Dune Has A Star Wars Diss You May Have Missed
It's said that good artists borrow and great artists steal. If that's true, it's particularly apparent in fantasy and science fiction. There would be no Coruscant in Star Wars without Isaac Asimov's Trantor, no Westeros without Middle-earth, and no giant sandworms in much of anything without "Dune."
Seminal genre texts always leave lasting influences, but some creators borrow more than others. If you're a fan of Dune and Star Wars, you've surely noticed some similarities between them. Both star a young man on a desert planet with strange powers and an important destiny — and the parallels hardly stop there. Frank Herbert died in 1986, meaning he lived through the original Star Wars trilogy. As you might expect, he was asked frequently about the similarities between the films and "Dune." He even worked in a bit of a dig at George Lucas in the series' fifth novel, "Heretics of Dune."
In one section of the book, Herbert describes a rare and expensive wood used only by rich people across the galaxy. He explains that lesser families used the synthetic materials polastine, polaz, and pormabat and that there was a common pejorative for such people: "'He's a three P-O,' they said, meaning that such a person surrounded himself with cheap copies made from déclassé substances." By invoking the name of Star Wars' own C-3PO, Herbert seemed to insult Lucas' efforts of copying "Dune."
Did Frank Herbert ever speak publicly about Star Wars?
The complicated Star Wars insult in "Heretics of Dune" seems to paint George Lucas' films as "cheap copies" rather than the genuine article. It was clear from the moment that "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope" was released in theaters that it drew heavily from Frank Herbert's world, or at least, seemed to.
Speaking with the Associated Press in 1977, Herbert mentioned he had been asked soon after the "Star Wars" premiere if he intended to sue. "I will try hard not to sue," he said. "I have no idea what book of mine it fits, but I suspect it may be 'Dune' since in that I had a Princess Alia and the movie has a Princess Leia." He also referenced the desert planet of Tatooine and the "hooded dwellers" who live there. Funnily enough, that same article refers to "Dune" as a completed trilogy. It wasn't until 1981 that Herbert continued the Dune timeline with a fourth book, "God Emperor of Dune."
Herbert's skepticism toward Lucas' originality was fair, though the stories of Star Wars and "Dune" are quite different in tone and subject matter. The latter is a darkly serious story about how power corrupts all and how heroes cannot be blindly trusted. The former is a popcorn adventure story full of romance and spectacle. It's also worth noting that many have compared "Dune" to the story of T. E. Lawrence, made famous in 1962's "Lawrence of Arabia." It seems even Herbert may have borrowed quite a bit.
Star Wars certainly owes a lot to Dune
While borrowing from your predecessors is common practice in sci-fi, Star Wars does owe a heavy debt to the Dune books. It's not just the desert planet, Princess Leia, or the evil empire. Once you get into the prequels, Star Wars takes even more inspiration from Herbert's stories.
A prophesied chosen one with unrivaled supernatural abilities plunging the world into chaos and bloodshed instead of salvation? Borrowed from Dune. That same messianic figure having a tragic love story that ends with his wife dead after giving birth to twins (a girl and a boy)? Borrowed from Dune. While not nearly as potent or important, Star Wars' spice is obviously inspired by the psychedelic substance of the same name from Herbert's universe. You could even draw these parallels to Disney's sequel trilogy, where the idea of an immortal emperor — once again a Dune staple — is central.
If you were being reductive, you could say that Star Wars is Dune adapted into a package with more mass appeal. The weird space religions are turned into a general spirituality, the protagonist is actually heroic (at least in the original trilogy), and hyperspace works without submerging navigators in giant tanks full of mind-altering substances. But of course, Star Wars has plenty of its own flavor — lightsabers, bounty hunters, and a resounding sense of romance. There's room for both in the great pantheon of science fiction and fantasy.
Check out the untold truth of "Dune" to read more about Herbert's sci-fi epic.