I thought it was a Flash Gordon ripoff?
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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sigh. Artistic works are often derivative. Even the music of Star Wars takes after Holst's Planets, but it's far from a copy.
The themes of the two go completely different directions. Star Wars is a fairly simple story of good and evil, while Dune dives deeper into politics and personality cults.
Hell, I'll even defend Cameron's Avatar from accusations of being derivative. You might find a list showing how it's exactly like ten other works of fiction. So, why aren't we citing those ten works as being derivative of each other? Yeah, the movie isn't that good beyond spectacle, but even spectacle adds something that those previous works did not have.
Probably because when you see a Cameron make billions out of his name and advertising for a story he ripped off, it is hard to cast aside all the influence he used that didnt get the same money/recognition
to be fair, the main problem with avatar being a retelling of pocahontas isn't the stealing aspect, but the fact they brought nothing to the table. It just felt stale.
Are you guys talking about Dances with Smurfs?
Star wars was always just a world war II movie rip off.
A lot of the side character archetypes/interactions are stolen from Hidden Fortress too. Like the two drunks becoming the bickering droids.
To be fair World War II was kind of a World War I rip off.
The battle scenes are a direct ww2 rip off. (Ships in space having dog fights and flying like planes in atmosphere.)
The story takes many elements from Dune.
The battle scenes in WW2 are a direct WW1 rip off. (Ships in the ocean fighting and floating like ships in water)
Maybe... But at least Star Wars isn't giving the catholic church a blowie.
If that's your interpretation, he didn't do a good job of writing.
"He felt that religion was forced down his throat, and his world of Dune was one of the ways he dealt with his childhood."
As if Herbert didn't rip off half his ideas from Heinlein.
Wow you don't understand Herbert or Heinlein.
If Heinlein wrote Dune, Paul would've been a real savior and also wouldn't have hesitated to use the family atomics by the morning of the night Leto died.
If Heinlein wrote Dune
Then that same argument works for Lucas copying Dune. If Herbert wrote Star Wars, Luke would have taken the title of Duke of the Sith and then negotiated with the Emperor to marry the Emperor's daughter to secure his power.
Lucas's writing was pulp sci-fi with bad dialog fixed by others. But anyone picking out Dune Easter Eggs from StarWars to claim it's a copy of Dune is crazy. Herbert should have reserved his bitterness for the public who picked StarWars over Dune. Herbert was like a classical music composer angry at the Beatles.
Just because Herbet ripped off Heinlein's ideas doesn't mean he used the same format or character work. You're taking me to mean "Herbert copied Heinlein in every respect" which I didn't say.
Heinlein was writing about meta humans with psychic based abilities for decades before Herbert wrote about the KH in Dune. Clairvoyance and neutron dampening/excitement, eidetic memory, inherent mathematical ability (mentats, anyone?), control over human physiology, twins having quantum mental bonds which work outside of light speed limitations, the ABILITY TO ASTROGATE AND LITERALLY CAUSE MATTER/ANTIMATTER REACTORS TO FUNCTION WITH YOUR MIND.
Pretty much all of Herbert's ideas about human evolution and the people that make society possible without thinking machines were based in Heinlein's prior novels and short stories.
Heinlein, inventor of the concept of being good at math.
All of those concepts predate Heinlein. You credit him with things Victorians were fantasizing about. The Oracles might take issue with your claims on clairvoyance, and and in some tellings of Ajax, Teucer only shows up to help because he has a premonition of his brother's peril. That's from 500BC.
I don't think that's entirely fair, because Heinlein didn't invent those ideas either. There's a whole library of pulp sci-fi out there that he stole from, not just one person!
It's honestly why I don't care for Dune, he drops these pseudo-technical terms with no context for a reader because his context was a Flash Gordon or whatever comic he read and he just assumes the reader did too, and if they didn't it was 1965 so every book came with a glossary in the back that said things like Personal Shield: A personal shield
Like, yeah, that's great writing, making the reader stop to look something up in the fuckin glossary that still doesn't explain anything.
Well sure, but that specific focus I believe was pioneered by Heinlein in the same way that when you think of Asimov you think "AI and the three laws of robotics." Along with his obsession with free love meta human abilties were his biggest returning concept.
Heinlein's biggest returning concept is that he is completely inconsistent ideologically and based his opinions on whoever he was married to at the time.
He took his big ideas early on from HG Wells, and later Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman.
The man began his career as an anti-war leftist barred from Naval service, and ended it writing fiction about how we'd all be better off if Nuclear Testing were still allowed.
He praised Rand, said both political parties had moved too far left, and lived his entire life on disability checks provided by tax-payers.
Heinlein was a turd of a man. His literature is so maleable and devoid of obvious truth that anyone can claim he supports their politcal views.
Even Asmiov turned against him in the end.
It's almost like an author can write about different societies and not just one that they specifically agree with, but I guess that makes them "ideologically inconsistent."
Furthermore, although a flaming liberal during the war, Heinlein became a rock-ribbed far right conservative immediately afterward. This happened at just the time he changed wives from a liberal woman, Leslyn, to a rock-ribbed far-right conservative woman, Virginia.
He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means "I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve". It's easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.
- Isaac Asimov
That you could read The Space Cadet and Starship Troopers and think they have a consistent message is disheartening to say the least.
His later work was a serious rendition of everything his earlier work mocked.
Something something long enough to become the villain
Stop me if you heard this one...
A youthful squire, with the aid of a knight errant, his trusty steed, and a powerful wizard, go to rescue the beautiful princess from the evil Black Knight and his fire breathing dragon.
Both Lucas and Herbert were plugged into fundamental cultural mythology:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces
Yes the common trope of a desert planet with a powerful worm-like guy that has a face and arms having spice orgies in a palace. That's just a common trope that exists... well just in Return of the Jedi and in God Emperor of Dune which was coincidentally published just around the time RotJ was being written.
And the old saw of someone having a vision of their lover dying during childbirth, trying to prevent it, getting an offer by an evil cloner dude to bring her back to life, and it ends up happening anyway, and surprise... it's twins! That kind of stuff is all over mythology, right?
Hey I love Star Wars too, but come on, Lucas burrowed very heavily from Dune.
Herbert admitted he ripped off Lawrence of Arabia so throwing stone in glass houses.
And they did that very differently. Lucas played the archetypes straight while Herbert deconstructed them.
I was just talking about this, about how Paul is not a typical hero. Sure he's the 'chosen one of prophecy', but only because of generations of genetic manipulation to create someone with his abilities and centuries of spreading superstition and prophecies. Even then his actions are only sort of heroic in that he helps free the Fremen but thus drives them into a holy war against the entire empire.
It's a really cool way of leaning on existing tropes in a self-aware way.
It's important to note that Dune was published in 1965, Star Wars premiered in 1977, and The Hero With a Thousand Faces was published in 1949 but the Hero's Journey took a while to become a well known concept.
Lucas has an interview where he talks about going to a lecture by Campbell on the Journey as part of his college studies, while Campbell was observing these common tropes have existed as long as storytelling the idea of this formula existing was still relatively new.
I am so fucking tired of people acting like the Hero’s Journey actually says something important about stories or that Campbell isn’t a complete hack.
Well, it only provided the framework for multiple multi-billion dollar franchises and thousands of individual works of genre fiction...
Pre-Disney Star Wars has an objectively trash method of story telling and the plot is incredibly derivative. If you enjoy Star Wars I am not hating on you, I do too but if you think all this hero’s journey nonsense actually helped Star Wars or that George Lucas really helped Star Wars (versus his wife and others involved) you are sorely mistaken.
Further just because pop culture decided this was the formula stories had to adhere to doesn’t mean that formula is good it means pop culture decided this was the formula stories had to adhere to.
Feel free to write something better or at least more academically acknowledged, lol
Do y’all seriously think Campbell is still respected academically? Sure he was popular and influential but in terms of the validity of his claims AND his supposed evidence (and extremely biased cherry picking of indigenous cultures’ stories that fit his global narrative) he is not widely respected anywhere anymore.
I mean for one, the guy was just straight up sexist in an old fashion way. The hero’s journey is a man’s journey he undertakes for the woman (whether that be mother or wife). Like he has just straight up said in the past the hero’s journey is inherently for men.
This is honestly just a case of the popular consciousness not catching up with the reality that is obvious to people who study this academically.
Paul also bailed before things ran their course, leaving Leto to become supreme jabbs of the universe. He chose what he thought was the lesser ofany evils and was still stacked by the guilt from the choice. Not very common for heroes to just bail on their destiny.
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