Talk:Descendants/@comment-836009-20150130040547/@comment-1765692-20150221064110

Y'know, there are people who complain about Frozen because they think it's a rip-off of earlier Disney movies. Nine times out of ten, the people who do this focus solely on the broad ideas behind some plot elements, and completely ignore the execution. For example, saying Hans is the same as Gaston, despite Hans having fooled everyone (audience included) into thinking he's the hero, while Gaston was completely obvious in how much of a jerk he was from the very beginning. Or, saying Lilo & Stitch did siblings already, ignoring that the exact dynamic (a young woman having become the legal guardian to her much younger sister) is not quite the same as in Frozen (two siblings around the same age, one of which shuts herself away from the world). Their sole focus is on the basic tropes used, and not the execution.

I bring this up because you're the opposite extreme. You focus entirely on the details and the technicalities, and deny that the similarities even exist. While it is true that EAH has a magic book and a Royals vs. Rebels gimmick, you ignore that both it and Descendants still involve "evil" characters trying to create their own path for themselves. It is true that not all the characters in Descendants are from fairy tales, but it still has the children of famous characters in a high school setting. To prove that the premises are different, you went on about the medium (live-action vs. animated), the format (movie vs. web show), and even the owner (Disney vs. Mattel), but none of these have anything to do with the actual premise. The Prince of Egypt is animated, but it still tells the same story as The Ten Commandments. Peter Pan is a movie, but it's still based on the same general idea as Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates. Medium and format are irrelevant when we're talking about the premise. Likewise, two different companies can use similar ideas. Just look at the early DreamWorks library: Antz, Shark Tale, and Madagascar all have a similar premise to Disney movies (A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo and The Wild). So, the production company is also irrelevant to the premise, because two production companies can use similar ideas. Notice the word I used there, "similar". Not "the same". And that is, perhaps, the biggest technicality you're hung up on. You think I'm trying to say Descendants and Ever After High are exactly the same, but I'm not. I am merely saying that they are similar. They aren't exact copies, but that doesn't mean there aren't parallels.

It's good that you can see the differences, but you shouldn't ignore the similarities. Then, you're no better than people who focus only on similarities, and ignore differences. The fact is that the general idea, the basic premise of Descendants is very similar to Ever After High. The exact execution may be different, but the overall concept still bears a striking resemblance.