Jedi Archives In Dublin Library?

bill_gates_jnr writes "When Attack of the clones came out many Dubliners thought that the Jedi Archives looked similar to a landmark in Dublin, the Long Room in Trinity College Dublin. The library administrator of TCD, Robin Adams has story written a letter to Lucasfilms suggesting the company should acknowledge a debt to the original architect Thomas Burgh. " I was in the Long Room a few years ago - it's a gorgeous room. But while we're acknowledge debts, perhaps Lucas can also acknowledge a more significant debt.

Comments

first post!

[CoffeeJedi]

So... it just looks similiar... but they didn't actually film in the room? Then why does GL need to give them credit?

Re:first post!

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

You have to ask the question though... Were the makers of Star Wars II even aware of this room? I wasn't, I also don't remember it from the film. But I can say that if I was going to have some grand library it would have looked like this one. It's what a lot of libraries look like and just the typical image of a grand library. The same goes for many other things. Just because you see a similarity in something doesn't mean there is, or that it copied it from something else. There are only so many original ideas in the world, everything else is a modification of an original idea. We go through life and bit things up from everywhere. If your the writer of something there is no way you could know if something you think of was truely something new to you or draw some some moment in your life. No one can remeber how every idea in their mind got there. The makers of Star wars very well could have just invisioned a library and this is what they got. Then someone around the world makes a connection and thinks they are making a rip off. There are so many things in the world. No one is aware of everything. Two people thinking of the same thing at the same time in the world happens all the time. Look at patent disputs. If enough people watched this film and tried to find similarities they would be able to say the makers ripped off the whole world. This goes for music , writtings, machines everything. There are only so many ways people are going to do things. and the good way have all probly been done. People make what people like so you get similarities, people arn't trying to rip people off or even aware of it. It just happens.

Now if the producers said "yeah we got the idea from the long room" then there probably should be credit givin.

people need to stop thinking everyone is just ripping other people off. It happens, you can't expect everyone to be aware of everything out there. your going to get copies.

Re:first post!

[Rellik66]

Quoth the AC

They don't need to. This wouldn't have come up if a.) SW II wasn't a huge movie and b.) GL didn't have 3 cubic acres of money.

I'm pretty sure the credits in Independence Day didn't include the architect of the White House.

That's a very good point, assumming that public or possibly private building like the White House are made from mock-ups rather than on loacation, does credit need to be given?

Often the movie makers credit the sites that were filmed at, but don't credit loacations created in a studio, or by CG op.

And besides, when was the last time you paid very close attention to the credits anyway?

Debt?

[CrackHappy]

Hemos, what other debt are you speaking of? I looked at the article you linked to, but couldn't find anything about Lucas.

Re:Debt?

[Uma Thurman]

Some dude comes out of nowhere on a desert planet to topple the empire.

Re:Debt?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

More likely it was just a sneaky plot to artificially inflate Slashdot's hit count so they can keep charging advertisers who don't know any better to place ads that 90% of Slashdot readers filter out and never see. Quite the scam, actually.

Bastard, indeed.

Re:Debt?

[br0ck]

If anyone is still remotely interested, here's Herbert's exact words from _Eye_ where he is discussing the making of the Dune movie: David had trouble with the fact that Star Wars used up so much of Dune. We found sixteen points of identity between my novel and Star Wars. That is not to say this was other than coincidence, even though we figured the odds against coincidence and produced a number larger than the number of stars in the universe.

An ign reviewer (click-thru ad) interprets Herbert's phrase as In other words, anyone in the early 80s making a movie about a psionically-gifted young man on a desert planet overthrowing a corrupt interstellar empire had better come up with a different take, something a little more stylistic, a little more Blade Runner-ish, than Lucas' powerhouse adventure story of intergalactic derring-do.

The list of coincidences linked in my previous post mentioned spice miners and I also noticed in the AOTC a reference to 'spice miners' on a moon of Naboo that could possibly be attempting to assassinate Amedala. It seems to me that it would take a great leap of imagination to come up with the concept of spices that are mined. I guess a more positive viewpoint would be that Lucas is just using the ideas that are out there and is just paying homage to Dune.

Re:Debt?

[grumpygrodyguy]

It's true of course that Star Wars borrows heavily from its predecessors. But like most things there's always 2 sides to the phenomenon of "borrowing" ideas.

Steven Spielberg is considered by many to be one of the greatest directors of all time. Jaws, Close Encounters, Poltergeist...these all won him respect and acclaim, but it was the Indiana Jones series that boosted him to his present status. Raiders was a mercurial moment for him; he even says so in many of his interviews. But what does this have to do with George Lucas? Lucas wrote the Indiana Jones story and gave it to Spielburg.

Nobody remembers that...when they hear Raiders they automatically think Spielburg. The fact is that we owe a great debt to George Lucas for creating some incredibly rich fantasies for us. He wrote the Star Wars series, and the concept of Indiana Jones. The point is, for a few years there Lucas was an absolute genius at fusing together the very best of a story genre...and he deserves a great deal of respect for that.

I'll be the first to agree that the ghost has left him however, and that his best days are long gone. Some people only get 15 minutes, George had at least 5 good years. Not too shabby.

Re:Debt?

[Wavicle]

1.) In Dune, the hero is names after a biblical person, Paul, while in Star Wars the hero is named after a biblical person too (Luke).

That is really reaching... That bible thing has dominated the culture of western civilization for over a thousand years... the names of biblical figures permeates our literature.

6.) In Dune, the galaxy is made up of an Empire with a demotractic power base (The Lansraad (Spelling?)). In SW you have an Empire with a democratic power base (The Senate).

That is a natural extensions of an existing political systems which is found in generous quantities in western civilizations.

7.) In Dune, you have both energy weapon based warfare, and melee (swords and knives) combat. Most combat takes place with energy or projectile weaponry, but key battles are fought melee. In SW, you have both energy based combat, and melee combat (swords). Most combat takes place with energy weapons, while key battles are fought melee.

I thought in dune not a lot of fighting took place with energy weapons because Laser + Shield = Nuke. Fights in star wars ALWAYS involved energy weapons, except those between Jedi/Sith.

Re:Debt?

[Scooter]

Oh for goodness sake - there are only about 8 plots in the broadest sense anyway - Lucas rips off Dune? why? becasue there's a "saviour" who was prophecied? One who will be more powerful than any before him and will set the world to rights? Come on - Herbert didn't invent that - try Mallory's Mort D'Arthur, "The Return of the King" - LOTR, or Jesus Christ if it comes to it. Honestly - Frank Herbert needs to climb out of his own arse if he seriously thought there are more similarities between SW and Dune than SW and a hole host of other films/books etc etc. I mean yes, veryone gets inspiration from things they;ve read or seen, childhood memeories and so on, but seriously - did anyone else apart from him actually think to themselves "hmm Star Wars - it's a bit like Dune" Only after sucking on some serious Jamaican Woodbines.

Re:Debt?

[EnglishTim]

Because all of those ideas are completely original, aren't they?

Hmm - chosen people living in the desert, waiting to be freed by a chosen one... where have I heard that before?

Oh yeah - Exodus!

Re:Debt?

[kannen]

The truth is that while Star Wars is my first love, and Dune is a close 2nd, comparing the two is ridiculous. Dune is about politics, man's interaction with his environment, power, history, religion as a means of controlling society, etc. Star Wars is about friendship, good vs. evil (on a very idyllic level - evil is so much better represented by the vile Baron Harkonnen in Dune) and blowing stuff up.

Dune has a weight to it that Star Wars has never had - and never pretended to have. Lucas has been up front from the beginning that Star Wars is a spaghetti western in Space. A B-grade space opera. Dune is sci-fi from its very foundations - it concerns itself with much larger questions about society, religion, etc.

Star Wars is for the heart - it is the equivalent of donning your favorite sweatshirt, wrapping yourself in the softest blanket, nestling a mug of hot cocoa between your hands, and throwing Toy Story 2 or Dead Poets Society in the DVD player. Dune is for the head - it is the all-nighter you put in while finishing up your paper on the economic situation in post-Soviet Russia, studying for your final on Computability and Unsolvability, and preparing to defend your thesis on the effects of the Gnostic movement on the structure of the 2nd Century Church and its continued ripples through history. It is heady.

For more reasons that this is stupid:

• Paul is a melancholy. Luke is just a whiner.
• Paul is a noble. Luke is a farm boy.
• Paul thinks. Luke is impulsive.
• In Dune, control is wielded by controlling the Spice - it's economic. In Star Wars, control is wielded by brute force.
• In Dune, the religious faction is clearly female. In Star Wars, it is decidedly male.
• In Dune, the religion is merely a means of controlling society. In Star Wars, the religion is based on the Force which, though it is of a dualistic nature, is of substance with a definitive will and moral outlook.
• In Dune, everybody is a human. (Or was human.) In Star Wars, there are aliens.
• In Dune, the Bene Gesserit use their warrior skills only as a means of protecting themselves. In Star Wars, the Jedi use their warrior skills as a means of keeping peace throughout the galaxy. This idea of a spiritual warrior is also common in our own human history. (Genesis 3:24 - "So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life")
• In Dune, the monopoly on space travel is because only one group, the Spacing Guild, is capable of folding space. In Star Wars, everybody can get the technology for high speed space travel - the "monopoly" is created by piracy/thuggery, not by an actual monopoly on technology.
• In Dune, the Landsraad is not a democracy, but a meeting of the heads of the major noble houses. In Star Wars, the Senate of the Republic is an actual republic.

Hardly unique

[maggard]

Gee, a barrel-vaulted room in a library littered with busts, I can only think of, oh, a half dozen or so of those off the top of my head. Without getting the DVD or seeing the Imax version playing downtown its hard to compare them but from my recollection there doesn't seem to be anything unique about the Dublin room or the Coruscant one.

Furthermore, what kind of credit is expected? Few sets, digital or physical, are created ab novo. Need there be an attribution for every filmed space that was inspired by another? Should this be limited to notable public buildings or to parks too? Should I hound the film major who set a scene in what looks remarkably like my old apartment's living room in which he once got drunk?

Did Lucas Film "rip off" that library? Who knows. Certainly enough other library rooms look like it, need they all get plaques? Indeed I used to live down the street from a former fire station in Boston that was notable for having its hose-drying tower built like a Venetian campanile. When that was built it started a trend of lots of other fire stations being built soon thereafter looking similar - should all of them put up plaques attributing their inspiration?

Extending "Trade Dress" to spaces - Feh.

Is it a problem when...

[Frobnicator]

... creative people turn to existing sources? We have seen so many articles lately of when creativity is based on other creative sources and in some of them, one group sues over it. I'm getting pretty tired of it.

Yes, if I duplicate your stuff almost exactly and hurt your business, then copyright should kick in. However:

• Set designers need to build sets based on existing architecture.
• Cartoonists should be able to draw an eyeball even if they saw other green eyeballs in the 60's. [back on that discussion, Blizzard could say both groups stole it from their Warcraft 2 'Eye of Kilrog']
• Musicians should be able to use any set of notes, not worrying that a particular set of 4 notes will get them in copyright issues.
• Any other creative art (programming, artistry, city planning, construction, &c.) requires the use of elements that are used elsewhere, or that may have been discovered by someone else for the same purpose.

Or in summary: All great works are based upon the works that came before, and while credit is always appropriate, unless there is some actual harm done in the use, there should never be talks of lawsuits or licensing or copyright violations.

Frob.

Similarity?

[jansro]

I don't think there is much of a similarity except that both versions feature a great hall.
The real one is wooden, old fashioned and has a beautifully barrel-vaulted ceiling. The fictional one contains strangly glowing book-like cubes, which might be data-banks. And even then it doesn't contain "all the knowledge accumulated by a ancient order" since you can (and have to) ask the secretary if the obviously not-so-mighty database fails to come up with an answer to your request. :)

There shouldn't be too much fuss about credits. The fictional version is no where near as impressive as stumbling into the fantastic Long Room after having just glimpsed the famous Book of Kells.

Jan

is anything really original?

[xkorpyn]

is he going to have to give credit to the saharan desert also? Most ideas are regurgitated ideas of an earlier time.

Re:Hidden Fortress

[nomadic]

Well it's the cinema snobs, the people who can't accept Star Wars as a good movie because it's not subtitled.

"Lucas is a plagiarist! He stole the plot to Star Wars from Kurosawa!"

"Kurosawa is a genius! He adapted the plot to Ran from King Lear!"

Re:Have you been smoking weed or something?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"IV, V and VI are NOT nearly as good from a visual point of view as I, II and very likely III are. Not even close."

Whoah I strongly disagree. With 4, 5, and 6, you knew what was going on. You knew who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. You knew who to feel sorrow for when the fell.

4, 5, and 6 may have had primitive effects, but the story telling was much better. In Episode II, people had no idea who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. It was clearer in Episode I, but they failed to make the audience emote. Nobody cared about the Gungans. Nobody cared about the Naboo pilots. Nobody was made to feel like they should care who wins.

The effects in the recent movies may be ahead technologically, but the lack of good storytelling with those effects ruined the movie's ability to make good use of those shots. Sorry, the VFX was better in the 4, 5, and 6 simply because the audience reacted to them.