It’s strange to me that the article focuses on Requiem for a Dream when Black Swan is much more directly inspired by Perfect Blue - if you wanted to you could even argue that it’s a remake of Perfect Blue. The plots are that similar. The article touches on Black Swan briefly, but I think it gets stuck focusing on the tub shot.
> Aronofsky bought the rights to “Perfect Blue” to use one of its scenes for his “Requiem for a Dream” (2000)
which TFA actively denies.
It's actually puzzling how Aronofsky went back to Perfect Blue, after being caught effectively plagiarising it once already and likely knowing that Kon, beyond the formal politeness typical of the Japanese, wasn't really happy about it. It's like he was daring to be sued.
Both directors don't come out of this particularly well - Kon for being a frustrated but ultimately weak character, Aronofsky for achieving success with fundamentally plagiarized work.
Indeed; the tub shot was arguably the only thing in Requiem for a Dream that was clearly a Perfect Blue ripoff. As TFA says, several other things that pissed of Kon were already present in the source material for Requiem.
