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Dakota Johnson is currently promoting Verity alongside co-stars Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett, and one of their stops was a fun rapid-fire segment with DiscussingFilm. At one point, the trio was asked to pick between two iconic thrillers: Fatal Attraction or Black Swan. All three actors struggled to choose.
The latter remains the defining film of Natalie Portman‘s career. However, Johnson raised an interesting point about Portman’s Oscar-winning film that tipped her toward the other option.
Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson & Josh Hartnett try to decide which film is better — ‘Black Swan’ or ‘Fatal Attraction’. “When I think of an iconic Glenn Close performance & an iconic Natalie Portman performance, it’s these two.” https://t.co/Aswb2yr79o
She shared, “I do think it’s still Fatal Attraction. I would almost say because Black Swan was like derived of Perfect Blue, right?” When Hathaway mentioned that she thought Black Swan was derived from Repulsion, Johnson responded:
I think it was a lot of Perfect Blue as well. It was like very not derived but like very inspired by Perfect Blue. And I like maybe Fatal Attraction and Perfect Blue. I think it’s Fatal Attraction.
Her comment essentially reopened a 15-year-old debate about Darren Aronofsky‘s film and its alleged connection to Perfect Blue.
Dakota Johnson Voices Critics’ Major Issue With Black Swan
Dakota Johnson isn’t the first person to link the two films. Ever since Black Swan hit theaters in 2010, critics and anime fans have pointed out how closely it mirrors Satoshi Kon’s 1997 animated thriller Perfect Blue. The similarities are hard to miss.
The movie follows Mima, a pop idol who becomes an actress and slowly loses her grip on reality under the pressure of her new career. Black Swan similarly follows Nina, a ballerina who unravels while preparing for the lead role in Swan Lake.
Both women are haunted by a dark double; both films use mirrors to show their heroines splitting apart, and both blur the line between what’s real and what’s imagined. To be fair, Perfect Blue itself borrowed heavily from Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thrillers, and Hathaway’s mention of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion shows that Darren Aronofsky has several influences.
The real issue for many critics isn’t that the movie drew from Kon’s movie. It’s that the influence was never openly credited. When a film borrows this much, fans expect the original to get its due. That’s where things get complicated for the director.
That said, when it comes to Natalie Portman’s performance in the film, it’s undoubtedly her best. Her performance as the fragile and obsessive Nina earned her appreciation and accolades. Portman reportedly trained in ballet for about a year to prepare, and her total commitment to the role is a big reason the film became a critical and commercial hit.
Darren Aronofsky Denied Black Swan‘s Perfect Blue Comparison
When asked about the comparison during a Q&A at the Philadelphia Film Festival in 2010, Darren Aronofsky simply brushed it off. He shared (via Dazed Digital):
There are similarities between the films, but it wasn’t influenced by it. It really came out of Swan Lake the Ballet, we wanted to dramatise the ballet, that’s why it’s kind of up here and down there, because ballet is big and small in lots of ways.
Many fans found that hard to accept, especially given Aronofsky’s history with Kon’s work. When the Academy recently dropped a post comparing the two movies, fans were quick to share their criticism about Aronofsky.
Two psychological spirals, told more than a decade apart. Films: PERFECT BLUE (1997, dir. Satoshi Kon) and BLACK SWAN (2010, dir. Darren Aronofsky) https://t.co/7JUa7bjEig
@TheAcademy It’s a shame that Aronofsky denied the influence of Perfect Blue and didn’t properly credit Satoshi Kon https://t.co/J76VpOWaQ7
— Chris Lambert (@TheChrisLambert) October 6, 2026@TheAcademy Good we finally acknowledge Black Swan shamelessly rips off Perfect Blue.
— Sebastian Sanhueza Rodríguez (@Sisanhue) October 7, 2026@TheAcademy Is the academy acting like this was a coincident lol he did scene to scene copy and and did not credit satoshi kon he may rot in hell!
— dizho (@dizh334923) October 7, 2026@TheAcademy This was a rip/off. Nothing to celebrate about Black Swan besides Natalie’s performance.
@TheAcademy the way aronofsky basically remade perfect blue and nobody called him out for a decade is wild to me. saton kon did it first and better
— Lau Rosales☘️ (@laurapixeldust) October 7, 2026The director reportedly bought the remake rights to Perfect Blue in the late ’90s (via Dazed Digital). While a remake never happened, he recreated the film’s famous bathtub scene almost exactly in Requiem for a Dream, with Jennifer Connelly screaming underwater just like Mima.
Kon didn’t mince his words as he expressed his feelings about his movie scenes being recreated. On his blog in the early 2000s, he wrote that some shots in Requiem had been copied in their entirety, and joked that Aronofsky was paying “too much homage.” Kon passed away in August 2010, just months before Black Swan reached theaters, so he never got to weigh in on it.
Do you think Black Swan owes more credit to Perfect Blue? Let us know in the comments below!
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