I just saw this TikTok video pop up on Facebook, which I thought was hilarious. It's a TikTok remake of a sarcastic comedy bit by Aaron Woodall, explaining why Harry Potter is a remake of Star Wars. Here's the whole bit (3:26).
With this quick, and well done, one minute piece, Woodall has his audience thinking, "Wait, it is pretty much the same story." Raised in the era of rise of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books being released in print, and then as movies while they were kids and teens, the Millennial/Gen Z audience sees the connections they never noticed before.
Yep, here's a guy, who sounds like a wizard from Dungeons &Dragons land, explaining the parallel plot lines of J.R.R. Tolkien's great trilogy, published in 1954-55, with Geroge Lucas' original Star Wars, which premiered in 1977. Huh? It's the same shit. Almost. And The Lord of the Rings is Frodo's adventure, which is an offshoot, a sequel, and also a parallel to, his uncle Bilbo's adventure, told by Tolkien in The Hobbit, published in 1937. So who's going "WTF?" at this point? Even most of today's writers, whining on Twitter all day, don't even realize this. And they write novels and screenplays... sometimes.
Meanwhile, a fairly typical Gen X person, part of my crew, now in our middle age, just nods. "Yep, George Lucas told us that story first, as the original Star Wars, now known as A New Hope or Episode 4, thanks to 8 sequels and prequels. Except our version had warp speed spaceships and blasters, not an old train from the 1800's, and pointy sticks." Hey, we're Generation X, sarcasm is our thing. We were named after a book that wasn't even about our generation, it was actually about the people in every generation, who drop out for a while because they don't fit into the culture everyone else seems to want be a part of.
But if you dig a little deeper on YouTube, there's another video that shows us how our Star Wars was really a knockoff of grandpa and grandma's fantasy novel trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Wait... what?
Yep, here's a guy, who sounds like a wizard from Dungeons &Dragons land, explaining the parallel plot lines of J.R.R. Tolkien's great trilogy, published in 1954-55, with Geroge Lucas' original Star Wars, which premiered in 1977. Huh? It's the same shit. Almost. And The Lord of the Rings is Frodo's adventure, which is an offshoot, a sequel, and also a parallel to, his uncle Bilbo's adventure, told by Tolkien in The Hobbit, published in 1937. So who's going "WTF?" at this point? Even most of today's writers, whining on Twitter all day, don't even realize this. And they write novels and screenplays... sometimes.
The reason all of these stories parallel so close in plot and themes is because they are all versions of "The Hero's Adventure." The late comparative mythologist, Joseph Campbell explained that concept in his 1949 book, The Hero With 1,000 Faces. I'll go into a lot more detail on Campbell and his theory in one of my next posts.
Star Wars 1977 trailer -A small movie, with unknown actors, that the studios didn't expect to succeed.
Star Wars: A New Hope modern trailer - A now legendary movie that spawned one of the greatest franchises of all time, completely recut, with hints of "The Hero's Adventure" included.
As you may have guessed by now, many of our other favorite novels and movies are also forms of The Hero's Adventure. Like these...
Monty Python and The Holy Grail- 1974 The many variations of Holy Grail stories, which go back 1,000 years, are Hero's Adventure stories, this one is a parody, but a version of the idea, none-the-less.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade- 1989 - A more serious 20th century version of the quest for the holy grail.
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