Creativity or copying

Lu's version retains the three principal characters but has a new story, which upset Zhang's fan base.

Other than the insufficient credit, the two movies are both properly licensed. In 1981, a hit novel, Xu Mao and His Daughters, spawned two screen versions, made by two State-owned, Beijing-based studios. Only one of them had the author's approval. Ironically, the unlicensed one was deemed to have higher artistic merit.

This is testament to the progress China has made in the protection of intellectual property. There are even signs that the pendulum may have swung a little too far to the other side.

When Zhang Yimou made A Simple Noodle Story in 2009, he said that it was remade from the Coen brothers' Blood Simple. I asked Joel Coen about this in 2011, when he appeared at a Beijing forum, and he said he could not detect any similarities between his movie and Zhang's remake when he started viewing the film. But as the story unfolded, he finally recognized the narrative arc. "It was my single weirdest viewing experience," he said.

I had always suspected that Zhang or his production company paid the licensing fee more or less as a marketing expense. He must have foreseen the negative reviews, and he must have hoped that the source material could be one of the weapons he could use as a defense. He knew most film critics loved the Coens'work.

I wonder what would have happened if Lu had not used the characters' names from the novel and not bothered with the licensing agreement with the author. Would he have had more creative freedom and come up with a better story? Would the film have ended up with lower box-office receipts because the fan base would not have showed up?

Let's take a step back and examine the Monkey King story, which is in the public domain and needs no prior approval from anyone for an adaptation. If I create a new story with a mischievous monkey, should I say it's based on the age-old legend?

It is difficult to come up with a story that is different in every aspect from the ones that already exist. All genre films follow certain formulae, such as "boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy gets girl" for romances.

While the formulae can be shared, the treatment should be individual.

Take a buddy film, for instance.