Lucas/Tolkien: Haven't I heard this before?

Cafe Society
1

Caveat: Okay, I put a little strain on the hamsters, and searched the board for a past reference to this, and came up empty. If I just plain missed the thread (or if it was something lost in the Winter of Our Missed Content) would someone kindly point me in the right direction? With that in mind…

Here there be Spoilers

***Clash of the Trilogies ***

The parallels between Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings could just be chalked up to the fact that “there’s nothing new under the sun” and all, but there are a couple… dozen.

Ep IV and Fellowship
The hero of our story (who lives with his uncle), his faithful (and bumbling) sidekick, and (eventually, after a little adventure) two other good guys set off from home, and hit the closest settlement. While in a bar, they meet a character they’re a bit leery of, but who, it turns out, they really need to have along. Before long, they’re forced to flee from powerful enemies. Somewhere along the way, our young hero inherits a powerful weapon, formerly owned by a relative. One of the group is hiding the achilles heel of the great enemy. A bit later they find themselves in the midst of enemies, and the mysterious older fellah seemingly sacrifices himself against a powerful foe, buying the rest of the gang a chance to escape. The heroes reach an allied stronghold, but soon find themselves forced into another fight. One of the good guys ends up buying the farm during the climactic battle.

Ep V and Towers
Not long after the story gets underway, the heroes find themselves scattered hither and yon. The older fellah seemingly returns from the dead (but he doesn’t, really) with some timely advice. Our heroes are sorely pressed on every front, and things seem bleak for the good guys. Some of the gang ends up in the clutches of the bad guys. At the end of this part of the story, we’re left with a bit of a cliffhanger, with the young hero, who’s been injured, about to plunge headlong into enemy territory

EpVI and King
The good guys prepare for the final battle against the dread enemy. Some of our heroes are indeed deep in enemy territory. The setup finally pays off, and the climactic fight is a real knockdown-dragout, and it’s questionable as to who will win the day. One of the enemy’s most feared weapons is vanquished on the field, but at a high price. Our intrepid young hero, still sneaking about in dark territory, finally confronts the supreme bad guy, and, when it seems as though he’s finally faltered and will join the bad guys, and all hope is lost, help comes from an unexpected source. A bad guy gets chucked into a deep hole. With the Dark One overthrown, his armies falter on the field, and the day is won. And that shady guy they met in a bar way back in part 1 ends up marrying his princess sweetie, though we have to get this information from sources outside the actual story.

Parallels that occur outside the above framework:
Betrayal by a member of the good guys, who redeems himself in the end. The intrepid young hero loses an extremity. He also gets help from a green guy who he doesn’t expect to meet in the place he meets him. He also sees some visions of bad things happening to his friends.

There are more, I’m sure, but you get the point. So would this be considered an homage, or just a seriously recycled story? Or do I just have way too much time on my hands tonight?

[sub]I’m gonna feel a right idiot if this has been beaten to death already, and I just missed it.[/sub]

2

Of course Lucas read Tolkien and knew that he was modeling his story after The Lord of the Rings. Take a look at these two reviews of mine:

http://www.dcfilmsociety.org/rv_starw.htm

http://www.dcfilmsociety.org/rv_phantom.htm

Lucas was deliberately basing the plots of the entire series on various archetypal stories. The commonest claim is that he was basing the plots on Joseph Campbell’s monomyth (found in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces), but I think that Lucas did better when he ignored Campbell and simply modeled the story after all the original books, rather than after Campbell’s rather rigid schema.

3

Eh. The ways in which they coincide are pretty stretchy at times (for instance… in ANH, sure, “one of the good guys ends up buying the farm during the climactic battle”, but 1. a LOT of the good guys die, and 2. he’s not really a major character), and then there are all the manners in which they simply DON’T add up (there’s no major blow to the enemy at the end of FOTR, aside from the heroes not dying).

4

Interestingly enough, I read an article earlier this year about how all the Harry Potter books have plaigarised the majority of other books in the same genre. It gave a large number of examples which seem more than coincidental and really does make you question how ‘original’ the works of ‘Smiler’ J. K. Rowling are…

5

Yes, Lucas stole/borrowed (depending how charitable you feel) some things from Tolkien. He also stole/borrowed heavily from “Flash Gordon” and other old cliffhanger serials, and 1930s sci-fi B-movies.

For that matter, J.R.R. Tolkien stole/borrowed some things from the Bible, from Arthurian legend, from Norse mythology, and from ancient epic poems.

And Vergil stole/borrowed from the Aeneid… yadda yadda yadda.

MOST of the greats of literature (and film, and theater) have built on earlier stories and earlier legends. As long as the end product is interesting, and shows a modicum of originality and creativity, that shouldn’t bother anyone.

6

Sigh… I meant Vergil stole from Homer, when writing the Aeneid.

7

Wait a moment… Luke sets out with two bumbling sidekicks, then meets one other party member. Not counting Han, 'cause he’s the guy in the bar. And the other guy that Frodo meets up with at first isn’t the mysterious old guy. And does this mean that Phantom Menace is the Silmarillion?

Oh, and you might add that the allied stronghold is a forest.

8

There really isn’t a whole lot new under the sun, folks. What sets most fiction apart from what came before is how it’s written, not what happens.

Even Shakespeare stole most of his stories from previous authors. Look through the Decameron sometime and you’ll see where Chaucer, Shakespeare, and a hundred other later authors got their story ideas. And then go looking for the older sources that Bocaccio took his ideas from. You might have a basis to say that the old Greek, Roman, Middle Eastern, Norse, Celtic and Hindu myths have a claim to precedence. Then again, they may just be the echoes of an older Indo-European religious base. Which may be perched rather precariously on top of a Neolithic spiritual tradition. Which may…

Well, you get the idea. I cringe whenever someone says that an author/screenwriter/director “stole” an idea from an earlier work. Unless it’s obvious that the creator in question just filed the serial numbers off of the original works characters and plot (cf. The Sword of Shannara if you really want to see someone plagiarize Tolkien), I’m more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt.

jayjay

9

Yes, but there are THREE forests of importance in LOTR, while there are only two in SW (Yavin 4 and Endor). I guess one could argue that Kashyyyk is the third, but it’s never mentioned or seen in the movies.

There’s no love story that started due to the adventures in LOTR… the Aragorn/Arwen thing was going on before the story opened, didn’t develop at all during, and simply culminated in marriage at the end.

There’s no significant relationship that acts as a primary point of conflict (nothing analogous to “I am your father!”).

10

In all of literature, only 3 original storylines have been created: 1) Boy Meets Girl, 2) The Man Who Learns Better, and 3) The Little Engine That Could.

Everything else is variations on a theme.

11

Both Endor (meaning Middle-earth) and Aldaron are place-names in Tolkein’s mythology.

12

Our gracious host Mr. Adams says, in “What are the seven basic literary plots? (24-Nov-2000)”, that depending on the point of view there are 69, 36, 20, 7, 3, 2 or 1 basic “plot(s)”. For simplicity’s sake, I like to stick with the one plot theory: “Exposition/Rising Action/Climax/Falling Action/Denouement or to simplify it even further, Stuff Happens”.

13

Lots of interesting points. If I came across as shouting “Lucas ripped off LOTR!”, well, sorry. Wasn’t really trying to imply it. I realize that, yes, there are only so many plots, and eventually, every story told falls into one or another of these general plots.

I also wasn’t trying to make the implication that if you start watching Star Wars just as you cue up the ‘books on tape’ version of LOTR (is there such a thing? and, good grief, how many tapes would it encompass?) you get this Wizard of Oz Dark Side of the Moon phenomenon going, but…

The details that do match up just caught me off guard. I started writing the OP, and the more I looked at it, the more things I spotted. At first I was thinking that there were just some neat parallels between the two. Then it dawned on me that the heroes both lived with uncles, both get a sword that was an heirloom, etc. So I think, “What are the odds? Nah. Coincidence. Or maybe a sneaky tip of the hat by Lucas.” Then, as I’m remembering more and more, it even gets to the bit about the shady guy from the bar, who by the end has got the princess girlfriend, and… Damn. These minor points can’t all be coincidence, can they? The basic arc of the stories is just what’s been said re Under the Sun, an’ all; the sheer amount of sometimes trivial details that parallel, though? Just wanted to see what the Dope consensus was, I guess. Thanks all for the input.

A couple specifics:
SPOOFE:

Considering that (at least, from what I’ve read over the years) Lando was originally supposed to die at the end of Jedi, and the bit about Vader being Skywalker was something Lucas came up with during the filming of the movie, it seems a bit more like George was re-writing Tolkien. Or at least borrowing heavily.

Chronos: I was actually thinking of Luke and 3PO setting off from home, running into Ben and R2, etc.

Eran: Didn’t know that. (or at least, didn’t remember that) Have to go have another look at the maps n’ appendices n’ Silmaril, n’ such. Thanks.

And lest anyone get a false impression, I do love both trilogies (and dammit, I almost cried when Boromir died in the movie) and fully appreciate 'em for what they are: entertaining fiction, with the good guys winning in the end.

14

Bolding mine.

Eowyn and Faramir.

15

Of couse, in this post-modern era (or whenever the Star Trek writers get lazy), there’s an even simpler plot - Nothing Happens.

16

Alderaan. (Yeah, not much of a difference, but I’m anal.)

Okay, I grant that, but their story is more of an aside than anything else. Han and Leia is quite prominent in the plot.

17

Missed this:

I would imagine that Lucas could have gotten those plot ideas from just about anywhere.

And besides, there’s a LOT of stuff that was (supposedly) originally gonna happen… like Episodes 7, 8, and 9, two Death Stars in the final battle instead of one, Luke turning to the Dark Side, etc. etc.

18

Well, I think most of the parallels come from your descriptions instead of being true parallels. I imagine if you put some effort into it, especially if you were looking for parallels to start with, you could make just about any two stories sound similar.

A lot of the things you mentioned I’d consider to be a stretch because their importance to the story is so different – for example, the “family heirloom” is the main thing driving the plot in Lord of the Rings. But Anakin’s light saber isn’t really that big a deal in Star Wars; all it does is set up the scenes where Obi-Wan tells Luke about his father and his history in the Jedi Knights. Also, the roles of characters that you say are analogous – like Aragorn and Han Solo – are very different. Star Wars isn’t really about Han Solo, but I’d say that Lord of the Rings is very much about Aragorn’s return to power.

I would say that the Gandalf == Obi-Wan parallel is pretty clear; it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that Obi-Wan was based directly on that character. But then again, I imagine that Gandalf’s character & story arc was a pretty old convention by the time Tolkien got around to writing it.

I’m just glad that the thread’s gotten this far without anybody dragging out The Hidden Fortress. Hopefully, now that the movie’s out on DVD and more people have actually seen it, they’ll stop trying to say that Lucas “based” Star Wars on that movie.

19

Yeah, I can’t deny this, plus…

Granted. I’d originally only noticed a few of them; the OP started life about 10 lines long, then, as I said, “there’s another, and another, and another…”

Actually, I was talking about Sting/Saber. The Ring I equated to the Death Star plans. (The whole achilles heel bit, at least in the beginning.)

True. It was the little things that kept hitting me over the head. Both characters are originally met in a bar, not really trusted by the rest of the good guys, at first, and both end up with a princess who’s family is dead/leaving this world forever (Yikes, another one) as a bride to be…
Although, upon further reflection, Aragorn and Arwen did tie the knot during the actual story, so that one just gained and lost a point. <shrug>

Alla this does explain, I suppose, the reason so many people are big fans of both trilogies. Even if you don’t consciously see all this, it still appeals to you when another story uses it; you liked it once, then you liked it again, when somebody else told a similar story.

One could (especially at the SDMB) probably list a hundred or more stories/movies/legends that use a large number of these same story arcs. There’s always an old wizard, who keeps a low profile until he needs to whip out the big guns, a brash young hero charging off to save the day with his sidekick(s), a scoundrel with a heart of gold and a gruff exterior, etc. etc.

But in how many of these does the hero live with his uncle, and inherit a sword, and find out he’s secretly related to the bad guy and/or the princess and/or both…
The more I think about it, the more it seems like Lucas consulted the LOTR on set as often as Peter Jackson. :wink:

I apologize if it seems like I keep beating a dead horse here. Chalk it up to the fact that in 25 years of watching/reading these two great tales, I only just now saw any of the parallels. I’d never compared and contrasted the two in any detail.
:smack: I’m still in awe of my own blindness, and it’s making me run off at the mouth.

20

But… LOTR doesn’t have mile-long Star Destroyers.

HA! I just blasted your theory to pieces with the strength of a 200-gigaton turbolaser blast! Bwahahahahaha!

(Okay, I’m tired and delirious. Sue me.)