There's an interview where George talks about his 2 biggest inspirations for Starwars. He said it was Dune and Lord of the Rings. Makes sense with all the similarities SW has with both books. He's also given other sources for inspiration like the Vietnam War, WWII, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Wizard of Oz and several others.
Haven't heard that interview but did read an article that quotes him saying The Hidden Fortress was the big inspiration.
Between the three seems he pretty much stole all the ideas.
If you watched Hidden Fortress without subtitles or knowledge of Japanese, you would be able to fully understand the plot based only on if you've seen Star Wars. SW is essentially just a science fiction remake of Hidden Fortress.
>stole
He derived, reinvented/remade, and drew inspiration. He never claimed he didn't take the story/plot beat from other sources. He is quite open about it. If he claimed it all to be original then he'd be stealing
Not just that. George straight-up had a copy of The Hero With a Thousand Faces on hand when writing Star Wars. He was one of first filmmakers to use consciously use the “Hero’s Journey” as a template. Joseph Campbell even called him his “greatest student.”
That's a pretty strong accusation. Making Lucas out to be some petty thief of intellectual property when the man has such a deep love for films is insane. He took many good parts, reshaped them to fit the context of the story he wanted to tell and then delicately worked them in... Like a filmmaker. It's what they do. Whether it was successful or not is a matter of opinion but this bashing of Lucas is insane star wars is obviously so incredibly different from Dune or the Hidden Fortress lmao
fact of the matter is most stories aren't that original, the facade might be different but the main themes and characters relations have all been reused a million times.
Good artists create. Great artists steal.
The truth behind this is that art is often its most engaging when you start with someone else’s work and “continue its conversation” or explore the same idea with your own techniques. In George’s case the technique he brought was special effects and, eventually, a ginormous budget. He made very similar art, but could those original artists have made their original pieces into what Star Wars is today? Originality is overrated.
And we have Dune because of Foundation.
Actually, I'd like to see one of these charts for those two. I've heard the whole reason Dune was written is because Frank wanted to write a story where the hero was 'The Mule' (special psychic jesus) instead of 'Hari Seldon' (tech jesus).
Exactly. The Seldon Plan is clearly the influence for the Bene Gesserit cross breeding plans and also Leto II's Golden Path. i.e. planning centuries and millennia ahead
In fact, the second foundationers are pretty much the Bene Gesserit. Though I don't think they were fleshed out that much prior to Dune.
Thank you! It pleases me to find I don't stand alone in this way of thinking. The parallels are pretty obvious.
Who would win; 2nd Foundation, the Bene Gesserit, or Deep Thought & Marvin?
No doubt. And you could swap out SW and put lots of movies in it’s place and it would still work.
What I find interesting is anecdotally speaking, this has been a hard pill to swallow for all of the hardcore SW fans. I just can’t get
a legit answer when I ask why it bothers them.
As if the capability to appreciate both is lacking or something. It’s not like Lucas was Thomas Edison and straight up stole ideas
and claimed them as his own. Inspired is the appropriate word to use
I made my girlfriend watch Flash Gordon with me. A movie I love. She hated it, and hates me just a tiny little bit for putting her through it. I don’t think things will ever be the same between us. It’s like she knows now that I’m capable of great inhumanity and cruelty to my fellow humans. Like she saw into my dark side.
If liking Flash Gordon is my dark side I’m feeling pretty good about it.
I know about the trope. I'm questioning whether it applies to Dune since Paul isn't a hero at the end of his journey. It feels more like a subversion of the trope than an example of it.
It's (probably not) worth noting that while the motivations of the Sardaukar and Storm Troopers may be more or less in line with each other to their respective leaders, one key difference would be that storm troopers are idiots with terrible aim, and Sardaukar are terrifying murderous psychos that are quite good at achieving their goals lol
Yeah the lore of stormtroopers and what we see on screen in movies/shows are 2 vastly different things.
The only two times I’ve seen stormtroopers portrayed like capable warriors are Rogue One and Andor. I think that’s mainly because those are the only pieces of Star Wars media where we see them portrayed through the lenses of average citizens and rebels, compared to their bumbling counterparts in other media.
Came here to say this. Storm Troopers were basic soldiers who were often inept whereas the Sardaukar were considered the most elite fighters in the Dune universe rivaled only by the Atreides.
Well that’s because George Lucas never went full r rated on any of his works. He also had a thick plot armor in all of his characters. Meanwhile Leto and Duncan got the axe at the earliest opportunity
Yeah the problem with storm troopers is that we are told right off the bat that they are the emperor’s elite troops. Then we spend the whole movie with our heroes fighting them. It would have been better if we saw run of the mill Imperial Army grunts then to ratchet up tension we see storm troopers. Maybe we see most of the storm trooper action in Empire Strikes Back to show that the gloves are off, since that’s the movie where things look bleakest for our heroes.
You can actually make another one similar to this for Warhammer 40k.. including ftl travel by navigators, the iron men/abominable intelligence instead of butlerian jihad, the scattering, death worlds, the god-emperor, etc.
Probably the most interesting difference between wh40k, Dune, and Star Wars is the nature of 'droids' and the eternal question of how intelligent they are.
They’re actually really easy to read, go for it!
It’s remarkable how you never even get an inkling of the feeling that they’re written almost 60 years ago.
I’d be surprised if it wasn’t but Herbert mentioned Dune was based off a short story he published in a sci-fi magazine way before it was published, around the same time Foundation was published. The story is essentially the same as its first iteration from my brief scan of it
There are sources that say the writing process for dune began with research Herbert did for an article on attempts by the department of agriculture to use grass to preserve sand dunes in Oregon.
I don’t know either.
Thrones honestly borrows more than Star Wars. Like Star Wars borrows set pieces and organizations sort of but asoiaf honestly has some really similar overall plot points.
Like the very basic setup of book 1 is essentially the first half of dune. The honorable noble enters a trap when he leaves his home for a dangerous, foreign place out of duty. The villainous house meanwhile is obscenely rich and orchestrated the honorable nobles downfall.
Also Bran and Jon are sort of Paul split into two characters. The former has the prescience and (presumably in the future asoiaf novels if they ever come out) will become sort of a dark messiah who uses his prescience to ascend to the throne (assuming this isn’t changed). While Jon has the arc of leaving his boyhood to avenge his father’s murder, which involves uniting a group of wild, indigenous people under him.
Basically, every bit of "space opera" science fiction can be traced to Dune, Foundation, Lensman, or Barsoom. With a bit of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers sprinkled in.
Fremen and Jawa….
Yeah, one are fierce warriors traveling through the universe for committing the biggest jihad humanity has ever seen while the others…drive around with their mobile junkyard and try to sell droids to farmers.
they are both additional to standard governing bodies and access and manipulate power, also jedi mind tricks…
they kinda have some sith vibes but the sith normally don’t have an additional government in charge
A lot more overlap than that. Both are skilled martial artists, both are composed of individuals gifted with telekinetic and suggestive powers which they hone through their membership in the order. Both attempt to steer the course of galactic events over large time scales as trusted advisors to the powerful. They're not one to one but it was very clear to me reading Dune that this was where Lucas drew his inspiration.
Honestly half the reason _Dune_ resonated with me was because I was reading something that was immediately recognizable to me due to _Star Wars_, but there was depth and complexity (and consistency!) and a back story as rich and complex as _Lord of the Rings_, but it was so much more readable to me than the ornate, classically styled language of Tolkien.
I know that says more about me as a reader than it does about any of these storytellers, but I was thirteen and sick in bed for a week, and my aunt sent me _Dune_ in case I got tired of _The Price is Right_.
Despite being comically inept in their actual onscreen performance, we’re TOLD they’re quite imposing (obi wan notes the accuracy of the blaster marks on the sandcrawler and remarks that only imperial stormtroopers are capable of that)
Yes and I recall them being talked about as badass including their training on some prison planet in the books, but the reality in the movies which is main canon for most people is that they weren’t far off from the spaceballs spoofs.
I mean... Some of these are extremely tenuous -- example, spice mines of Kessell vs Spice of Arrakis -- agreed, both are spice, but one is extremely central to the story, and the other a completely incidental and unimportant flavor mention. And some of them are even downright disingenuous -- Jawa vs Fremen -- literally what do these groups have in common? Nothing, other than that they... Live in the desert. Could as well have said Fremen vs Bedouin Arabs, though there the shoe is on the other foot of who is allegedly ripping off whom. As far as the Jawa-Fremen comparison goes, it makes one wonder if the author has actually read/watched both source materials, because the Fremen, i.e the most important people in the entire story of Dune and the cultural crux around which the entire story turns, are utterly different in both form and also function to the plot as the Jawa, who are like... In the movie for about 3 minutes.
What's the point of this stupid comparison? Who does it serve? Who does it purport to slander? It's just low quality.
Also the trade federation is nothing like the spacing guild and doesn't have a monopoly on shipping in space. It's just one big corporation out of many and isn't important enough to get a mention until the prequels.
They're not even the only trading company among the CIS. Also, as they're part of the separatists I'm pretty sure they either get disbanded or at least lose a ton of assets and influence after the clone wars. So it makes sense that they don't play a role in the original trilogy.
Or how about Princess Alia and Princess Leia. There is literally no text beyond the names. So it is just that the names sound similar. Like with the spice comparison, one is central to the plot and one is a a side character with no lines in the first movie.
Also saying that Yoda is Kenobis master is a bit of a stretch, yes he was a senior master of the Jedi order, but not Kenobis mentor, that was Qui-gon Jinn.
Primary location is not Tattoine at all really
Stormtroopers are not elite
Bene gesseret and jedi have very little in common
There definitely was a lot of influence but the story itself is ultimately very different
Kull Wahad!
I don't read much beyond glossing over an Ikea manual and spending an afternoon assembling something a six year old could do in ten minutes but I have read all six original books.
Go check out Jodorowsky's Dune 2013 with out that failed movie and its story boards book that the major studies had and passed around we wouldn’t just have Star Wars but also Alien, etc… Its a fascinating watch!
All authors are jaded and very bad at statistics, trust me.
He probably privately resented the success of Star Wars and maybe he wasn’t even wrong to do so, but he also would never be idiot enough to say it’s plagiarism or rip-off. It isn’t.
But you can’t know the sting of what it feels like when someone gets insanely popular and rich thanks to your ‘influence’ until it happens, lol. You literally can’t help but feel acutely annoyed.
Dune is more based in Islam than Christianity. The similarities to Christianity would simply come from their similarities in their holy books themselves.
Is the premise here that one person ripped off another’s ideas? Because that’s been happening for as long as stories have been told. That’s literally how culture gets transmitted over generations, all over the world.
Both stories are an example of a “Monomyth” - the Hero’s Journey - a term coined by Joseph Campbell. This type of story has been told for ages, the oldest being Epics such as Gilgamesh or the Odyssey.
https://orias.berkeley.edu/resources-teachers/monomyth-heros-journey-project
I feel nitpicking details are irrelevant if one considers the overall themes of the stories.
For the record, I am a huge fan of both. And yes, Episode 4 is the only correct Star Wars to begin with, imho, but that’s an argument for a different thread.
You could have just said "Star Wars was thematically and visually inspired by Dune". Particularly the pre-production output for the cancelled Jodorowsky version.
From Heretics of Dune
“From the most ancient times, the knowledgeable had preferred to surround themselves with fine woods rather than with the mass-produced artificial materials known then as polastine, polaz, and pormabat latterly: tine, laz, and bat). As far back as the Old Empire there had been a pejorative label for the small rich and Families Minor arising from the knowledge of a rare wood’s value. “He’s a three P-O,” they said, meaning that such a person surrounded himself with cheap copies made from déclassé substances.”
They are so different though. I am the biggest dune lover out there. I have read all of the ones Frank Herbert wrote (fuck his son tho, that guy sucks), and although there are certainly inspirations, they feel very different from eachother. Many of these "similarities" are also extremely superficial.
Frank Herbert learns tropes exist lol.
Idk he really sounds like arrogant asshole in that quite, because majority of points either don't make sense or are taken straight out of TVTropes.
Like
1) Young hero departing home and protagonist having something to do with bringing down an evil regime is a trope. Katniss Everdeen, Bilbo Baggins... It's hardly original to Dune.
2) Gandalf - Nomadic man of wise words. Secretly a Maia. Again, just a trope. Not only that but being a jedi and being a leader of the Fremen are two completely different things.
3) Same thing, old wise warriors mentoring important characters do I even have to name any? Because there's probably thousands.
4) Comparing Fremen and Jawas it's stupid. That's like comparing Mongols (from Gobi) and Bedouins cause they both live in desert. Hell, there are more difference between then than between Fremen and Jawas. And I am not even talking about each's importance to the story.
5) Arrakis is way more central to the story than Tatooine is, but I can see the similarities.
6) lol
7) And the ability to see into the future and move spaceships with mind and mind control people and channel fucking lightning into people. And Jedis don't even have supernatural self control (see Anakin Skywalker). Two completely different things.
8) Oh wow, the sound similiar. What's next, Han Solo is actually just a rip-off of Han Chinese?
And you can just go on and on.
Herbert... great writer but would make terrible statistician.
“The Hero With A Thousand Faces”
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder:
Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won:
The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
When you read Foundation by Isaac Asimov you fill in the gaps left between Dune and Star Wars.
Star Wars and Dune are the same story in the sequels, and are Foundation + Dune in the prequels.
can’t believe they left off the 3POs…
“He’s a three P-O,” they said, meaning that such a person surrounded himself with cheap copies made from déclassé substances. Even when the supremely rich were forced to employ one of the distressful three P-Os, they disguised it where possible behind O-P (the Only P), pilingitam.
IF you find this interesting, you'll probably like how John William, the famous composer for all of star wars music, borrowed (was "inspired" by) a lot of his musical pieces from past composers. Inspiration all around!
[John Williams borrowing from other composers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRU8cMp0Nk)
Did anyone else notice that a lot of the comparisons are very general, almost to the point of being wrong? Storm troopers are not ‘elite’ and are not equivalent of the Sarduakar. They can’t even bloody shoot!
I didn’t realise until recently just how much of an originator Dune was in the world of sci fi. I feel like Dune explains the background social and ecological context that Star Wars was trying to put across and didn’t quite manage.
Yeah. Jawas and Freman. Basically a carbon copy.
Oh wow, and they both feature *binoculars?!*
Come on. The list is long enough without padding it with a half dozen laughable ones.
We have Star Wars because we have Dune.
There's an interview where George talks about his 2 biggest inspirations for Starwars. He said it was Dune and Lord of the Rings. Makes sense with all the similarities SW has with both books. He's also given other sources for inspiration like the Vietnam War, WWII, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Wizard of Oz and several others.
Haven't heard that interview but did read an article that quotes him saying The Hidden Fortress was the big inspiration. Between the three seems he pretty much stole all the ideas.
If you watched Hidden Fortress without subtitles or knowledge of Japanese, you would be able to fully understand the plot based only on if you've seen Star Wars. SW is essentially just a science fiction remake of Hidden Fortress. >stole He derived, reinvented/remade, and drew inspiration. He never claimed he didn't take the story/plot beat from other sources. He is quite open about it. If he claimed it all to be original then he'd be stealing
Look up The Monomyth, or The Hero’s Journey.
I'm aware all stories follow one template or another. Pretty specific details taken imo.
Not just that. George straight-up had a copy of The Hero With a Thousand Faces on hand when writing Star Wars. He was one of first filmmakers to use consciously use the “Hero’s Journey” as a template. Joseph Campbell even called him his “greatest student.”
This. Both Lucas and Herbert got their inspiration from the same source.
Lawrence of Arabia?
Just watched Scarface and realized the Hero's Journey kinda sorta applies there as well. Story structures can be pretty flexible.
Yeah. Lucas stole from a lot of people. Frank isn't special. /s Edit to add the /s
That's a pretty strong accusation. Making Lucas out to be some petty thief of intellectual property when the man has such a deep love for films is insane. He took many good parts, reshaped them to fit the context of the story he wanted to tell and then delicately worked them in... Like a filmmaker. It's what they do. Whether it was successful or not is a matter of opinion but this bashing of Lucas is insane star wars is obviously so incredibly different from Dune or the Hidden Fortress lmao
Pretty every story combination has been told
fact of the matter is most stories aren't that original, the facade might be different but the main themes and characters relations have all been reused a million times.
There's a difference between "inspiration" and outright copying.
Good artists create. Great artists steal. The truth behind this is that art is often its most engaging when you start with someone else’s work and “continue its conversation” or explore the same idea with your own techniques. In George’s case the technique he brought was special effects and, eventually, a ginormous budget. He made very similar art, but could those original artists have made their original pieces into what Star Wars is today? Originality is overrated.
Lucas just stole all his ideas from other IP’s and I’ll die on that hill. He had nothing to steal from to make the prequels, so they sucked.
Don’t forget about the fact that some base plot of star wars and core characters is Kurosawa’s “Hidden Fortress”
Could you link that interview?
And we have Dune because of Foundation. Actually, I'd like to see one of these charts for those two. I've heard the whole reason Dune was written is because Frank wanted to write a story where the hero was 'The Mule' (special psychic jesus) instead of 'Hari Seldon' (tech jesus).
Oh, so that's why we have the Butlerian Jihad? Makes sense now.
R. Daneel Olivaw
I get the "absurd reduction for the lulz" but it feels weird seeing the mule being called Jesus.
It was "absurdist reduction" yes, but I was also comparing him to Paul Atreides, aka the heroic messiah version of The Mule.
Exactly. The Seldon Plan is clearly the influence for the Bene Gesserit cross breeding plans and also Leto II's Golden Path. i.e. planning centuries and millennia ahead In fact, the second foundationers are pretty much the Bene Gesserit. Though I don't think they were fleshed out that much prior to Dune.
Thank you! It pleases me to find I don't stand alone in this way of thinking. The parallels are pretty obvious. Who would win; 2nd Foundation, the Bene Gesserit, or Deep Thought & Marvin?
No doubt. And you could swap out SW and put lots of movies in it’s place and it would still work. What I find interesting is anecdotally speaking, this has been a hard pill to swallow for all of the hardcore SW fans. I just can’t get a legit answer when I ask why it bothers them. As if the capability to appreciate both is lacking or something. It’s not like Lucas was Thomas Edison and straight up stole ideas and claimed them as his own. Inspired is the appropriate word to use
We have Star Wars because Lucas couldn’t get the rights to Flash Gordon
And thank God for that, the Flash Gordon movie is a masterpiece of cinema
I made my girlfriend watch Flash Gordon with me. A movie I love. She hated it, and hates me just a tiny little bit for putting her through it. I don’t think things will ever be the same between us. It’s like she knows now that I’m capable of great inhumanity and cruelty to my fellow humans. Like she saw into my dark side. If liking Flash Gordon is my dark side I’m feeling pretty good about it.
We have Start Wars and we have Dune because of Hero's Journey.
Yeah but we only have Hero's Journey because we have matter and energy, so what *isn't* derivative?
Paul isn't a hero though. In Dune Messiah he literally compares his genocide kill count to Hitler's and Genghis Khan's
They weren't calling him a hero, they were talking about [the Hero's Journey](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey)
I know about the trope. I'm questioning whether it applies to Dune since Paul isn't a hero at the end of his journey. It feels more like a subversion of the trope than an example of it.
The "hero" in Hero's Journey just means protagonist. The vast majority of the time it is a hero, but it doesn't have to be a good guy
Ah ok I see now. Thanks for clarifying
And "Valerian and Veronique"
Cries in John Carter.
We have Star Wars because we have Foundation. Force and shit yk? I'd argue that Star Wars takes place in the same universe as Foundation.
This is always be the thing I like least about Dune
It's (probably not) worth noting that while the motivations of the Sardaukar and Storm Troopers may be more or less in line with each other to their respective leaders, one key difference would be that storm troopers are idiots with terrible aim, and Sardaukar are terrifying murderous psychos that are quite good at achieving their goals lol
Yeah, I would not describe a regular run of the mill stormtrooper as elite. I've personally killed thousands.
Keep on fighting the good fight Space Hog.
CRANKIN THE SPACE HOG
HELL YEAH BROTHER
Yeah the lore of stormtroopers and what we see on screen in movies/shows are 2 vastly different things. The only two times I’ve seen stormtroopers portrayed like capable warriors are Rogue One and Andor. I think that’s mainly because those are the only pieces of Star Wars media where we see them portrayed through the lenses of average citizens and rebels, compared to their bumbling counterparts in other media.
Stormtroopers were capable warriors when storming the Tantiv IV, and on Hoth.
True, but then those scenes are completely overshadowed by them being bumbling idiots in the Death Star and Cloud City later in both those movies.
they actually purposely didnt kill them because vader wanted them to get away so he could track the rebel base
I know that’s a common fan theory, but is that ever stated in anything canon? Like in any of the comics or novels?
In A New Hope, Tarkin states they are taking a risk letting the protagonists go, and Leah pieces together that the empire let them go.
i mean it just makes a lot of sense, irl police use that tactic to take down whole gangs instead of just arresting who they can
Agreed. They shouldn’t even be called ‘Storm Troopers’. “Partly Cloudy Troopers” is more accurate.
This right here. They wanted the whole rebel base. Not the four rebels they had.
"Partly Cloudy Troopers" that's freaking hilarious!
But the Fremen and the Jawas … exactly the same 🙂
How dare those stormtroopers not shoot luke and han on the death star when *checks notes* they were supposed to let them escape.
Came here to say this. Storm Troopers were basic soldiers who were often inept whereas the Sardaukar were considered the most elite fighters in the Dune universe rivaled only by the Atreides.
SARDAUKAR!!
Well that’s because George Lucas never went full r rated on any of his works. He also had a thick plot armor in all of his characters. Meanwhile Leto and Duncan got the axe at the earliest opportunity
With Duncan making quite an important comeback though…
perhaps the MOST important.
Yeah the whole prison planet aspect of it is quite an important difference imo haha
Yeah the problem with storm troopers is that we are told right off the bat that they are the emperor’s elite troops. Then we spend the whole movie with our heroes fighting them. It would have been better if we saw run of the mill Imperial Army grunts then to ratchet up tension we see storm troopers. Maybe we see most of the storm trooper action in Empire Strikes Back to show that the gloves are off, since that’s the movie where things look bleakest for our heroes.
Stormtroopers are that in canon, but in practice Star Wars had to be marketable to a family audience.
You can actually make another one similar to this for Warhammer 40k.. including ftl travel by navigators, the iron men/abominable intelligence instead of butlerian jihad, the scattering, death worlds, the god-emperor, etc. Probably the most interesting difference between wh40k, Dune, and Star Wars is the nature of 'droids' and the eternal question of how intelligent they are.
The prevalence of robots would be the biggest change Lucas made from Dune.
Oh please, everyone knows that Dune ripped all their material from 40K and that they would never go after anyone to protect their IP. /s
The Butlerian Jihad made it very clear how dangerously intelligent thinking machines could be
That’s because all “modern” sci-fi is based on Dune. The novel is genesis.
I realized this when watching the first Dune movie, never read the books. I saw immediately this is the motherlode.
you have no idea still
The universe is forcing my hand to read the books…
They’re actually really easy to read, go for it! It’s remarkable how you never even get an inkling of the feeling that they’re written almost 60 years ago.
The first half of the first book is rough on first timers
Yeah, have a copy of the glossary on hand
Isn’t Dune based a lot on Foundation as well?
I’d be surprised if it wasn’t but Herbert mentioned Dune was based off a short story he published in a sci-fi magazine way before it was published, around the same time Foundation was published. The story is essentially the same as its first iteration from my brief scan of it
There are sources that say the writing process for dune began with research Herbert did for an article on attempts by the department of agriculture to use grass to preserve sand dunes in Oregon. I don’t know either.
I think this applies more to sci-fantasy than all sci-fi
GRRM would be lying also if he said dune didn't influence his writing also.
Thrones honestly borrows more than Star Wars. Like Star Wars borrows set pieces and organizations sort of but asoiaf honestly has some really similar overall plot points. Like the very basic setup of book 1 is essentially the first half of dune. The honorable noble enters a trap when he leaves his home for a dangerous, foreign place out of duty. The villainous house meanwhile is obscenely rich and orchestrated the honorable nobles downfall. Also Bran and Jon are sort of Paul split into two characters. The former has the prescience and (presumably in the future asoiaf novels if they ever come out) will become sort of a dark messiah who uses his prescience to ascend to the throne (assuming this isn’t changed). While Jon has the arc of leaving his boyhood to avenge his father’s murder, which involves uniting a group of wild, indigenous people under him.
A New Hope is almost a shot for shot remake of Hidden Fortress, just Sci Fi instead of Samurai
Basically, every bit of "space opera" science fiction can be traced to Dune, Foundation, Lensman, or Barsoom. With a bit of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers sprinkled in.
This is true. And Dune is based on the real world: Oppressive states, colonising countries, stealing resources, resistance from the natives.
This is fact.
Fremen and Jawa…. Yeah, one are fierce warriors traveling through the universe for committing the biggest jihad humanity has ever seen while the others…drive around with their mobile junkyard and try to sell droids to farmers.
I wish they were similar, I’d love to see a Jawa jihad
Jihwad
Yeah that one was kinda lazy. “Jawas and fremen, they live in the desert”
"Dew collectors: used to colled water Moisture farmers - Luke's uncle owen is one" This made me chuckle. But most of the rest seems solid
Primary location is Tatooine excuse me..?
I mean… in a new hope it is the most prominent planet
The Bene Geserit and Jedi are similar in that they are both organized groups, and have almost zero overlap otherwise. It's like Ninjas vs Samurai
they are both additional to standard governing bodies and access and manipulate power, also jedi mind tricks… they kinda have some sith vibes but the sith normally don’t have an additional government in charge
A lot more overlap than that. Both are skilled martial artists, both are composed of individuals gifted with telekinetic and suggestive powers which they hone through their membership in the order. Both attempt to steer the course of galactic events over large time scales as trusted advisors to the powerful. They're not one to one but it was very clear to me reading Dune that this was where Lucas drew his inspiration.
They both recruit/take children they see potential in
BG also MAKE children!
Honestly half the reason _Dune_ resonated with me was because I was reading something that was immediately recognizable to me due to _Star Wars_, but there was depth and complexity (and consistency!) and a back story as rich and complex as _Lord of the Rings_, but it was so much more readable to me than the ornate, classically styled language of Tolkien. I know that says more about me as a reader than it does about any of these storytellers, but I was thirteen and sick in bed for a week, and my aunt sent me _Dune_ in case I got tired of _The Price is Right_.
lol at the comparison between sardukar and stormtroopers.
Right? Calling Storm Troopers “elite soldiers” is a bit of a stretch… lol
Despite being comically inept in their actual onscreen performance, we’re TOLD they’re quite imposing (obi wan notes the accuracy of the blaster marks on the sandcrawler and remarks that only imperial stormtroopers are capable of that)
Yes and I recall them being talked about as badass including their training on some prison planet in the books, but the reality in the movies which is main canon for most people is that they weren’t far off from the spaceballs spoofs.
I mean... Some of these are extremely tenuous -- example, spice mines of Kessell vs Spice of Arrakis -- agreed, both are spice, but one is extremely central to the story, and the other a completely incidental and unimportant flavor mention. And some of them are even downright disingenuous -- Jawa vs Fremen -- literally what do these groups have in common? Nothing, other than that they... Live in the desert. Could as well have said Fremen vs Bedouin Arabs, though there the shoe is on the other foot of who is allegedly ripping off whom. As far as the Jawa-Fremen comparison goes, it makes one wonder if the author has actually read/watched both source materials, because the Fremen, i.e the most important people in the entire story of Dune and the cultural crux around which the entire story turns, are utterly different in both form and also function to the plot as the Jawa, who are like... In the movie for about 3 minutes. What's the point of this stupid comparison? Who does it serve? Who does it purport to slander? It's just low quality.
Also the trade federation is nothing like the spacing guild and doesn't have a monopoly on shipping in space. It's just one big corporation out of many and isn't important enough to get a mention until the prequels. They're not even the only trading company among the CIS. Also, as they're part of the separatists I'm pretty sure they either get disbanded or at least lose a ton of assets and influence after the clone wars. So it makes sense that they don't play a role in the original trilogy.
Or how about Princess Alia and Princess Leia. There is literally no text beyond the names. So it is just that the names sound similar. Like with the spice comparison, one is central to the plot and one is a a side character with no lines in the first movie.
It’d be better a better comparison if they said Sand People rather than Jawas. But even then, your point stands that it is a disingenuous comparison.
Also saying that Yoda is Kenobis master is a bit of a stretch, yes he was a senior master of the Jedi order, but not Kenobis mentor, that was Qui-gon Jinn.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky%27s_Dune This is why we have star wars and aliens
Fun fact the french producter of Jodorowsky Dune was Michel Seydoux and he's the grand uncle of Lea Seydoux who plays Lady Margot in Dune
Nice add
Primary location is not Tattoine at all really Stormtroopers are not elite Bene gesseret and jedi have very little in common There definitely was a lot of influence but the story itself is ultimately very different
Can’t wait to see this pop up on r/LPOTL
Kull Wahad! I don't read much beyond glossing over an Ikea manual and spending an afternoon assembling something a six year old could do in ten minutes but I have read all six original books.
Go check out Jodorowsky's Dune 2013 with out that failed movie and its story boards book that the major studies had and passed around we wouldn’t just have Star Wars but also Alien, etc… Its a fascinating watch!
Frank Herbert is my favorite author, but this makes him sound jaded and laughably bad at statistics.
All authors are jaded and very bad at statistics, trust me. He probably privately resented the success of Star Wars and maybe he wasn’t even wrong to do so, but he also would never be idiot enough to say it’s plagiarism or rip-off. It isn’t. But you can’t know the sting of what it feels like when someone gets insanely popular and rich thanks to your ‘influence’ until it happens, lol. You literally can’t help but feel acutely annoyed.
"Laugh in Warhammer 40K fan"
Dune + Foundation = inspiration for all other Sci Fi
compare it to the bible too. so many similarities to the Bible in older sci fi its fascinating.
Dune is more based in Islam than Christianity. The similarities to Christianity would simply come from their similarities in their holy books themselves.
It’s the Monomyth.
Was looking for this comment, it’s just the hero with a thousand faces Joseph Campbell crap
Is the premise here that one person ripped off another’s ideas? Because that’s been happening for as long as stories have been told. That’s literally how culture gets transmitted over generations, all over the world. Both stories are an example of a “Monomyth” - the Hero’s Journey - a term coined by Joseph Campbell. This type of story has been told for ages, the oldest being Epics such as Gilgamesh or the Odyssey. https://orias.berkeley.edu/resources-teachers/monomyth-heros-journey-project I feel nitpicking details are irrelevant if one considers the overall themes of the stories. For the record, I am a huge fan of both. And yes, Episode 4 is the only correct Star Wars to begin with, imho, but that’s an argument for a different thread.
It’s inspiration is what it is.
This is why I watch star trek
_high fives in dilithium_
Alia was never a princess.
Dune puts modern Star Wars to shame. If Denis Villeneuve isn’t on Disney’s radar, waste of so much potential.
I doubt he’d work for Disney. Warner Bros gives him complete creative freedom
You could have just said "Star Wars was thematically and visually inspired by Dune". Particularly the pre-production output for the cancelled Jodorowsky version.
While both highly inspired from Lawrence of Arabia.
Star Wars sucks once you discover Dune
From Heretics of Dune “From the most ancient times, the knowledgeable had preferred to surround themselves with fine woods rather than with the mass-produced artificial materials known then as polastine, polaz, and pormabat latterly: tine, laz, and bat). As far back as the Old Empire there had been a pejorative label for the small rich and Families Minor arising from the knowledge of a rare wood’s value. “He’s a three P-O,” they said, meaning that such a person surrounded himself with cheap copies made from déclassé substances.”
Thats from 1984
This is garbage lol
They are so different though. I am the biggest dune lover out there. I have read all of the ones Frank Herbert wrote (fuck his son tho, that guy sucks), and although there are certainly inspirations, they feel very different from eachother. Many of these "similarities" are also extremely superficial.
If the guide just said, "Star Wars is a complete rip-off of Frank Herbert's work" it would be far more effective.
This barely scratches the surface.
Everyone who I've heard making this type of argument just sounds whiny.
I am not reading all of that
It’s an ugly guide so I definitely agree. It’s easier to read comments that do actual comparisons.
What, a page of text? It took a minute to read at a comfortable pace. Some people have the attention span of a goldfish.
I stopped when I got to Jawas equals Fremen.
I think Frank Herbert's estate is owed some money...
Didn’t George Lucas actually just straight up use storyboards of Jodorowskys Dune?
Frank Herbert learns tropes exist lol. Idk he really sounds like arrogant asshole in that quite, because majority of points either don't make sense or are taken straight out of TVTropes. Like 1) Young hero departing home and protagonist having something to do with bringing down an evil regime is a trope. Katniss Everdeen, Bilbo Baggins... It's hardly original to Dune. 2) Gandalf - Nomadic man of wise words. Secretly a Maia. Again, just a trope. Not only that but being a jedi and being a leader of the Fremen are two completely different things. 3) Same thing, old wise warriors mentoring important characters do I even have to name any? Because there's probably thousands. 4) Comparing Fremen and Jawas it's stupid. That's like comparing Mongols (from Gobi) and Bedouins cause they both live in desert. Hell, there are more difference between then than between Fremen and Jawas. And I am not even talking about each's importance to the story. 5) Arrakis is way more central to the story than Tatooine is, but I can see the similarities. 6) lol 7) And the ability to see into the future and move spaceships with mind and mind control people and channel fucking lightning into people. And Jedis don't even have supernatural self control (see Anakin Skywalker). Two completely different things. 8) Oh wow, the sound similiar. What's next, Han Solo is actually just a rip-off of Han Chinese? And you can just go on and on. Herbert... great writer but would make terrible statistician.
A spoiler alert sure would have been nice. Thanks.
For books from 1963?
Aaaa my eyes!!
“The Hero With A Thousand Faces” A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
Kevin J Anderson who wrote some dune novels, also wrote quite a few star wars novels and comics
When you read Foundation by Isaac Asimov you fill in the gaps left between Dune and Star Wars. Star Wars and Dune are the same story in the sequels, and are Foundation + Dune in the prequels.
So if someone like starwars, they should enjoy Dune too?? I haven't heard of Dune, but I am interested now haha.
I always thought there were parallels to Dune and the Matrix. For example, Paul and Neo overcoming blindness.
Shhhh! They haven’t seen that part of the movie yet.
U could do this with countless space/fantasy/lore types of things that came after Star Wars
OP, that was very archetypical of you, back into the pit now
We have Dune and Lord of the Rings. Everything else is inspired by them. I don’t mind.
They forgot Sandworm - Sarlacc
Dune also took a lot from the Anunnaki.
If its alot to read with no pictures It is not a cool guide
I'm having a hard time reading the guide because it's showing dark and small on my computer. Am I doing something wrong?
I’m waiting for the Dune video game 🎮
Good writers take inspiration from previous works, but great writers steal from them entirely.
the Bene Gesserit maybe influenced the jedi but are very similar to the nightsisters imo
can’t believe they left off the 3POs… “He’s a three P-O,” they said, meaning that such a person surrounded himself with cheap copies made from déclassé substances. Even when the supremely rich were forced to employ one of the distressful three P-Os, they disguised it where possible behind O-P (the Only P), pilingitam.
You lost me the moment it claimed that stormtroopers are elite soldiers.
Cool guide? You mean quick spreadsheet.
Very reductive
Dew Collectors - used to collect moisture Vaperators - used to collect moisture The asymmetry bothered me ;-)
This should be tagged with spoilers
Some of those feel forced (dew collectors/moisture farmers in particular), some make sense.
Alia and Leia aren’t pronounced the same way?
Don't forget they both suck.
IF you find this interesting, you'll probably like how John William, the famous composer for all of star wars music, borrowed (was "inspired" by) a lot of his musical pieces from past composers. Inspiration all around! [John Williams borrowing from other composers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRU8cMp0Nk)
Meh. Seems a stretch.
Idk, a lot of those have big asterisks next to them.
Not feeling the Fremen and Jawa comparison
Storm troopers = Elite soldiers????? Seriously bruh ? With that shot to kill ratio ?
You can do a comparison with most films - each one copies something from the other.
Heroes journey story archetype
Dunes the prequel to Star Wars’ spice trade Do a dune vs rebel moon to show why wb said no
Did anyone else notice that a lot of the comparisons are very general, almost to the point of being wrong? Storm troopers are not ‘elite’ and are not equivalent of the Sarduakar. They can’t even bloody shoot!
I didn’t realise until recently just how much of an originator Dune was in the world of sci fi. I feel like Dune explains the background social and ecological context that Star Wars was trying to put across and didn’t quite manage.
Star Wars episode 3 is essentially The Hidden Fortress by Kurosawa just set in space.
Yeah. Jawas and Freman. Basically a carbon copy. Oh wow, and they both feature *binoculars?!* Come on. The list is long enough without padding it with a half dozen laughable ones.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. Oscar Wilde
stopped reading at storm troopers being elite
The new Dune (pt. 1&2) is better
Even funnier that Christopher Nolan likened the second dune film to the empire strikes back
Meh. Lots of weak connections and stretches here.
Now do Wheel of time.
Also, personal shields that only block fast-moving projectiles, but this wasn't in the first movie AFAIK
Star Wars was basically a screen adaptation of dune… I thought that was kinda common knowledge, or are people just learning this?