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Spiritual Successor / Live-Action Films (0-F)

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Spiritual Successor in Films.

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  • The Cabin in the Woods:
    • It makes for a pretty good adaptation of (warning: major spoilers) the SCP Foundation, of all things. The main bad guys are a nebulous organization of questionable morality that possesses an enormous catalog of monsters and other dangerous supernatural items (in this case, horror movie baddies), which it keeps and controls so as to prevent an XK-Class end-of-the-world event. And when the heroes find out about the lengths they're willing to go to, they take one look and say "fuck it, better to let the world end." Furthermore, S. Andrew Swann's proposal for SCP-001 is that it's the people in Real Life who are writing the website — and the main subtextual thrust of The Cabin in the Woods is that the Ancient Ones represent horror fans. It's no surprise that the site's users have declared it to be Containment Breach: The Movie.
    • It's also a very good Scooby-Doo film, with the young protagonists battling a supernatural mystery that's not what it seems at first glance. The "Scooby-Doo" Hoax, however, turns out to have something far more sinister behind it.
    • In the updated 2019 edition of Seth Grahame-Smith's book How to Survive a Horror Movie, when adding this film to the list of "additional study materials" (i.e. recommended horror films) at the end, he referred to it as "the reason there will never be a movie adaptation of the book you're currently reading."
  • The Cannonball Run is a spiritual successor to Smokey and the Bandit. It also has much in common with It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
  • Can't Hardly Wait to American Graffiti minus the period piece backdrop. Both movies are about a group of recent high school graduates and their adventures over the course of a single night. Can't Hardly Wait also shares some similarities with Some Kind of Wonderful with Preston being Keith, Amanda Beckett being Amanda Jones, Denise being Watts, and Mike Baxter being Hardy Jenns. Finally, the entire setting of it being at a Wild Teen Party could be reminecent of the one seen at Jake Ryan's house in Sixteen Candles.
  • Due to both being superhero period pieces by the same director, Captain America: The First Avenger could be this to The Rocketeer.
  • Carlito's Way to Scarface. Both are about Latino crime bosses and have the same director (Brian De Palma) and star (Al Pacino).
  • Casa de mi Padre is probably the closest we will see to a feature-length version of the Conando sketches from Conan O'Brien's stints hosting Late Night and The Tonight Show, as both feature the concept of an obviously white actor appearing in an Affectionate Parody of telenovelas in which Rule of Funny appears heavily.
  • The 2003 live-action film version of The Cat in the Hat was Imagine Entertainment's attempt to duplicate the success of their popular take on another Dr. Seuss book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, down to the casting of comic star Mike Myers as the Cat as its equivalent to Jim Carrey's Grinch.
  • Cemetery Man is widely considered a better live-action Dylan Dog than the comic's actual film adaptation, which was a generic monster movie bordering on In Name Only. Moreover, the main character in Cemetery Man is played by Rupert Everett, who was the visual inspiration for Dylan Dog's facial features.
  • Charade was famously called the "best Hitchcock movie that Alfred Hitchcock never made".
  • While the 2019 Charlie's Angels movie is a continuation of the '70s TV series and the 2000 film, a lot of fans of the Kingsman films have also argued for it being an unofficial girl-team Spin-Off. The Townsend Agency is portrayed less as a Private Detective agency like on the show and more as a private spy agency in full Tuxedo and Martini mode (or in this case, Cocktail Dress and Martini), doing the jobs that government intelligence services are portrayed as too constrained by bureaucracy to get done, with a heavy focus on the protagonists' lavish lifestyles — a description that also just about perfectly applies to the Kingsmen.
  • Chitty Chitty Bang Bang:
  • Christopher Robin is widely considered a spiritual successor to Hook, much like Alice in Wonderland (2010) if not more so. Both films show a little boy character from classic children's literature now grown up, having lost his childhood idealism and imagination, and having become a workaholic who spends too little time with his child/children.. But then the fantastical characters from his childhood unexpectedly come back into his life, helping him rediscover his inner child by the end.
  • Chronicle:
    • Many point to it as a good Western live-action adaption of AKIRA, in that both are about teenagers who are bestowed with superpowers and proceed to use them in terrifying ways.
    • While Stephen King's Carrie has had more than one worthy adaptation (the 1976 version in particular being considered an outright horror classic), this film makes for a great gender-flipped, capepunk remake of the story. Andrew Detmer, like Carrie White, is a troubled teen raised in a toxic, abusive environment at home (Carrie by her widowed, religious fanatic mother, Andrew by his alcoholic father while his mother is dying of cancer) and the target of relentless bullying at school, and both of them have telekinetic powers that, towards the end of their respective stories, they use to get revenge on everybody whoever wronged them. Max Landis, the film's writer, even pointed this out when disputing the argument that it was a superhero film, arguing that it drew more from Carrie than anything and that, under any standard by which Chronicle could be considered a superhero story, so could Carrie and another King novel, Firestarter.
  • Anthony Mann's El Cid starring Charlton Heston has multiple films that qualify as spiritual successors.
    • When it comes to films that involve some of the same players involved in their making you have...
      • 55 Days at Peking qualifies as it was the immediately following Samuel Bronston epic mega-production also based on a historical event/conflict. And like El Cid it touts Heston as the leading hero, the film being made when it was because of his interest in its script over the already in production The Fall of the Roman Empire, and it somewhat similarly relays a message about unity and peace. Both featuring a diverse group with tenuous relationships that have to come together to help them stave off a powerful threat in a group of radicals that are in a sense seeking to lash out at the "Western World".
      • The Fall of the Roman Empire is the one most often considered to be a spiritual successor to El Cid as both are historical epics produced by Samuel Bronston, directed by Anthony Mann and featuring Sophia Loren as the leading female. Heston was even originally planned to play the lead role. However because of his tenuous relationship with Loren as well as dissatisfaction with the script, in part because he felt it was too similar to Ben-Hur, he wound up declining the part. And after genre veteran Kirk Douglas turned down the part it wound up going to Heston's Ben-Hur co-star, Stephen Boyd. Both films also deal largely with the themes of tolerance and honor. They both also have a leading character who is a high-ranking warrior that seeks to bridge his people with their long-standing enemies and contends with his stubborn ruler who they try to remain loyal to in spite of their growing tension as he continually refuses to listen to pleas for unity and peace. However, ironically enough, things end up in near opposite manners. It is also notable that the English actor Douglas Wilmer is in both films.
      • The War Lord (1965) was a subsequent Medieval epic starring Heston as a knight.
      • Khartoum like El Cid is a large-scale historical epic that has Heston play a successful and revered historical figure and military commander as well as a devoted and stalwart Christian. One however who has managed to gain the respect and loyalty of members of both the Christian and Muslim faiths. The conflicts of these films having them square off against a fanatical fundamentalist Muslim leader with an eye for conquest. Along the way he must also contend with the corruption within the system he serves. Each film also prominently features, and comes to end with, the battle for a key city. And both stories ultimately end with the lead heroes becoming martyrs. It is also notable, like for another example listed, the English actor Douglas Wilmer also appears in both movies.
    • And when it comes to films that came out a good deal later and don't involve the same cast or crew, but were definitely influenced by it to a sizable degree you have three of the most well known modern Medieval based historical epics...
      • Braveheart was influenced by it and was a film Mel Gibson grew up with and admired. Both are historical epics set in the Middle Ages that centers around a European country's national hero. Both films centering around their battle to try and keep their countries free and stable. Having to deal with a corrupt outside force trying to take control over them as well as the corruption in his nation's own hierarchy. Both ultimately manage to inspire unity in their people but die as martyrs in the process. It is also notable that the arcs for the young royals Alfonso VI of León & Castile and Robert the Bruce as well as their relationships to the lead heroes are quite comparable up to a point.
      • Kingdom of Heaven like El Cid is a Medieval based historical battle epic centering around a conflict between Christians and Muslims, wanting to teach a lesson about tolerance to the audience. And it has been said that Ridley Scott was first inspired to wanting to make a crusader movie after having seen El Cid in the theater when he was a young man. Both films center around a historical noble who seeks to create stability in his land of residence, and manages to win the admiration and loyalty from people of both faiths. Both because of his honor, as well as displays of mercy.
      • Robin Hood (2010) is a film to also take into consideration given the previously mentioned affinity the film's director Ridley Scott has for El Cid. Both films are Middle Ages set historical epics that center around a famous hero from a European nation. (though whether or not Robin Hood actually existed is still in question) The main conflict in either film centers around a foreign ruler trying to conquer the lead hero's nation. Both plan on first making it easier by sowing discord among the nobles of that country who already have tenuous relationships with each other before coming in with his invasion force. The assassination of his brother as a part of this plan leads to a younger and more questionable noble to taking the throne as king. The leading hero manages to bring his nation together as the foreign power is starting its invasion on the coast, with of course a grand battle ensuing.
  • Circle is one to Cube. An Ontological Mystery of people from different walks of life who were abducted by mysterious forces and placed into a confined Death Trap where they start dying one by one unless they somehow find a way out. The stress of the situation causes them to turn on each other, and many people end up dying because they are A House Divided. Also, the circle itself can be seen as a different form of Sinister Geometry.
  • The Kid 'n Play movie Class Act is really just House Party without the house party, with most of the movie taking place in school instead.
  • J. J. Abrams stated that Cloverfield was his attempt to do an American take on Godzilla. This video by Up From the Depths goes into more detail, specifically calling it an American version of the original 1954 film in how it portrays its monster, using it as a metaphor for contemporary fears (nuclear weapons in Godzilla, terrorism in Cloverfield) and having it be nearly invulnerable to conventional weaponry such that humans are almost powerless against it.
  • Clueless has been called a better film adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma than any of the official adaptations, taking the plot and characters and relocating them to a Beverly Hills high school.
  • Coming to America is a spiritual successor to Trading Places. Both films were made by John Landis, feature Eddie Murphy, and both deal with issues of wealth and poverty. Coming to America even includes a cameo by Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy as the still-poor Duke Brothers.
  • The Commitments:
    • The films The Snapper and The Van were spiritual successors to The Commitments. They all revolve around a Dublin family with a father played by Colm Meaney and all are based on Roddy Doyle novels. (The novels themselves were actual successors, but due to copyright issues, the name of the family in each of the films was changed).
    • In The Commitments, Outspan ended up as a busker on the streets of Dublin. Twenty years later the same actor, Glen Hansard, starred in Once which opened with his character ...busking on the streets of Dublin. Bonus points due to his character in Once being unnamed.
  • Con Air to The Rock. Both are "Die Hard on an X" type films (on a prison transport plane and the prison Alcatraz Island respectively) that were produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and star Nicolas Cage.
  • Conan the Destroyer is essentially a Dungeons and Dragons movie.
  • There is some discussion over whether Confidence is a Spiritual Successor or an updated remake of The Sting. Both feature a team of small-time conmen accidentally ripping off an underling of a crime boss and getting out of it by pulling a much larger and more elaborate con on him.
  • The Crank duology is also this to the Grand Theft Auto series as a whole.
  • The 2004 film Crash to the 1991 film Grand Canyon. Both movies feature the interconnected lives of and then tensions between people of different races and classes in Los Angeles.
  • A Cure for Wellness, in a way, is the Gore Verbinski's closest way to adapting Bioshock like he tried to do all those years ago. To wit: A secluded community of very rich people lead by a megalomaniac guru, an outsider trapped inside said community after an accident, a creepy young girl wearing a blue dress and corrupted by the villain, omnipresence of water, a life-altering substance processed from a water animal, a villain who turn to be a character from the backstory than everyone thought was dead, and great amounts of Squick and Nightmare Fuel.
  • The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has been considered by some by some reviewers as a spiritual successor to Forrest Gump. The films share a screenwriter.

    D 
  • Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula is closer to Doctor Doom's origin story than the one in the actual Fantastic Four (2005) film, or the one in the 2015 reboot, for that matter.
  • Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, and Disaster Movie (the only real link being their directors, their inability to actually parody the genre they claim, and their total lack of quality), though this dubious quartet probably couldn't come across as more contrived and crass by being a series of actual sequels.
  • Dave Made a Maze, an indie comedy about a slacker artist who builds a fort/maze out of cardboard in his living room only for it to grow into a Magic Realism monstrosity, has often been described as feeling like a feature film adaptation of Community, particularly in terms of that show's more fantastical episodes.
  • Day of the Animals to its director William Girdler's previous film Grizzly, since it has a similar location, plot, and shares some of the cast.
  • Days of Thunder to Top Gun. Tom Cruise controls (pilots) an extremely fast piece of machinery, deals with a crisis about 2/3's of the way in following a traumatic accident involving a friend, only to come out of it at the end and win the heart of his higher-class love interest. All with a power ballad soundtrack. Both of them are also directed by the late Tony Scott.
  • DC Extended Universe:
  • Given the revelation that the titular monsters are actually an alien bioweapon, it's safe to call The Deadly Spawn the best Tyranid movie without any Tyranids in it.
  • David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone and The Fly (1986) came one after the other in his filmography, and both are literary adaptations featuring several members of Cronenberg's Production Posse (casting director, cinematographer, film editor, and production designer) and a minor role played by Les Carlson. But on top of that, Cronenberg and the latter film's lead actor Jeff Goldblum have pointed out that both films are about a man who gains extraordinary abilities in an accident, but in the process ends up unable to be with the woman they love. And though the route each movie takes to it is very different, both end on a floor-level shot of the woman grieving the death-by-gunshot of their beloved.
  • Dead Snow might as well be a Norwegian adaptation of Call of Duty's Nazi Zombies mode. All that's missing are the hellhounds and rayguns.
  • Death Race, a 2008 remake of Roger Corman's Death Race 2000, may not have been particularly faithful to the original, but it was a very close adaptation of Twisted Metal. Frankenstein's in-universe "mascot" mystique is treated in a manner akin to Sweet Tooth's, and it now has the cars equipped with weapons activated by driving over icons on the track, a feature pulled out of many a Vehicular Combat game. And in turn, the 2012 reboot of Twisted Metal had a number of cars seemingly based on those from the Death Race remake and its sequels.
  • Defiance could be considered one to Glory. Both are war films that were directed by Edward Zwick and, at least somewhat like the last pair of film ironically enough, center around members of an oppressed group striking back as well as fighting for their freedom.
  • Definitely, Maybe is the spiritual successor to Love Actually.
  • The Sylvester Stallone vehicle Demolition Man is said to have captured the humor of the Judge Dredd comics better than the actual Judge Dredd movie starring Stallone!
  • The Departed to Gangs of New York: two Martin Scorsese films which follow two young Irish-American infiltrators who grow up poor and without a father figure, dealing with themes of violence, religion and race.
  • French 1982 comedy Deux heures moins le quart avant Jésus-Christ (literally "Quarter to Two B.C.") is a peplum parody set in the Roman Empire era, full of deliberate anachronism, and with Caesar and Cleopatra as characters. It feels like an unofficial Asterix live-action adaptation (although much coarser) predating the official ones by two decades.
  • The Devil's Carnival to Repo! The Genetic Opera. The film was made instead of a sequel to Repo! after creators Terrance Zdunich, Darren Smith, and Darren Lynn Bousman lost the rights to it. As well them both being rock-horror musicals, they both star Terrance Zdunich, Alexa Vega, Nivek Ogre, Bill Moseley and Paul Sorvino.
  • Of all things, Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator is one to the 1977 anime Voltes V. Both are about a narcissistic, psychopathic ruler of a country (planet in Voltes V's case), and a Princeling Rivalry of an uncle trying to get rid of his nephew because he's a threat to the throne. Said nephews are also oblivious to their uncles' plots, and are pretty tyrannical themselves, being highly nationalistic and ready to punish anyone who disobeys them. Both end with the authoritarian monarchy overturned. The two also have shared themes of oppression, unjust imprisonment and insurrection.
  • Django Unchained has been said to be so to Inglorious Basterds. Both films were directed by Quentin Tarantino, and feature members of an oppressed group striking back violently against their oppressors. (Jews against Nazis and a slave against Antebellum South Slave Owners) Both also feature Christoph Waltz in a major supporting role that garnered him an Oscar win.
  • Doctor Mordrid, a low-budget fantasy film made by Full Moon Features, was originally intended as a Doctor Strange adaptation, but Charles Band's rights to the property expired before he could begin production. Undeterred, he simply rewrote the script to be an original property.
  • Kevin Smith's religious comedy Dogma, with its satire of the finer points of the Christian faith combined with Black Comedy and very R-rated sensibilities, is the closest we've gotten to a film adaptation of Preacher, albeit with more of a focus on gross-out humor.
  • Double Impact, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, is considered a better adaptation of the Double Dragon video game than the official Double Dragon (1994) movie starring Scott Wolf and Mark Dacascos. It even had Bolo Yeung playing an Abobo-like henchman who throws oil drums at his enemies. Coincidentally, the long-haired version of Abobo from Double Dragon II: The Revenge is named Bolo in most versions of that game.
  • Dracula Untold:
    • The closest we'll get to a Castlevania: Lords of Shadow movie. The fact that Dracula's vampire mode here is portrayed very similarly to his portrayal in those games helps.
    • The closest we'd ever get to a live-action Hellsing prequel.
    • The story (historic prince gains magical powers from an ancient being which he uses to defeat his enemies) bears some similarities to the origin of Black Adam.
  • Dune (2021) is the best live-action adaptation of Warhammer 40,000 we're going to get, which makes sense considering that the original Dune was one of the inspirations for Warhammer 40k.
  • Drag Me to Hell
    • It could just as easily have been called Evil Dead 4, and nobody would have batted an eye. Not only was it written and directed by Sam Raimi and billed as his return to horror, it has virtually all the characteristic elements of the prior films: the emphasis on Bloody Hilarious carnage, the mix of demonic horror with slapstick comedy, a demon-possessed man acting like a Deadite, and the protagonist Christine coming across as more of a Distaff Counterpart to Ash (at least from the first movie) than the actual gender-flipped version of Ash from the remake. Even the PG-13 rating doesn't take that much away from the mayhem.
    • It can also be considered this to Thinner, which also involves an upper class protagonist in a Race Against the Clock to remove a gypsy curse from them before their time is up. Interestingly enough, the music composer for Thinner Daniel Licht was a protege of Christopher Young, the music composer for this film. Both Licht's and Young's ensemble orchestras performed for those movies were even the Northwest Sinfonia.
  • Duplex has been called a spiritual successor to Throw Momma from the Train. Both are black comedies directed by Danny Devito that center around a character's (or characters') fixation on murdering an old lady. However the comparison is often used as point of derision, as even the Rotten Tomatoes Critic's Consensus blurb does: "It was funnier when it was called Throw Momma from the Train".

    E 
  • Easy A is a high school version of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which the heroine pays tribute to by wearing a giant red "A" on her shirt.
  • Elysium
    • It is as close as we get to a Halo film, for now. It was directed by Neill Blomkamp, who originally was slated to direct the canceled Halo movie, and features a ringworld colony that shares its name with Master Chief's birthplace, dropships similar to the Pelicans, and a protagonist wearing Powered Armor, among other similarities.
    • It has also drawn comparisons to Shadowrun: the class warfare, the Street Samurai who gets his chrome attached by a street doc, runners tracking down a mark, the bad guy calling down a High Threat Response team, in turn, the pimped-out guns, the Black ICE protecting the data... Only the metas were missing.
    • Shadowrun is based on the works of William Gibson. So Elysium could also count as an adaptation of the short story Johnny Mnemonic.
  • Enter the Void definitely comes across as some sort of successor to 2001: A Space Odyssey, featuring the same kind of exploratory existentialism and drawn-out, trippy sequences. It's even harder to sit through due to the addition of general human degeneracy and psychosexual issues, however.
  • According to critic Nathan Rabin, Envy is a successor to Sour Grapes, which was directed by Envy's producer Larry David - both movies feature best friends growing apart after one of them becomes rich - by winning a cassino jackpot in Grapes, and patenting a revolutionary invention in Envy. The "poor" friend, in both cases, becomes envious of the rich one and, in a moment of anger, destroys a beloved piece of his friend's property. Both movies also feature a bizarre homeless man becoming involved with the poor friend's life after he tries to hide his misdeed.
  • Equilibrium
    • It may be the closest thing to a mainstream, an internationally recognized adaptation that We will ever see, as straight adaptations are very few, far between, and obscure.
    • Bob Chipman has called it a better adaptation of The Giver than the official film adaptation, spending an entire video using it as a counterpoint to that film and to the young-adult dystopian genre in general.
  • Ernest P. Worrell is like a live-action version of Goofy, from his nature as a Kindhearted Simpleton, to his distinctive southern drawl, to the amusing, cartoony slapstick brought on by his own obliviousness to every situation.
  • Erik the Viking, written and directed by Terry Jones and featuring supporting performances by him and John Cleese, succeeds marvellously as a Spiritual Successor to the Monty Python films, even if it wasn't intended to.
  • Time to talk a little Errol Flynn...
    • His breakout film was Captain Blood, and that is a film with what can be considered two spiritual successors:
      • The Adventures of Robin Hood like Captain Blood is a swashbuckler directed by Michael Curtiz and also has Olivia de Havilland and Basil Rathbone as co-stars. The former as his upstanding love interest, and the latter as a major supporting villain who clashes blades with Flynn by the end.
      • The Sea Hawk is again a swashbuckling adventure film starring Flynn as a charismatic pirate captain. And once again Curtiz is in the director's chair.
    • Next up is The Adventures of Robin Hood itself, which is possibly his most famous and popular film:
      • The Mark of Zorro (1940) while the only film in this bunch not to star Errol Flynn, the lead here being Tyrone Power, it is also a swashbuckler about a famous classic hero taking on corruption in his homeland. Both Basil Rathbone and Eugene Pallette, actors who played supporting characters from Robin Hood, are also featured in strikingly similar roles. The former again as the main antagonist's chief enforcer and rival to the lead, whilst the latter again plays a tough-as-nails holy man who serves as a close ally to the hero.
      • Adventures Of Don Juan is once again another swashbuckler starring Flynn. He here is once again playing a classic European hero who fights against a corrupt man of power in his nation who is trying to take over and woos a woman of royalty. Even the title seems to be deliberately trying to harken back to that film.
  • Escape Room (2019) is the closest we can get to a Danganronpa or Zero Escape movie.
  • Event Horizon
    • Many Warhammer 40,000 fans consider it to be canonical, especially with its employment of Hyperspace Is a Scary Place (specifically, Hell).
    • Likewise, some Doom fans consider it to be a better Doom movie than the one the game actually got. The background of the game was that some scientists in space were experimenting with teleportation and created a portal that, instead of taking them from point A to point B, led straight to Hell. And Hell's army comes out of the portal and threatens to doom our universe. That's the plot of the movie Event Horizon to a tee, made in 1997. And then, eight years later, some people just had to go and make another Resident Evil genetic experiment gone wrong movie and go and entitle the movie Doom.
    • Along those lines, Doom is essentially the live-action film version of Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D.
    • It has also been seen as this for H. P. Lovecraft's work in general, even though it can't be said to be even a loose adaptation of one story in particular.
    • To those who have seen both, this film is considered the successor to Disney's The Black Hole (1979). Both are about the crew of a space ship investigating a much bigger derelict ship, only to find out that something horrible happened to the crew, and that the ship was designed to travel somewhere outside of normal reality which both times turns out to be, if not literally Hell, then somewhere that easily resembles Hell.
  • Everything Everywhere All at Once is a cheerfully surreal multiversal adventure with a surprising amount of heart, about an Asian woman who can access all the memories and skills of her alternate selves. With Everywhere in the title. Sounds rather like a Jenny Everywhere movie, doesn't it? (Furthermore, while Evelyn isn't that similar to Jenny Everywhere, the film's primary antagonist Jobu Topaki has considerable similarities with common takes on her arch-foe Jenny Nowhere, both of them being women who gained the ability to exist "everywhere, all at once" across the Multiverse and were turned into nihilistic villains by the experience even as it empowered them, making their newfound abilities a danger to the rest of reality.)
  • Evolution was, for a long time, the closest we had gotten to a proper Ghostbusters III. It was a sci-fi comedy directed by Ivan Reitman about a group of misfit scientists battling an unnatural menace using creative applications of advanced technology, and even featured Dan Aykroyd in a bit part as the governor of Arizona. The script was originally written as a serious, R-rated horror movie inspired by The Thing (1982) and The Andromeda Strain, but Reitman saw potential in it as a comedy, and had it rewritten into something more like Ghostbusters (1984).
  • eXistenZ is essentially Videodrome for the new millennium.

    F 
  • Though the tropes in The Faculty are obviously Older Than They Think and chiefly inspired by Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Puppet Masters (which are together described below, and which the film even lampshades), to its late '90s teen audience it could also be seen as Animorphs: The Movie, albeit without the super-powered heroes. The aliens in the film are even shown to be slug-like creatures that live in water, and possess their hosts by entering through the ear.
  • While the official adaptation of The Killing Joke was polarizing, Falling Down still makes for a remarkably good live-action film version, albeit set in the "real world" without superheroes. The comparisons between the Villain Protagonist Bill Foster and the Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist Martin Prendergast — two men confronted by tragedy who responded in very different ways, the former turning to crime and nihilism and the latter committing himself to justice, with the film ultimately siding with the latter's perspective — are uncannily similar to those between The Joker and Batman in that story. And in turn, the 2019 film Joker was noted as having drawn heavily from this film, among others, in how it portrayed Arthur Fleck's downward spiral amidst a Crapsack World that abused people like him.
  • The Fast and the Furious:
  • Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the first of a new series of Harry Potter prequel films. While it looks, feels, and reads very much as a Harry Potter film, it wouldn't be out of place in the Doctor Who universe if you just replaced some of the names and treated the titular fantastic beasts as aliens. The main character New Scamander is a lot like The Doctor himself, with many of the same quirks and mannerisms as everyone's favorite Time Lord (being played by a British actor is a plus), and the suitcase he carries around with him is bigger on the inside just like the TARDIS. Jacob Kowalski could easily be one of The Doctor's companions, an ordinary human being suddenly thrust into the fantastical world of Newt/The Doctor. Tina and Queenie fit in as allies of The Doctor who are already in-the-know and understand what he's talking about for the most part. The Magical Congress of the United States (or MACUSA) can be taken as any of the Obstructive Bureaucrats that hinder The Doctor and his companions. Finally, Grindelwald is a shoo-in for The Master, a background antagonist of similar origins who ultimately does come into conflict with the heroes.
  • Fantastic Four (2015) has been described by many as basically being Chronicle 2. It was even made by the same director (Josh Trank) and features one of the actors from that film. The general opinion is that this resulted in the movie barely resembling the comic it was based on.
  • Are we sure that the 1977 action-thriller The Farmer isn't supposed to be an adaptation of The Punisher, or even John Wick? Though it does have differences, isn't all TOO different when you get right down to it.
  • Martin & Porter's DVD & Video Guide calls A Few Good Men "the best Perry Mason movie ever made."
  • 1997's Fierce Creatures featured the same core cast and much of the same crew as 1988's A Fish Called Wanda, and includes at least one explicit Shout-Out to the earlier film, although they are in no way connected to each other. The actors also play more-or-less similar characters, with Kevin Kline as a dimwitted egomaniac, Jamie Lee Curtis as seductive and manipulative, John Cleese as a stuffy square, and Michael Palin as a weird guy with a bit of a talking problem.
  • Luc Besson's The Fifth Element was, for a long time, the best adaptation of the Franco-Belgian sci-fi comic Valérian ever made, with Jean-Claude Mézières himself, one of the co-creators of Valérian, even working on the production design... that is, until twenty years later, when Besson finally got the opportunity to adapt Valérian for real. And to bring it full circle, the resulting film, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, was often described by critics as Besson's spiritual successor to The Fifth Element.
  • Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within has much less to do with Final Fantasy and more to do with Contra. A futuristic war with aliens, with commandos, that die in one touch? Definitely.
  • Finding Forrester is often considered to be a spiritual successor to Good Will Hunting. Both are films directed by Gus Van Sant that center around a low-class young man who turns out to be prodigy in a certain field and winds up finding a mentor who helps him explore his potential.
  • A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly are all Spaghetti Western films by Sergio Leone, with Clint Eastwood as one of the stars. They form a Thematic Series, often called "The Man with No Name", and some promotional material states that they exist in the same world.
  • Seeing how the subject matter of an ambitious but flawed man struggling with his inner demons and addiction are similar, Flight could very well be a higher-budgeted and more graphic update of The Lost Weekend.
  • Either John Carpenter's The Fog (1980) was a damn good adaptation of Stephen King's short story The Mist, or vice versa; they both came out the same year (1980). Less debatable is that the 2007 film adaptation of The Mist was a much better remake of The Fog than the latter film's own remake in 2005.
  • Footloose and Rebel Without a Cause has the respective protagonists, Ren and Jim move to a new high school, attempting to fit in in their communities, and having to display strength over weakness in order to survive high school. Secondly, in both films, there is an upset in the parent-child family dynamic concerning the female leads Ariel and Judy and their strict, authoritative fathers. Thirdly, the characters of Chuck Cranston in Footloose and Buzz Gunderson in Rebel Without a Cause are both violent and reckless towards the protagonists. Additionally, there is a scene in Footloose that is quite similar to the chicken game in Rebel Without a Cause.
  • Gene Roddenberry openly admitted that Forbidden Planet was the primary inspiration for Star Trek: The Original Series, and its influence can be seen in everything from its premise, to its special effects, to its characters, to its dramatic cues. Depending on how you see it: either Forbidden Planet is an unofficial feature-length Star Trek episode or the original Star Trek is an unofficial television spin-off of Forbidden Planet.
  • Forbidden Zone is probably the best live-action Betty Boop adaptation we're ever gonna get, which makes sense given that one of the film's big influences was old Fleischer cartoons.
  • Foxy Brown was the successor to Coffy. It was originally meant to be a sequel titled Burn, Coffy, Burn, but the producers changed it at the last minute. As a result, we have two films with similar plots and very similar protagonists, both played by Pam Grier.
  • Free Guy:
    • Based on the humor in the trailers, it has been trumpeted as possibly being the closest possible live-action adaptation of NoPixel.
    • Being about a man who finds out he's an NPC in an MMORPG, it could also be inspired by the Yahtzee Croshaw novel, Mogworld, which itself is a Spiritual Successor of Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.
    • The popular visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club! also focuses on the concept of a videogame NPC becoming aware that they're in a game, although Monika doesn't take this revelation as well as Guy does.
    • The anarchic game world that the film takes place in, a modern-day city where players are encouraged to carry out bank robberies and other criminal activities with an arsenal of weapons and vehicles ranging from mundane to exotic to flat-out sci-fi, has also been compared to the excess of Grand Theft Auto Online.
  • Friday Night Lights like Varsity Blues, is set within the world of high school football in West Texas.
  • There's a reason that Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is affectionately called "Jason vs. Carrie" by many fans of the franchise. Both The New Blood and Carrie feature traumatized teenage girls with telekinetic powers and Abusive Parents who they kill with their powers, the former having her as the Final Girl with an alcoholic father and the latter as the Anti-Villain Protagonist with a fundamentalist mother. If you ignore the little detail that the name of the female lead in The New Blood is "Tina Shepard", the movie is the world's first, best, and only horror crossover starring Carrie White.
  • The Frighteners is a spiritual successor (no pun intended) to Beetlejuice:
    • Both are Horror Comedies that offer their own spin on exorcisms.
    • In both films, the main leads have their lives dramatically changed by a car accident involving their spouse.
    • In both films, the Big Bad is defeated through being Swallowed Whole by a gigantic worm-looking monster.
    • Both films have been scored by Danny Elfman.
    • Frank and Lucy gaining the ability to see ghosts after a traumatic experience harkens back to Lydia being able to do so due to her "strange and unusual" nature following her mother's death and Delia and Charles also gaining that ability after being terrified during the climax.
  • From Beyond shares Re-Animator's over-the-top approach to Lovecraftian source material, as well as a significant chunk of the cast and crew. Both star Jeffrey Combs as a Mad Scientist (borderline) Villain Protagonist.
  • The miniseries From the Earth to the Moon is the spiritual successor to Apollo 13, as an in-depth look at the Apollo program from the late '60s and early '70s. Both were produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, with Tom Hanks onboard, only in the capacity of narrator (except in the last episode). Apollo 13 is itself a spiritual successor to The Right Stuff.
  • The Full Monty is a British remake of Flashdance only with six steelworkers instead of one young woman. It's even invoked by the film itself when the protagonists are watching Flashdance so they can strip.

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