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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.
I assume he's referreing to the popularity of Star Wars owing a debt to the great sci-fi that came before it (i.e. Dune the novel), though I would think a comment like this would make more sense if it referred to Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress".
It hurts when I pee.
Herbert? How? Lucas has publicly admitted taking ideas from Campbell and Kurosawa (Episode IV owes a lot to The Hidden Fortress), but I don't see any significant resemblance between anything Lucas has written and anything Herbert wrote. Apart from the fact that they're both dealing with space and empires, of course.
The claim that Lucas took ideas from Asimov makes more sense, and that hardly makes sense at all. Then again, there are people who say Niven should sue Bungie, so you can never tell.
I write in my journal
I agree with the observation, but to Lucas' credit (grr, I hate crediting Lucas with anything) he has, indeed, stated his debt to Kurosawa many times.
For bibliophiles, this room is right up there with the old reading room at the British Museum or the Library of Congress' reading room.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I'll have to chime in on the Dune 'credit' issue. Really I would rather not have such a banal work associated with anything related to Dune.
Although reading the Dune thread that is linked, I noted that the slashdot crowd must have been smoking something damned fine when they were watching the mini-series/reading the book. It's really too bad I can't comment on it...
I believe everything I do, say, write or output in any other form is a combination what I have noticed around me before. So, should I, in the end of this comment post the list of everything that has given me input and therefore affected the content of this comment, including the numerous typing errors :) Some individuals might be able to output a higher percentage of unique content - but atleast in my case 99.999% is combinations of previous observations. To begin with, I would like to give credit to my father, mother and the midwife who helped me get outa there. Or maybe, the credits list should start earlier, maybe I should give credit to the authors of the music pieces which I heard while in the womb. I don't intend to troll, but I would like to argue that about nothing is unique.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
"Then why does GL need to give them credit?"
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.
"...though I would think a comment like this would make more sense if it referred to Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress".
Err why? It's not the overall plot that made SW popular, it was the characters and the visuals. That's why 4, 5, and 6 are so much better than 1, 2, and very probably 3.
SW was able to attract an audience that Dune couldn't. That's not a feat you accomplish with a good plot, sadly. It's a feat you accomplish by being just plain entertaining. That's why movies made in the 80's are considerably better than movies made today.
Ep 6 was filmed in the jungles of Guatemala - when the government found it out, they were quite upset, and tried to get them to credit the location (the jungle forests are quite beautiful, too), so now they have ironclad restrictions on filming in Guatemala.
Inconceivable!
Well, it should be Trinity College who should be crediting LucasFilm for this blatant rippoff "Deathstar" from RTOTJ:
http://www.tcd.ie/Library/Images/sphblue.jpg
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.
The best way to describe them is to describe them like the bible.
I, II and III are like the old testament; pretty stunning visual effects, but rather lame story.
IV, V and VI are like the new testament; pretty stunning story, but rather lame visual effects.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Lawrence Lessig, in his keynote presentation made on July 24, 2002 at oscon, repeatedly made the four point argument:
He made this argument while arguing against lengthy copyright terms, but I think the first point applies here: any creative work, such as Star Wars, builds upon the library of existing human work. It's nearly pointless to try to credit every single contributor to that existing compendium of knowledge. I guess it's a judgement call of when you should give credit, but this one feels ok to leave out, to me. (And the actual library will be a trivia factoid for years to come, this way.)
The reason I personally disliked that scene in Episode 2 is that it took place in a physical library at all, instead of being a four second web search. Kenobi doesn't Yahoo, apparently.
No, you're right. Robert Jordan really did rip off a fair chunk of Dune. But at least that is a change from the fantasy writers who just can't stop retelling The Lord of the Rings.
(Plus, the idea of originality is highly overrated.)
That's why movies made in the 80's are considerably better than movies made today.
/. Some of the best stories are centuries old, and stories from the 80s may very well be, on average, better--but they're not better moves.
Come again?
Star Wars wasn't made in the 80s--and what made it great was the groundbreaking FX that held up the suspension of disbelief all good fantasys require, even with Lucas's script and plot.
Movies made very recently--most notably IMO, Spider-Man--beneft from even better FX, as well as (in many cases) better stories.
Some of the best movies ever made are being made as we chat on
As for Dune... it still strikes me as an agnostic science fiction writer trying to be spiritual, and failing. Star Wars does "mystic warrior" better by not even trying.
I think Dune is one of the works that shaped my beleif about what differentiates fantasy and scifi. In Fantasy, it doesn't matter what your stories aboubt as much as how you tell it. In scifi, it doesn't matter how crappy your writing is, as long as you've got some new ideas.