It’s a truth universally acknowledged that with great artistic and financial success comes lots and lots of ripoffs. The entertainment world is full of these — it’s the reason every action movie looks like John Wick now, and every fantasy TV show feels like Game of Thrones. There is an industry within these industries, however, that experiences the largest volume of copycat culture of all, and that’s animated children’s movies.
The term for a movie that is all but a carbon copy of another, more popular movie is “mockbuster,” often seen as a desperate attempt to look and feel like something everyone already likes, if not an outright 1:1 parody. Mockbuster trends are nothing new, and started well before the apps were infiltrated by anonymous streaming slop, but their closeness to their source material, and the way their thumbnails and DVD covers are fashioned to look just enough like something people recognize means that more and more of us are becoming exposed to their ubiquity. When the users of these apps are children, they’re even more likely to click on something that looks like a beloved classic.
Some of these mockbusters are more shameless than others, and they’re not going away anytime soon. Every time a large animation studio releases a new hit, expect lots of imitators following in its wake. These movies rarely share the same plots, or even the same general ideas — the whole point is to make them seem familiar, so that once you realize you’re not watching what you thought you were, it’s too late. We’ve chosen the most shameless examples of this phenomenon, from copied DVD box covers to ripped off character designs and plot arcs, each more flagrant than the last.
The Worst Mockbuster Ripoffs of Beloved Animated Movies
We can’t in good conscience recommend any of these terrible cartoon mockbusters.
Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky
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