‘The Mandalorian' Acknowledged That 'Star Wars' Was Kind Of A Rip-Off
If you hadn't already angrily rejected the show and all of its horrors, the newest episode of The Mandalorian found Mando performing another random task to procure information that will likely lead him to a new planet where he will have to do even more odd jobs in a cycle that presumably won't end until Baby Yoda is an acne-ridden teenager. At least The Mandalorian found out that he's heading to find fan-favorite Jedi Ahsoka Tano, who we learn is in the city of "Calodan" on the "forest planet of Corvus."
Which should be familiar names for fans of science fiction literature and/or Sting's space-speedo. Yeah, it sure seems like a reference to Dune; "Caladan" and "Alpha Corvus" are both planets from the original books. Which may be the first time the Star Wars franchise has explicitly paid homage to Dune, which is kind of weird, seeing as some people believe that Star Wars borrowed too liberally from the Frank Herbert novel.
Yeah, there's a lot of Dune in the original Star Wars; moisture farmers on a desert planet, giant worm monsters, spice mines, a young hero learning from an ancient order of superpowered mind-controllers. And while Lucas took inspiration from a multitude of sources, others seem somewhat more permissible, such as the Kurosawa influence, which was less distinctly recognizable in a sci-fi setting. But Dune was another sci-fi story, and it came out just twelve years before A New Hope. That would be like if The Rise of Skywalker lifted huge chunks of its plot from Spider-Man 3.
And Herbert himself seemed aggrieved by the whole thing, responding to reports of the "suspiciously similar" stories by claiming that he was "going to try very hard not to sue." So it is somewhat strange that The Mandalorian made a cute reference to a book written by a guy who felt he'd been totally screwed over by George Lucas and nearly took him to court.
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Top Image: Lucasfilm
