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A fan filmmaker claims Disney stole his lightsaber fight and used it in an episode of Star Wars: Visions. He also shared a rather incriminating side-by-side comparison.
The filmmaker, Lorenz Hideyoshi, says a lightsaber fight in episode 7 of the second season of Star Wars: Visions is a duplicate of a scene he created. He even claims that Disney copied the camera angles from his 2019 film.
“When Disney blatantly steals your action design,” Hideyoshi captioned a side-by-side video of the two lightsaber fight scenes. The bottom video is from the 2023 Star Wars: Visions episode titled “The Bandits of Golak.” The top video is from Hideyoshi’s Dark Jedi: A Star Wars Story, which he published on YouTube in 2019.
“I mean, they already had a different weapons setup but still managed to brute force (push) my choreo onto that action,” he added in the Instagram post’s description.
“Why @disney?” Lorenz Hideyoshi added. “Is it because we made a non-profit tribute fan film of one of your IPs, and now you feel justified in stealing from this pool of creative output? Maybe either a) pay your animators more or b) hire an action designer.”
Is Disney really to blame for the alleged plagiarism?
According to IGN, “While Disney owns Star Wars maker LucasFilm, Visions is the work of numerous animation studios spread across the world, with this particular episode in particular made by Indian outlet 88 Pictures.”
In a response to comments about his accusation, Hideyoshi admitted he has no ownership of any Star Wars IP. That is why he didn’t monetize his film.
However, he added, “I could easily show that the action design itself is not reliant upon the SW elements which were incorporated. If I took an existing melody but played it with different instruments than the original, is that not infringement if done without license?”
Meanwhile, back in 2023 in an interview with StarWars.com, the episode’s director Ishlan Shukla made no mention of the lightsaber fight scene coming from anywhere other than his imagination.