Yeah, I haven’t seen Button yet, but I thought the video was funny. Glad I could get some discussion rolling about it though!
Disclaimer: Girlfriend saw it, said she seemed familiar, showed her the video and she agreed, they were very similar.
Okay, well, let’s go about this two ways. First I’ll list all the ways in which Rywill fudged the details of one or both of the stories to make them match.
That paragraph sums up both movies in great detail
Yeah, except that Button isn’t mentally disabled, he has a father figure, the sea-captain in Button isn’t emotionally ‘closed’ at all, and Button falls deeply in love with someone else and only gets over it when she leaves him. Your point regarding paternity part is cleverly worded, but the two situations are not very similar.
and leaves out almost nothing of importance.
You left out meeting JFK, playing ping pong in China, Gump’s best friend who dies in his arms, an entire war as opposed to one sea battle, hippies, Black Panthers, Watergate, the part where Gump runs across America, and AIDS. Or if you want to look at it from the other side you could say you left out Button’s being adopted, or his ruminations about death, or the fact that Button’s father comes back and has an important plot point hinge on him, or the fact that Button doesn’t end up causing several historical events.
But whatever. On to my main point.
they’re both told from an older/semi-omnipotent perspective of the main character, in flashback, taking key scenes from a long life and showing them to us, then skipping ahead to the next key scene, etc.
Come on, really? This is literally every movie with bookends.
In each story he meets the love of his life while they are both children, but in each story they cannot be together at first (or for many years thereafter) because of his handicap, and because the girl is unsettled in herself. In each story the girl goes off to find herself, and so the boy goes off traveling the world having a series of adventures, including such growing-to-a-man pursuits as going to war and learning the sea […] In each story, the girl and the boy each pursue their own interests, including romantic interests, but cannot settle on anyone else because we know they’ve been destined for each other since childhood. The boy eventually lucks into substantial wealth. Eventually, in both stories, the boy and the girl burn out their desire to find themselves and realize that what they really have wanted all along is to be together, and so they get together, finally, as adults.
Woah, Love in the Time of Cholera! To the fucking letter, except for the wealth part, which I may just be forgetting. Or how about the aforementioned Fifth Business? I’m tired, but I’ll edit with more examples as I think of them.
What are we left with? They are both about lovers who meet in childhood but can’t hook up for a long time because of the man’s handicap. In both cases the girl gets pregnant. In both cases the relationship can’t last because of the man’s handicap. They both have coming-of-age segments involving war and boats, sort of. And both of them have corny advice administered by the protagonist’s mom.