Star Wars and Eragon: a different comparison
I was pondering in my lair (read 'at my computer') when an interesting thought popped into my head: Star Wars is the greatest rip-off that cinema has ever seen. It basically took the good bits from everything and got away with it, making a shed-load of money in the process. To name a few: the opening text crawl from old adventure films like Flash Gordon, visuals from memorable flicks like Metropolis, the Wilhelm scream, transitions from Akira Kurosawa and the basic plot of The Hidden Fortress for that matter and a load of other moments from films and stories that I can't recognise, like leaping a chasm on a rope, falling into a pit with a monster and that sort of stuff. Also, each character is a certain type and not wholly original- Luke's the good hero, Vader the tragic villain, Han the roguish scoundrel and so on. And the writing's not exactly brilliant either- ever try to slip a line from A New Hope into a conversation whilst still sounding natural?
So my question to you is this: what makes Christopher Paolini's actions wrong when it comes to plagiarism if George Lucas is congratulated for doing the same thing? Both are works that lift ideas from classic fiction and both can get a little shaky when it comes to writing. I know we can all say how even the small plot details are the same (the hero being a farm boy, for instance) in both Eragon and Star Wars and how Eragon copied it, but I was wondering what everyone would say if we just ignored how similar Eragon is to the plot of Star Wars and focused on how similar it is to the concept of Star Wars- and how Star Wars is celebrated for this aspect and how Eragon is not. And don't say that it's because Star Wars already did it, because Indiana Jones took the same too. And again, everyone loves it.
So my question to you is this: what makes Christopher Paolini's actions wrong when it comes to plagiarism if George Lucas is congratulated for doing the same thing? Both are works that lift ideas from classic fiction and both can get a little shaky when it comes to writing. I know we can all say how even the small plot details are the same (the hero being a farm boy, for instance) in both Eragon and Star Wars and how Eragon copied it, but I was wondering what everyone would say if we just ignored how similar Eragon is to the plot of Star Wars and focused on how similar it is to the concept of Star Wars- and how Star Wars is celebrated for this aspect and how Eragon is not. And don't say that it's because Star Wars already did it, because Indiana Jones took the same too. And again, everyone loves it.