I just saw the first movie with a friend and the thought went through my mind. I’m not really sure what something being derivative means, so I looked it up and apparently it’s more subjective than I realized.
What are your thoughts?
I just saw the first movie with a friend and the thought went through my mind. I’m not really sure what something being derivative means, so I looked it up and apparently it’s more subjective than I realized.
What are your thoughts?
I feel like this is possibly one of those things where Dune was responsible for a lot of the things you’re seeing in it that you might call derivative. Dune was written in 1965 and while I don’t mean to imply that Frank Herbert’s work was wholly original and that he didn’t take great influence from a number of things himself, it was also highly influential at the time and provided a lot of themes and tropes that would be taken up by sci-fi in the coming decades as well.
Hasn’t it been said that Star Wars was admittedly pretty influenced by Dune? Lemme see if I can source that …
EDIT: Yes, apparently Herbert himself even noticed and directly complained about it, https://nerdist.com/article/everything-star-wars-borrowed-from-dune/
To be clear, I don’t think this is a bad thing. I don’t think Lucas was wrong to wear his influence on his sleeve and I don’t think Herbert was wrong to take some offense at it. This is just art, this is how things work. Was it too much? I think it’s debatable. Whatever. I’m too old to be arguing about Star Wars on internet forums at this point.
A lot of that article is a stretch. Some of these things are very basic storytelling elements or ancient character archetypes, and things like Empire vs Imperium are only similar in that they’re empires in space; everything about how the empires actually work and their relationship with the main character is completely different. And space empires are older than Dune, but nobody accuses Dune’s Emperor Shaddam of ripping off the Flash Gordon character of Emperor Ming.
Everything is derivative. Even the Epic of Gilgamesh probably borrows from some older oral tradition that was lost to time. While Dune influenced Star Wars, Flash Gordon and pulp fantasy were stronger influences. Dune, meanwhile, is essentially Lawrence of Arabia crossed with Hamlet.
i’ve heard this called the Seinfeld effect, where Seinfeld was so influential on sitcoms that built off of it that it seems generic in hindsight
Seinfeld is Unfunny
it’s probably the reason I don’t really are about Led Zepplin. I like hard rock and heavy metal all the way to tech death etc, but there’s been so many generic hard rock bands that tried to ape led zep and/or rolling stones that I just don’t put them on myself. (EDIT : I like them when they come on, but I won’t worship it like Igorrr’s ancient sun or Black Sabbath’s self titled song)
Bands like Deep purple had some bells and whistles that made them stand out even if they got ripped off, but led zep was probably too close to setting/being the standard that they seem generic now.
That makes sense. Dune itself had derivative elements, and since it was written many other works have lifted ideas from Dune.
Similar to music from the 60s and other eras.
I know I have my favorite versions of different works, and most often it’s difficult to keep in mind that no art is definitely right or wrong. It’s very hard to create something truly original.