Dunes vs Star Wars

I have no opinion on the Star Wars/Dune debate but that is one fantastic comment. Kudos to the author, brought me quite a smile.

Had me in the first half ngl
- I got slightly heated myself...
The most funny thing about this is when Google AI will pick this as the true answer to the creation of Dune

My friend, who has never watched Star Trek, was convinced it was Star Wars ripoff.

My personal faves are the claims that the cybermen are ripping off the borg and that Pratchett's Unseen University is a hogwarts copy.
- And Battle Royale totally ripped off Hunger Games

Hidden Fortress by Akira Kurosawa. It’s still enjoyable today IMO, and you can really see how some of the characters are a direct line to Star Wars characters.
- It also partially explains the Western feeling to Star Wars. Lots of Kurisawa films were made into Westerns.
  Seven Samurai became the Magnificent Seven (and Bug's Life!). Yojimbo and Sanjuro became A Fistful of Dollars and A Few Dollars More.
If you watch enough old scifi and adventure movies, you'll learn to welcome the "so that's where Lucas took that idea from" feeling as an old friend. He lifted a lot.
- Well, you know the old adage: "Good artists copy, great artists steal"
- The sci-fi artists were really all copying each other and building off of one another anyways.
  It’s the same with almost all art anyways, it’s “inspiration” by another word.
- The Hero with 1000 Faces
I also remember many designs and visual concepts were also based on a French scify graphic novel.
- Valerian and Laureline
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val%C3%A9rian_and_Laureline
  https://screenrant.com/star-wars-valerian-series-inspiration-similarities/
The Vietnam war.
pretty much everything is a rip off of everything.
A fistful of dollars which has become the archetypal western is also just a rip off of yojimbo im addition to the magnificent seven being a rip off the seven samurai which was also directed by kurosawa the same guy who made the movie star wars ripped off.

Star Wars is the plot of Hidden Fortress, in a universe similar to Dune, in the style of Flash Gordon, but with genius special effects and Jaws level care for every aspect of the production of the film itself.

The music tends to be left off lists like this but without that fabulous score and the genius of John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra, Star Wars would not have had the same emotional impact.
- Forget the music it's the overall sound design, music is just a small part of it. Villeneuve's vision for the whole thing was to make it sound like a documentary: The desert sounds like desert, not like music, the ornithopers sound like -- erm, they sound like ornithopters, not helicopters or music, everything sounds natural. As if shot on location, on actual Dune, and that atmosphere is given plenty of screen time, no grand musical scores interrupting the immersion.
  EDIT oh wait you were talking Star Wars, not Dune. Yep, completely different beast. Also the THX logo not just the 21st Century Fox fanfare is part of the score I'm ready to die on that hill.
- The music of Holst's "The Planets", if we want to complete our list of things Star Wars superficially plagiarized.
So, an original work then.
- Good artists copy, great artists steal
Sounds like an AI prompt
- For fun I put it into ChatGPT. Response is below.
  That's an insightful summary! George Lucas was indeed inspired by Akira Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress" when developing the plot for "Star Wars," particularly the perspective of the story being seen through the eyes of two lowly characters. The universe of "Star Wars" shares many thematic elements with Frank Herbert's "Dune," such as the desert planet of Tatooine resembling Dune's Arrakis and the concept of a galactic empire. The stylistic influence of Flash Gordon can be seen in the serialized adventure feel and the distinctive, retro-futuristic aesthetics. Lastly, Lucas's groundbreaking use of special effects and meticulous attention to detail in production set a new standard for filmmaking, much like "Jaws" did for the thriller genre.
And a producer who worked magic.
Star Wars and The Hidden Fortress aren't that similar. There's some clear inspiration in some aspects, sure, particularly with the Droids, but the overall plot evolved into its own thing.
- I often wonder if anyone who says this even seen The Hidden Fortress.
- Right? I kept hearing this claim so I finally watched Hidden Fortress and now it pisses me off at how much of a huge fucking stretch has to be made. "Oh, two comic relief buddy characters in an otherwise mostly serious film? Must be a Hidden Fortress ripoff!"
  Fuck off. You might as well say they're similar because both movies use moving pictures and sound to tell a story.

Lol the real plagiarism is GW / Warhammer 40k ripping off Dune

And literally everything else and cramming it into one universe
- Also big numbers = epic as a guiding light
Though you could do an identical meme with Games Workshop and Blizzard. There were so many people back in the day that didn't know Warhammer 40k had been around for over a decade when StarCraft released.
And then the same thing happened again when Dawn of War was released.
- To be fair, the original warcraft was supposed to be an rts using the Warhammer IP.
- https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10/i-hope-you-like-text
- Also Warcraft, it's blatantly ripped from Warhammer
Not only Dune. GW ripped off so many franchises it made my head spin when I finally read the Foundation series by Asimov. Let’s just say the Mechanicum wasn’t an original idea.
And Starcraft ripping off 40k

Wow. A legit /MurderedByWords. Very rare even on reddit.

Now tell us how Lord of the Rings ripped off Star Wars, so that your journey to the dark side will be complete...

If you create a story, any story, and it’s in space then it’s a complete 100% rip off of Star Wars.

Disney will sue you if you say otherwise.

When I said my biggest problem with the story was the same problem I had with Star Wars, royalty starting wars. My buddy who likes both said they were "Space Operas". I think that's the perfect way to describe them and how they are similar.

—Wait till they find out about Rebel Moon and how it was churned out with the specific intent of creating a space-franchise to capitalise on.

I would say Dune (at least the first book before it goes really fucking weird) has a sort of anti-colonial, indigenous(ish) peoples under occupation themes that Star Wars just isn't interested in exploring. With Star Wars it's basically just "There's an evil empire, okay that's enough, let's go" vibes to OG Star Wars. Like you don't have to pay attention to the political background blurb at the beginning that serves as pasting a veneer of political intrigue at all and the story basically makes sense. It's a War story, whether or not a Monarchy is involved barely matters. It could be "Ambassador Leia" and "President Palpatine" and basically nothing would functionally change. Empire requires no monarchs to function.
Dune does come across as "The Indigenous peoples of Dune hadn't a hope until this one random outsider self insert character showed up and joined their cause and was amazing at everything and was lifted up as saviour because vague prophecy seeded by generations of matriarchal Jedi (Bene Gesserit) manipulation reasons..." It's sympathetic to indigenous peoples in a vaguely problematic for a host of familiar reasons kind of way. Like the world building is great and all but I feel like you could swap Luke Skywalker and Paul Atreidies and end up with a generally better story on both counts.
- I somewhat agree. The theme of indigenous-ness is critical and is nicely explored in Dune while Star Wars may have too grand stakes and had to simplify the fight to Good (value lives and give freedom) vs Evil (power for me is yummy).
  It sounds like you've also read the next few books..
  As you probably know, Dune was made to subvert the Chosen One trope. He's "self insert" with all the magical powers and strength and intelligence and prophecy but even that couldn't help him be a "Good" guy because of his perverted intentions (avenge his family and gain power to do what's "right"). Even the movie starts off with the good guys in White and bad guys in Black. Then things get Grayer as time passes.
  But don't think you could swap the protagonists. Luke and Paul are completely different characters. But you've raised a fun hypothetical! Let's see...
  Luke would be less ambitious than Paul. There were a few moment where both characters had the choice to go to the 'dark' side. Luke rejected the main? call (killing his father), Paul accepted the main call (during his first duel). Assuming both have equal strength and plot armor.. If you gave Luke the same Power as Paul (foresight), would Luke just choose to die than subject the indigenous people to centuries of war? Or do as Paul did and in his way, try "free" the indigenous people?
  I still think that absolute power would corrupt absolutely and Luke would probably turn into Palpatine (as Paul and and [mild spoiler] God Emperor did) if his family was directly slaughtered in front of him and he was a little more emotional. We see some of that when Luke decided to leave training with Yoda and go save his precious ones. Foresight is an anxiety inducing power... If he could see into the future, would he have stayed and allow a few sacrifices for the Greater Good? We don't know.. but that same emotional reasoning would probably indicate Luke would probably do the same as Paul and sacrifice future lives for the Now.
  It would also depend on what stage of his character arc Luke was plucked from and replaced with Paul. I might even argue that Paul(/or swapped Luke) never even had free will and was just doing things because his mother chose emotion over duty and kicked off this saga.
  Happy to be corrected! This was fun.
- Doesn't the story portray Paul Atreidies' messianic rise as a bad, albeit opportunistic move? I only watched the new films, but it did not feel like we were supposed to think it was a good thing.
- sort of anti-colonial, indigenous(ish) peoples under occupation themes that Star Wars just isn't interested in exploring.
  Rebels did that pretty well. Andor is digging into it too.
- Dune has the sub-theme of tough conditions create tough people. The sand people were just waiting for the right spark.
"Space opera" has been a term in science fiction since at least the 1940s. Flash Gordon, John Carter, and Buck Rogers all fought Emperors.
- I'm so cheesed off that the John Carter didn't perform well. It was pretty good and they're really interesting/fun books.

You might want to consider looking up "Jodorowsky's Dune" for a bit more insight into how... huh... let's say "influenced" Star Wars (and others for that matter) was by Dune overall.

Google Gemini will regurgitate this one day.

Does anyone have an analysis comparing the Fremen of Frank Herbert's Dune to the the Aiel of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time?

I'm 9 books into WoT right now (its good shit) and the overlap between the Dune series is pretty interesting to say the least. Rand -> Paul, Aes Sedai -> Benne Gesserit, Aiel -> Fremen, I mean there's a dozen more comparisons I could make too. The lack of Turbo Pussies and chair dogs is a let down though.
- Graendal uses humans as chairs.
- Definitely a huge overlap but mostly just because these are classic and great tropes from English-language literature. I doubt Dune was a major inspiration for WOT.
  Aes Sedai - Bene - Moirai/Weird Sisters Moiraine is literally named after the Moirai
  Paul/Rand are regular chosen ones with the foreign savior theme of Lawrence/Heart of Darkness added on for good measure
They're the same except you have to go through the rings to see the future.
Thank you for attending my TED Talk.
I had one in my mind for quite a while now. Time to write it down:
A famous-but-secretive order of women pulls the strings of all known civilization. They possess special powers, that allows them to do so, but even more than their powers they rely on their reputation and their vast network of connections. There is an important in-lore reason why the order accepts only women - the powers they use are defined by their gender, and the male version has some terrible aspects to it such that letting a man connect to it will be disastrous.
And yet - the order has a prophecy about a chosen one - a man that will use the power to unify humanity and lead it. For generations, the order's secret agenda was to track the bloodlines that will lead to his birth, all in order to ensure he is born under their control and guidance.
But as stories go - that doesn't work out. In the last generation, just before the chosen one is born, a member of the order betrays that goal. The chosen one is born outside the order's control (though not entirely outside its influence), and grows up training under a master swordsman.
We reach the first book. Boy leaves happily with his big happy community - which, of course, gets attacked and destroyed. Accompanied by a member of the order he manages to escape the massacre , and eventually reach the desert. There they meet up with the Bedouin themed desert nomads. These nomad are very isolated and xenophobic, but of course they eventually accept our protagonist. We learn a few things about them:
While they are known through the world as fearsome warriors, in their past they were pacifists.
Their women can also use the same power the order uses. They just... use it for their own tribe's businesses instead of interfering with governments.
They also have a prophecy about a chosen one that would lead them. And surprise surprise - it's the same chosen one the order was going for. What are the odds?
Well, chosen one or not - there is a tradition to be held. So our protagonist goes through their tests, becomes their great chieftain, takes a chieftain's daughter as his lover (which won't stop him from marrying a more conventional princess), and goes on to use them to do his chosen one business and take over the entire civilization.

Star wars was about how space fascisim is bad. Dune is the same but about the Space Holy Roman/Ottoman Empire.

And drugs.

I don't know anything about Dune, does it have Magic (the Force)?

No. But it has drugs that make you accurately predict the near and far future. And turn you into an immortal worm eventually.
- Not immortal, just long-lived and thick skinned
- The voice… Prana-bindu, there’s others, but spoilers ahoy.
- Not immortal, just long-lived and thick skinned
It definitely has aspects that could be considered magic, but I wouldn't necessarily compare them to the Force.
Some aspects of it. "The voice" is basically jedi mind tricks. People that are attuned also get visions/senses of foreboding about the future. There's no telekinetic stuff as far as I know.
Sort of yeah
Yeah
- Interesting, maybe I'll read the book. I'm trying to read more

Frank Herbert spent his entire family fortune building his time machine, and even had to sell his family ranch in California and the family's stock in General Electric.

Woah, that's heavy.

We've been making these Dune time machine jokes since Back to the Future.

And then Edgar Rice Burroughs used that time machine technology to go even further back to 1912 and started the serialization of A Princess of Mars.

Grandfather paradox.

No because Star wars wasn't inspired by Dune. It was created by its own, in a creative vacuum. Don't worry.

read the first sentence and was almost gonna downvote. well played

https://x.com/allahliker/status/1792779944751431849

I was like Star Wars ripped off Dune! Oh wait…

Which doesn't change the fact that the new movies are snoozefest

The book isn't a heart pounding thriller. I'm legitimately interested in how you would make a movie out of such lore dense tome without the dryness?
I found them to be the best movies I've ever seen. But that's the great thing about being human, we don't all have to like the same stuff! It would be wierd if we did.