J.K. Rowling stole from J.R.R. Tolkien?

I'm sure some of you may have ran into the FAKE Dementors pic from Harry Potter 3 that is spreading over the web like wild fire. It has sparked some conterversey. I think this quote by sambrook on the AICN talkback (a great place to find intellectual feedback, ) sums it up. Not that I completely agree with what he is saying.

"If the film makers are worried that people are going to compare their finished Dementors with the Ringwraiths, then it serves them right for adapting a book filled with LOTR rip-offs, especially the Dementors (plus the cave troll, the giant spider - called ARAGOG!, a backstabbing servant called WORMTAIL, small unwilling hero having to steal from a giant dragon, and the rest). From Goblet of Fire onwards though she seems to have laid off LOTR and found her own style. Maybe because when she wrote the first three books no-one took any real notice of LOTR and the the only people who would have picked up on the literary thefts would be the nerds who paint those little models. Then the film trilogy was announced, LOTR comes back into the public eye in a way she never imagined and she loses her muse. Thus she now makes up for it by replacing the real fantasy elements of the last two books with overlong character-based sub-plots which don't go anywhere. Quality, not quantity. (Having said that, I did enjoy the last two books, but they were lacking the magic of the first two."

[image=http://www.thesnitch.co.uk/galleries/POA/Movie%20Images//Possible%20first%20look%20at%20dementors.jpg]

http://www.thesnitch.co.uk/

 

Books stealing from others is nothing new. Lucas "stole" from LOTR, Dune and many other mythologies. LOTR itself "stole" material too.

 

i thought a certain amount of ''stealing'' in books was how you come up with a good idea.

 

Correct.

 

How did Lucas steal from LOTR?

 

The whole concept of what Obi-Wan is pretty much the same as Gandalf. Old guy with powers helps our hero through the story, dies in the first part, and comes back in a form to be an even greater help.

 

Oh my God! This is so true!!!

If you look at them closely, you can see that Harry Potter is nothing but a cheap imitation. For instance:

Harry Potter has two eyes, one nose and a mouth, the exact same as Frodo Baggins!!!

They both where clothes!!

Gandalf and Dumbledore both have white beards!

 

All these stories came from ancient myths. So the fact that they have similiar adventures and characters is understandable, but where does one draw the line.

 

Everything is a rip-off of everything else.

 

It's telling an old myth in a new way.

I'm 31. My generation's "new myth" was Star Wars. My parents' generation is LOTR. And the generation after mine has Harry Potter. (Of course I enjoy all three generations' new myths--but hey. )

 

Has it even been proven that JK Rowling has ever even READ any of the LOTR books? She has said repeatedly that she has not read any of them, and this was before LOTR came back into the public spotlight.

There are plenty of other authors who have dragons, giant spiders, trolls, goblins, elves, and evil people beneath menacing cloaks in their books, but they are neevr accused of plagerizing. The concept of all of those creatures has been around far longer than Tolkien or his books, and were used in novels before and after he began writing. If you are going to accuse JKR of plagerizing LOTR, then you should really go back to every single book that has a troll, elf, dragon, monster, broomstick, wand, pointy hat, guy with a white beird, and person in a big black cloak and accuse her of plagerizing from all of those sources, too.

BTW, the Dementors are much more similar to the Myrddralls (sp?) of Robert Jordan's A Wheel of Time then they will ever be to the ring wraiths, yet why isn't Rowling accused of plagerizing from Jordan?

Also, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Gandalf, and Albus Dumbledore were all been based off of Merlin, not off of one another. The creators of those three series' have all admitted this.

 

Yeah, that's true...

 

WOT is said to have ripped of LOTR even worse than HP.

 

Wheel of Time? In vauge odd ways maybe but not really. If it stole from anything it would be Dune with the Gnder issues, and Star Wars with the whole nature of The One Power.

 

Its hard to do original stuff now, especially in fantasy.

 

Most definately. I'm working on a fantasy tale of my own, and I often see similarities between my work and that of Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Dune, Star Wars, The Matrix, or Harry Potter, often without me even realizing it at first.

It's incredibly hard to come up with something 100% original today, or even 90%, 80%, or 70%. I've been trying to come up with a completely original idea for years, and it's damn near impossible. Any writer will tell you that there will always been similarities between their work and that of somebody elses, whether they initially realize it or not.

Now, if somebody writes a story about a Wizarding-Dwarf who has a lightning scar on his forehead, is named Frodo Baggins, lives on the desert planet Arrakis, can dodge bullets, fights with a lightsaber, is destined to bring balance to the force, and flies around in a large space craft called the Enterprise, then yes, perhaps they are stealing from others

 

J.K. Rowling stole from J.R.R. Tolkien?


yeah she and every fantasy writer since him

even his good friend CS Lewis ripped off him

 

I really don't think Haryy Potter and LOTR are that similar... I think HP is actually a lot closer to Star Wars than LOTR... and, as so many others have pointed out, every author "steals" from those that have come before...

 

Unless Tolkien owns the patents for hooded cloaked villains, bearded wizards and orphan heroes, no one is "stealing" from him And last time I checked, he does not own patents for those things.

Seriously, as some here have mentioned, LOTR itself "stole" from other sources.

 

Yeah, this is just like when people started noticing the similarities between HP and Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic, which is about a young British boy with glasses with a pet owl discovering magic. When somebody asked Gaiman how he felt about Rowling "stealing" from him, he said "What are you talking about? Every author steals. Books of Magic was just a big ripoff of The Once and Future King...that's where I got the owl. J.K. Rowling is no more guilty than I or any other author is."

 

Now, if somebody writes a story about a Wizarding-Dwarf who has a lightning scar on his forehead, is named Frodo Baggins, lives on the desert planet Arrakis, can dodge bullets, fights with a lightsaber, is destined to bring balance to the force, and flies around in a large space craft called the Enterprise, then yes, perhaps they are stealing from others

I want to see that as a movie.

 

/\/\/\
maybe Mel Brooks will make that movie

 

The key is, if you can't write something original, put a fresh spin on things. I don't care if I read variations of a single story, so long as it's interesting. But that's just me.

 

It's all the same story, just a new spin. Nothing new.


!snap

 

I could hardl Care of J.K. Rowling told J.R R Tolikins Ideas or not. I like them both and to me they are both Different not the same. Yeah Tolkin took Fordo to School to learn of to destroy the Ring of Power. The Snorting hat was Gandelfs.