Frank Herbert always thought Star Wars was a Dune ripoff
Frank Herbert always thought Star Wars was a Dune ripoff
At least Herbert got his revenge with one of the best and pettiest burns in all of sci-fi literature
Sir Terry Pratchett said, regarding fantasy:
“J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.”
I think pretty much the same can be said for Herbert (and before him Asimov) when it comes to science-fiction...
(Reading the article, though, it seems Herbert might have been a bit more of an arse about other authors being influenced by him than Tolkien or Asimov ever were...)
GNU Terry Pratchett
I was never a giant fan of the Lensmen books, but there's a lot of Doc Smith's story in Star Wars.
A multi species police force with telepathic powers and a symbol known and respected on all worlds?
For the uninitiated.
We are standing on the shoulders of giants.
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
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.
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.
Why did he think that? Also, why have no one mentioned Valérian and Laureline? It is much easier to argue was more than just a little inspiration?
The comic was published in 1967, ten years before star wars.
I remember seeing more side by side comparison somewhere, and the list of passing coincidences was very long. I think it was this one
I did mention Valérian!
Indeed you did! Apologies.
Thank you for mentioning Valerian et Laureline!
Permanently Deleted
And I dont get why Avatar from Cameron was not sued.
in 1979 Herbert and Ranson wrote "The Jesus Incident ":
A planet named Pandora inhabited by violent various beasts
The human survive in a Colony and cant barely go out, because of the wild life.
The whole planet is covered by an entity protecting the planet it is named: AVATA. who communicate with blinking light.
There is a scene, where one of the main human run around the human camp followed by many monster.
To survive on the planet, the human created special Clone with better reflex.
The Clone were badly treated and rebelled against the Colony
And Arrival by Villeneuve (or the book it pretend to be from) Is bit for bit from the novella :"Try to remember" From Herbert.
Aliens try to communicate to humanity.
Some woman manage to do understand their language.
But some military try to smugle a bomb in the alien ship.
The book it pretended to be from is the short story "Story of your life" by Ted Chiang which seems to be a bit different from "Try to remember":
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Aliens arrive
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Woman learns their language and it completely changes her perception of time which makes her tell her daughter her(the daughter's) whole life's story on the day of her birth (Hence the title)
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Aliens leave at some point and nobody knows why
what make me think that "Try to remember " was used, is the "bomb attack".. it make no sense in the movie, and it also sound a bit dumb in Herbert novel. And of course, beside the time travel twist, every thing play the same
-
Deathworld by Harry Harrison pre-dates all that:
very interresting. This might be why Avatar was so fast forgotten, it is just a mix of more interresting stories
I don’t remember a Death Star or a princess to save in Dune. Or robots.
Those three elements were taken from Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. There weren't robots, but there were two characters who serve the same function, often as comic relief in the background, but also coming through in some heroic way when it counts.
I don't think it's a rip-off either, but the Dune franchise does actually involve some princesses and robots
Yes, but not a damsel in distress. A trope that has a name from the other stories.
Star wars uses old tropes. Dune uses old tropes. The key is they both did it on ways that tell a story that lots of people found interesting or entertaining.
It’s not, it’s a rip off of Lord of the Rings.
Also, Harry Potter is a rip off of Star Wars, which is a rip off of Lord of the Rings.
- Galaxy spanning empire with unseen emperor.
- Spice as a valuable commodity
- Desert planet to include skeleton of wormlike creature and suited inhabitants
- Secretive sect of religious warriors with magical powers
- Chosen one narrative with a dead dad
Now that said, almost every one of these is sort of set dressing and skin deep, and changed drastically in some fundamental way. Lucas was also not exploring remotely the same thematic ground as Herbert. He owes some of the world building to ideas lifted from Dune, without a doubt, but also to Lensman and Flash Gordon and John Carter of Mars. He owes plot and structure to Kurosawa ad Sergio Leone, and themes to Joseph Campbell and three thousand years of adventure tales, fairy tales, and coming of age stories. the only thing "original" about Star Wars is the integration of so many disparate influences into a coherent whole. You could argue that Dune was exploring more sophisticated themes and had a more actionable morality, but Herbert was flattering himself that Star Wars was a "ripoff." The influences were obvious, but they were just one hopper of grist for the Lucas mill.
What's the spice supposed to be in star wars?
It's only a throwaway reference in the original movie, but ultimately, as is the way with Star Wars, the lore was expanded and it was declared to be a sort of general purpose narcotic, possibly mildly involving telepathy, suitable mostly for inspiring organized crime plotlines. It's pretty different from Herbert's spice.
Desert planet to include skeleton of wormlike creature
It clearly had a skull and looked like a reptile. It could have been a gorilla skeleton and people would try to tie it to Dune.
Secretive sect of religious warriors with magical powers
Fremen had no magical powers.
Chosen one narrative with a dead dad
Luke stumbles into adventure in Ep4. He's only reinvented into the chosen one later. Paul was the Duke's son and was a target of the Harkonen/Emperor from the start. It was a major plot point that Paul became the Duke at the death of his noble father. Luke didn't strive to become his father and scheme his way into becoming Emperor.
almost every one of these is sort of set dressing and skin deep, and changed drastically in some fundamental way.
I think we're on the same team here, but it would be silly not to view Dune as one inspiration among many. I think Herbert was a being a needlessly salty MFer though. For the second point, I was thinking more the Bene Gesserit than the Fremen, and while "warriors" is maybe stretching things a bit, you wouldn't want to get on the bad side of a reverend mother.
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.
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?
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
Because it had a desert planet with a giant worm for like 10 minutes?
It's crazy that Herbert would see a skeleton of a giant reptile in a desert and see it as a worm.
Storytelling is reimagining the basic archetypal stories over and over again for centuries. It's important to make the stories relevant and new for every generation. There's no point in arguing who came with a motive first.
Star wars was always just a world war II movie rip off.
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)
A lot of the side character archetypes/interactions are stolen from Hidden Fortress too. Like the two drunks becoming the bickering droids.
My son was really into Star Wars when he was a kid but was over it by the time I dragged him to see Dune. On the ride home all he had to say was that it just seemed like a big Star Wars rip off :)
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."
Some other parallels I haven't seen mentioned could be the revelation that the Baron is Jessica's biological father, Chani dying while giving birth to twins, Alia being Paul's secret sister.
Star Wars being a rip-off is a bit harsh and undeserved but I'd definitely say there was influence from Dune.
Luke and Leia being siblings only happened because Lucas scrapped his sequel trilogy idea after Empire and wanted to resolve that plot in Jedi. Them being twins only happened by narrative necessity when writing RotS.
I feel bad for him. That's silly.
I haven’t gotten to Heretics yet, but that line referencing 3PO is funny.
?
He was also a terrible sack of shit. I don't give a fuck what he thought.
Never looked up his real life. What make you say he was so bad?
elaborate?
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.
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.
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.
I thought it was a Flash Gordon ripoff?