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:
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.
Paul also bailed before things ran their course, leaving Leto to become supreme jabbs of the universe. He chose what he thought was the lesser ofany evils and was still stacked by the guilt from the choice. Not very common for heroes to just bail on their destiny.
It’s important to note that Dune was published in 1965, Star Wars premiered in 1977, and The Hero With a Thousand Faces was published in 1949 but the Hero’s Journey took a while to become a well known concept.
Lucas has an interview where he talks about going to a lecture by Campbell on the Journey as part of his college studies, while Campbell was observing these common tropes have existed as long as storytelling the idea of this formula existing was still relatively new.
Pre-Disney Star Wars has an objectively trash method of story telling and the plot is incredibly derivative. If you enjoy Star Wars I am not hating on you, I do too but if you think all this hero’s journey nonsense actually helped Star Wars or that George Lucas really helped Star Wars (versus his wife and others involved) you are sorely mistaken.
Further just because pop culture decided this was the formula stories had to adhere to doesn’t mean that formula is good it means pop culture decided this was the formula stories had to adhere to.
Do y’all seriously think Campbell is still respected academically? Sure he was popular and influential but in terms of the validity of his claims AND his supposed evidence (and extremely biased cherry picking of indigenous cultures’ stories that fit his global narrative) he is not widely respected anywhere anymore.
I mean for one, the guy was just straight up sexist in an old fashion way. The hero’s journey is a man’s journey he undertakes for the woman (whether that be mother or wife). Like he has just straight up said in the past the hero’s journey is inherently for men.
This is honestly just a case of the popular consciousness not catching up with the reality that is obvious to people who study this academically.
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.
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.
Paul also bailed before things ran their course, leaving Leto to become supreme jabbs of the universe. He chose what he thought was the lesser ofany evils and was still stacked by the guilt from the choice. Not very common for heroes to just bail on their destiny.
It’s important to note that Dune was published in 1965, Star Wars premiered in 1977, and The Hero With a Thousand Faces was published in 1949 but the Hero’s Journey took a while to become a well known concept.
Lucas has an interview where he talks about going to a lecture by Campbell on the Journey as part of his college studies, while Campbell was observing these common tropes have existed as long as storytelling the idea of this formula existing was still relatively new.
I am so fucking tired of people acting like the Hero’s Journey actually says something important about stories or that Campbell isn’t a complete hack.
Well, it only provided the framework for multiple multi-billion dollar franchises and thousands of individual works of genre fiction…
Pre-Disney Star Wars has an objectively trash method of story telling and the plot is incredibly derivative. If you enjoy Star Wars I am not hating on you, I do too but if you think all this hero’s journey nonsense actually helped Star Wars or that George Lucas really helped Star Wars (versus his wife and others involved) you are sorely mistaken.
Further just because pop culture decided this was the formula stories had to adhere to doesn’t mean that formula is good it means pop culture decided this was the formula stories had to adhere to.
Feel free to write something better or at least more academically acknowledged, lol
Do y’all seriously think Campbell is still respected academically? Sure he was popular and influential but in terms of the validity of his claims AND his supposed evidence (and extremely biased cherry picking of indigenous cultures’ stories that fit his global narrative) he is not widely respected anywhere anymore.
I mean for one, the guy was just straight up sexist in an old fashion way. The hero’s journey is a man’s journey he undertakes for the woman (whether that be mother or wife). Like he has just straight up said in the past the hero’s journey is inherently for men.
This is honestly just a case of the popular consciousness not catching up with the reality that is obvious to people who study this academically.
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.