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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
Ha! This is a glorious future we’re living in…
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.
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.
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.
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.
I mean it’s been a hot minute since I watched hidden fortress but it’s definitely much more than the droids as far as influence goes, unless I’m completely misremembering it there’s also Kenobi, Luke, and Leia equivalents and Lucas hasnt even been coy about how it was a big influence on the original film as far as I know
We’ve been making these Dune time machine jokes since Back to the Future.
Google Gemini will regurgitate this one day.
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.
read the first sentence and was almost gonna downvote. well played
Now tell us how Lord of the Rings ripped off Star Wars, so that your journey to the dark side will be complete…
Wow. A legit /MurderedByWords. Very rare even on reddit.
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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.
That just is what all storytelling is. You mix and match characters, tropes, settings, and such from other stories and irl and mix it all together to get something “original”
Well even paintings and music is usually inspired by something as well, it’s not just limited to the medium of story telling.
True, storytelling is just easier to track and what the thread was about
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.
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Akakiri is an even better example.
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.
I also remember many designs and visual concepts were also based on a French scify graphic novel.
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.
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.
I don’t know anything about Dune, does it have Magic (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.
No. But it has drugs that make you accurately predict the near and far future. And turn you into an immortal worm eventually.
The voice… Prana-bindu, there’s others, but spoilers ahoy.
Yeah.
Tap for spoiler
But non of it is magic. More like crazy mastery of your own body to a degree that it seems like magic.
basically The Force then
The majority of force abilities is basically that. Voice control isn’t mastery of muscle or nerve, it isn’t magic in a sense, but controlling someone’s mind to do what you want for all intents and purposes is.
Also, where do you think Star Wars got inspiration for most of their force abilities at the start?
Not immortal, just long-lived and thick skinned
True. My apologies. I fell for imperial propaganda for a moment.
Not immortal, just long-lived and thick skinned
Sort of yeah
Yeah
Interesting, maybe I’ll read the book. I’m trying to read more
You can get it on library genesis. Messiah, too.
This might be controversial, but the new Denis Villeneuve movies are much better than the book. Maybe watch the movies and read the book or trawl the wiki after for more context.
I’d compare it to The Lord of the Rings books vs the movies. The Movies are a great abridged series and they know what pacing is, but the books explain so much more and have several extra movies worth of cut content.
They’re definitely better entertainment pound-for-pound. I’d contend that the book gives you a lot more to think about, so it really depends what you’re after. I like them both a lot–I think they complement each other very nicely.
It definitely has aspects that could be considered magic, but I wouldn’t necessarily compare them to the Force.
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.
Grandfather paradox.
Both reference each other.
I forget what was in Dune, but I remember Han introducing himself and saying he was a spice hauler in a past life.
How does Dune reference something that doesn’t yet exist?
C3PO is referenced in Heretics Of Dune.
Bro…time machine!!!
Bro…
Herbert kept writing Dune novels until 1985.
Through the prescient powers granted by the spice melange.
