythological stories. you think christians invented the virgin birth? you think the great flood hadn't already been told by previous civilizations?

MegaBoner
ARH!, SHarK!
(shark attack 3 MEGALODON)

You guys want to read something really original, check out the Bible, yo!
Get over yourselves.

I agree, Garland is a rip off merchant. But he commits the cardinal sin in his writing of just being relentlessly tedious.

I agree with The Coma, but The Beach is more similar to Paradise Lost than Lord of the Flies, an Eden gone to hell, plus there's loads of biblical imagery through the novel. I reckon he's a great writer, although The Tesseract wasn't great. And 28 Days Later.. is an apocalyptic story, so of course it's going to be similar to any other story where humans stand up against whatever. To simply dismiss him as unoriginal is more than a little short-sighted.