⌠in other news, Shia LaBeouf to star in new, oddly familiar Shyamalan project.
Almost 40 years before âMâ came out with his film The Village about a hidden town of present day Amish-like occupants of a small Pennsylvania village who are made to think itâs really 1897, and kept secluded by the woods from venturing into the modern (evil) world, it seems Action Comics #324 had the same plot.
Thatâs pretty much all Amish villages though, isnât it?
Thatâs because itâs not the sort of idea that only happens once in a world with this many people.
Itâs a clever concept, but not one that only one person is going to come up with. Thousands probably had similar thoughts, and a few wrote about it.
I played in a homebrew RPG campaign once where the plot was also similar, and I bet cash that our GM wasnât lying about her lifetime dislike of âAll DC comics other than Sandmanâ. 
I say this despite my desire to punish Mr.Shyamalan a bit extra for the aliens in âSignsâ, because . . . seriously.
There are myriad vairations of X group cut off for Y reason from Z main body, each becoming unaware of the other until revelation preceded or followed by Drama.
Itâs fairly formulaic to such an extent that it wouldnât surprise me to find 2 examples set in somewhere btwn 17XX & modern day, cliffs vs monsters -Superman.
Not really a BOOM moment IMO, more of a âHuh, lookit that, someone either hit on a combo or was unknowingly influenced by having read/seen that combo.â
His script for âStuart Littleâ should earn him a vacation in â1984âsâ Room 101.
One thing that made no sense in that movie is why bother creating the illusion of living in a 19th-Century village at all? The elders were pretty up-front with their children about why they left life in the big city. Itâs not like the âweâre living in seclusion to insulate ourselves from the wickedness of modern societyâ story required an elaborate cover-up of what year it was.
Aye, right. The aliens are seen off by the only farmer in America who doesnât own a fucking gun? No. Just, no.
That makes even less sense than the Matrix creating the illusion of 1992.
In Pennsylvania, where everyone has a deer rifle.
Itâs also a young adult book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_Out_of_Time_(novel)
And as long as god was sending messages, maybe free subscription to Guns & Ammo would have been nicer than giving the kid asthma, killing the mother, and whatever else was attributed to the omniscient omnipotent.
The headline should have been âDoes M. Night Shyamalanâs The Village have same plot as a 1965 comic bookâ so that we could simply say âno.â
In the comic the isolated group became cut off centuries ago, unlike in the film.
In the comic the isolated group became cut off by accident, unlike in the film.
In the comic the isolated group does not employ fake monsters to keep the inhabitants in fear, unlike in the film.
In the comic the isolated group does not pretend to be living at an earlier time, unlike in the film.
In the comic a plane crashes near the isolated town, unlike in the film
The plot similarities are close to being zero.
In Pennslyvania, even the deer have deer rifles.
Not that they shoot other deer with the rifles, just that the rifles are owned by the deers.
Warner owns DC, and therefore action comics. No lawyers needed.
Also, thereâs no Superman in the film.
What a twist!
Iâve heard plenty of complaints about The Matrix, but thatâs a new one on me. What was the problem, exactly? And what makes you think â1992â when they had late-90s cellphones?
Well, their weakness turns out to be water. Very small amounts of water, like less water than they would have been exposed to in the air around them, when collected in a cup, made them dissolve like the wicked witch.
Guns were not required, because if we follow the internal logic of the movie, they would have dissolved instantly upon entering our atmosphere, which really makes you wonder about what safety protocols they had in place, given the unbelievably toxic environment they wandered into.
