Did J.K Rowling rip off Star Wars?

Well, girl, you wrote a funny fic.

 

lol! Thanks.

 

hey i talked to you remember on OS

i'm katana solo!

you got round to writing that other action figure on yet?

still a funny story and anyone who likes HP, has read alkl the books and wants to join the role playing game PM me

 

I love it when people bring up Joseph Campbell in a condescending manner which makes them sound like they think they are the only person in the world who knows this "supposed" intellectual idea behind Star Wars and stories of its ilk.

Unfortunately, concerning Harry Potter these people's reasonings are bang on the money. My opinion on the matter (And I will steer clear of Quoting 'The Hero With a Thousand Faces') relates simply to the issues of Authorship and that any "author" can only thinly claim to be such. The potential for a truly original story is pretty much non-existant. Even subconsciously writers (And other storytellers) will draw from things they have seen, read, heard, smelled, touched and tasted. For thousands of years the writer has not been "author" but "editor" taking pieces from different inspiration and constructing them together to make a work in their image.

Harry Potter is a horrible, horrible series. It's like everything it aspires to be, but without any empathetic characters to care about or any real drama. I hate it, although I would not challenge anyone who did not, but the last thing I would do is chastise JK Rowling for doing what has been done since the first human civilisations... Only curse her luck at carving a multi million pound fortune from a lacklustre series of books.

 

Even subconsciously writers (And other storytellers) will draw from things they have seen, read, heard, smelled, touched and tasted.

That's what I was thinking. I've noticed that many movies/books have a lot of things in common. Plus, being the Star Wars addict that I am, I can see Star Wars in almost everything I read or watch!

 

Oh, right! I was going to write another chapter, wasn't I? Wow, that was a long time ago. Whenever I get time I might start on that second chapter. I still want to do that, now that I remember I was going to.

 

Harry Potter is a horrible, horrible series. It's like everything it aspires to be, but without any empathetic characters to care about or any real drama. I hate it, although I would not challenge anyone who did not, but the last thing I would do is chastise JK Rowling for doing what has been done since the first human civilisations... Only curse her luck at carving a multi million pound fortune from a lacklustre series of books.

question, have you read harry potter?

most people who bash it haven't read it, including fundamentalist christians

(thank the Gods i'm no longer a christian)

 

I'm a Christian. I have been for 7 years. And HP is my second fandom, SW being number 1 of course.

 

I am Roman Catholic, have been so my whole life, and I love Harry Potter. Not nearly as much as Star Wars, but I do.

The Jedi religion also has a lot in common with many other religions, such as Christianity. Good vs Evil and all that. I also think it has a lot in common with Buddism, like when you "become one with the Force" it's like you are "reaching nirvana". Or is it Hinduism? Whatever.

 

i'm a witch, but my reasons for leaving the church are personal and not relating to this thread.

BTW if you like harry potter, there's a role-playing game going on and we still need a voldemort

 

just about every movie has ripped off some book or other movie in some way.

 

Ripped off is quite a harsh way to put it.

Why not, "referenced" or "homage"

Seriously, though, most of these modern myths and fantasy tales are steeped in references to the old classics, with the similar ideas and themes, which is why it sometimes seems like rip off when actually, they are homanges.

When people acknowledge the references, does it make it better?

I say Willow is very Lord of the Rings, with a bit of Star Wars thrown in. Do we say Lucas ripped those themes off form Tolkien and himself, because he has not publically acknowledged the references?

 

campel says there are no new stories, just stories being retold

 

I see most of the direct story parallels between the ends of OotP and AotC.

Just a warning, OotP spoilers ahead.

The main characters of both stories are moved into going to rescue their father figure/mentor from their enemies based on what they saw in a ?vision? of sorts. They arrive with a friend or five but are met by unexpected forces and are put in severe danger, but members of a powerful order come to bail them out. They, too, are put in danger but then an even more powerful character arrives. As a result, a powerful evil character in each case flees the battlefield. In both cases, the actions of that character cause harm to a person close to the main character, and move them to anger. Thus, they seek to attack Bellatrix/Dooku against the advice of their mentor, and suffer as a result. Both incidents end with crowd pleasing duels and a major evil character escaping in the face of more opposition.

I almost expected a scene at the end of OotP with Fudge, Lucius Malfoy and other Ministry wizards standing on a balcony overseeing hundreds of wizards marching off into fireplaces and dissapparating while others rise into the air on brooms?

?begun, the second war has?.

 

I say Willow is very Lord of the Rings, with a bit of Star Wars thrown in. Do we say Lucas ripped those themes off form Tolkien and himself, because he has not publically acknowledged the references?

I never thought of them as alike. The only things they have in common is the fact that a short dude is the hero, and there is magic in both stories.

I almost expected a scene at the end of OotP with Fudge, Lucius Malfoy and other Ministry wizards standing on a balcony overseeing hundreds of wizards marching off into fireplaces and dissapparating while others rise into the air on brooms?

?begun, the second war has?.

LOL! You have a point. Actually, it would have been pretty cool if they had done that.

 

"Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream." -- Joseph Campbell

Drawing on myth, either consciously or unconsciously, results in a personal vision of the myth, full of your own personal idiosyncranies.

When Lucas drew on the Osiris myth for ESB & ROJ, he made it so uniquely his own that most people wouldn't recognise it unless it was shown to them - and even then, some people would argue.


HP isn't personalised. It takes the best of myths (old and new), cuts 'n' pastes, stitches them together in their original form, and creates a tapestry of other borrowed ideas.

And yes, I have read the HP books. And seen the films. (Actually, the films plagiarise just as much as the books, so she's not solely responsible here).


HP might be fun - and I'll damn well applaud any book that gets kids that excited about reading - but it's not original, by any means.

 

Darth_Seldon

Harry Potter comes from a children book known as Larry Potter about a magical little boy with glasses who flies on a broom stick.

That's about what the author of the "Larry Potter" book claimed, but here are some interesting facts:

- Nancy Stouffer's Larry Potter and His Best Friend Lily was about a boy with glasses, who was sad that he had to wear glasses. That's it; no magic, no broomsticks, nothing of the kind. (And yes, the name "Lily" does show up in Rowling's books too, but under a different spelling, and despite Stouffer's later reference to a "Lily Potter," the book's Lily is clearly a friend, not a relative.

- Larry Potter and His Best Friend Lily was never published. It appeared for a few days at a trade show in Germany several years ago. The only argument Stouffer offered to prove that Rowling ever saw the book was that "she was living in Europe at the time."

Stouffer also claimed that Rowling stole the word "muggle" from her; in another of her books, Rah (retitled The Legend of Rah and the Muggles after the legal dispute began), the "muggles" are a race of three-foot mutants living in a postapocalyptic wasteland. Rah was published in very limited quantitites?most bookstores turned it down, citing poor quality writing?and most of what was published was never sold.

- For there to be a legal copyright infrigement, the plaintiff must prove that a reasonable person might mistake the imitation for the original (say, if a professional-caliber artist started putting out his own Superman comics.) As the judge agreed, no one would confuse a three-foot mutant with an ordinary human.

- The word "muggle" goes at least as far back as a Louis Armstrong song from the twenties.

- The other similarities that Stouffer alleges between the two works?both have flying creatures, both have castles, both have magic rocks in some capacity?are trivial, and commonplace enough that one could easily compile a list of hundreds of books with those same elements.

- Most damning, the court found that Stouffer had falsified evidence, retroactively slapping the word "muggle" on various invoices, concept art and other documents where it hadn't been before.

Without any evidence that Rowling had ever seen her work (most of which, again, was never published in the first place), and with the added weight of the falsified evidence, Stouffer's case crumbled, and she was heavily fined.

You can find the whole story, including two reviews of Rah, here.

Anytime a book becomes a hit, at least one of the thousands and thousands of writers all over the world will notice silmilarities with their own work. The more mature among them know that this is simply a matter of probability; the less mature start lobbing accusations of plagiarism. (An unpublished author recently accused the author of Mystic River of ripping him off, on the grounds that "Both stories have 'River' in the title, both feature three main characters, one character is Catholic, someone dies, and there's a scene with a car.") Occasionally, there is a legitimate gripe to be had, but that's the exception, not the rule.

 

I just noticed in Harry Potter the spider aragog is such a rip of shelob from Lotr

 

Remember, this thread is about HP and SW, not about anything else and HP. Keep on topic please.

 

I thought it was really cool how in Chamber of Secrets Voldemort tries to tempt Harry to turn to the dark side, much like Vader does with Luke in ESB. Except Voldie isn't Harry's father. And Harry gets to keep his hand.