Has anyone else noticed how similar Eragon is to the original Star Wars Trilogy? They both have a farm boy who becomes a warrior of a powerful organization that was destroyed by a traitor, they both have an old man teaching them, they both have a princess, etc. Even the plot is pretty similar! Am I overthinking things?
I've seen the comparison made numerous times in the media actually. But I haven't personally read Eragon.
Yep. You're not over-thinking anything. To me, a lot of scifi/fantasy/other fiction, has just absorbed Jung's Archetypes by the pound and regurgitated them up. This means you'll always find pieces with the young hero(average person put into an extraordinary situation), the mentor, the damsel in distress, the anti-hero, etc. It's all just part of literature.
I did notice this in the second book, but i didn't read the third one so i can't talk about the entire series. I will say this, using the phrase "look into your heart, you know it to be true" sure as heck didn't help.
The third book breaks out of that mould completely, you'd be hard pressed to find any real similarities compared to the first two. Unfortunately, the third book also lacks anything resembling a plot, providing instead a series of vignettes set around the war between the Varden and the Empire. While many of these little mini-arcs are entertaining enough, there is nothing really spanning them all together, with the result that it almost seems like the literary equivalent of a series of Filler Arcs.
Eragon = Star Wars ft. LoTR (Cliche Edit) Anyway, I like the series so I guess I have no rights to criticize it.
Lucas took inspiration from many things, Nixon, the hidden fortress, Sergio Leone, Flash Gordon but created soemthing original. About Paolini, I read the first three books, and Star Wars came immediately in my mind: peasant who finds out to be knight, his family sterminated, join a princess to start a war against the oppressor...all elements that you can find in Star Wars but not, for example, in the hidden fortress.
Yeah, Lucas has a wide variety of sources for material. Paolini, on the other hand, you can tell he wasn't drawing on a wide variety of sources.
Well, of a lot of literature is actually 'borrowed' and twisted for affect. However, with enough guise, it can become something totally different.
Everyone takes ideas from other sources. It's impossible not to. The key is to make it your own. I did not get the sense that this is what Paolini was doing.
Well, Bill Gates once said "Good artists copy, great artists steal." However, in cases like these I think it would be more fitting like this: "Good artists copy, great artists borrow."
Like i said i didn't read the third book (the first was only okay, the only part i liked in the second one was the part with his brother.) but i have to say i really believe that Pauline didn't steal anything. He was defiantly influenced by something, perhaps starwars (starwars copied and has been copied by so many people it's hard to say that is the exact thing he copied) and lacked the originality to make it unique, but i don't think he stool anything. He just didn't make anything memorable. after all we are all influenced by so many things it's probably possible to take any book/movie cut it to pieces and say what piece came from were. Well of course he'll say that. He built his entire business model on stealing! p.s But I do think he copied starwars simply because of the sentence: "seek it in your heart, you know it to be true" being uttered when someone finds out his further (and brother) serves the evil emperor.
No they're not just similar, Eragon is the fantasy mirror image of star wars. Dragon riders= jedis= once powerful order of law enforcers now eradicated by the dark forces. Each rider/jedi is gifted with thier mystical potential from birth and goes through extensive training to reach thier pinnacle. Eragon= Luke= naive farmboy who doesn't know he's the one of the last remaining riders/jedi= last remaining hope for humanity. Brom=Obi wan= old man who mentored the current villain and is now mentoring the new hero= one of the other last remaining riders/jedis= guy who gets killed somewhere along the way. Galbatorix= darth vader= former jedi/rider turned rogue who brought down his enitre order because of his ego. In eldest the big reveal is that Eragon is Morzan's son, one of the great villains of the rebellion. Sound a bit like empire strikes back?
