Eragon & Eldest: A Star Wars Plot Recap

Star Wars is a classic archetypal epic journey. Examine and compare with the Harry Potter series – you’ll find many similarities as well. HP is also an epic journey.

It’s part of the form, man.

True, true, but still…if you can make such blatant comparisons like that, you know that someone has a severe lack of creativity. (and by someone you know i mean christopher paolini)

You can’t really transplant specific events from SW straight into HP like slyshy did with eragon…it’s still an epic journey, but there’s a difference between similarities between genre/type of book and just plain copying.

(well, i consider it to be a ‘legal’ form of copying. it really took soooo much creativity on cp’s part to meld star wars plot with lord of the rings culture. even my nine year old brother would have been capable- he loves both. sure, he might have replaced dragons with dinosaurs, but at least the dinosaurs would have done something important, unlike what CP did!)

Clearly, Paolini has run out of ideas. Rather- let me restate that- he never had any to start with!
His writing is well-off enough, considering he was nineteen, eighteen, perhaps, when he first started writing if overly dramatic.
His story, whoever, needs to stop ripping off from predecessors.
Star wars is still the indisputed best. V. true- Copying is the most sincere form of flattery!

I added a few extra similarities (they’re in double parentheses). Let me know if you object and I’ll remove them (or you can do it yourself, obviously).

Nope, it’s cool, and spot on.

Ha! Awesome! Now, watch “Wanted” from last summer, and do it again. God, its funny.

Honestly, just arguing that ‘Star Wars is the classic hero cycle, therefore every other series using the Heros Cycle is like it’ just does not work for me. Examine The Matrix, for example. That follows the heros cycle as well, and yet has little to no similarities to Star Wars. I’m going to link to Anti-Shur’tugal here, which has a similar article about Star Wars/Eragon which is a great read, and goes even more in depth into plot similarities than this article: http://www.anti-shurtugal.com/starwars.htm

Yeah, it gets bad when you can change the names of places and things, and the story is the same.

I was aware of the similarities between Eragon and Star Wars the moment I walked out of the theater after seeing the movie (this was before I even touched one of the bricks).

Is it even legal for CP to adopt other people’s plots like that? You would expect George Lucas to sue the hell out of him by now.

A legal battle: the one form of criticism that CP really, really can’t ignore. At least, one would hope.

This has probably been stated at some point: both stories are pretty generic, so it’s no surprise they are extremely similar. On this basis there isn’t much legal ground for a law suit, especially since Star Wars isn’t losing any money from Inheritance, and Star Wars as a brand isn’t being damaged. Still, the similarities are lame.

I think you are trying to hard to find plot similarities. when you go over the book so basically sure there are some similarities in it but some of them you have tried to seem like plot similarities but are not. Surda was always a base for the Varden just not the one they were using during the books events. If you read the 3rd book you will find it highly differs from the star wars series with multiple plot twists that are just not similiar to star wars at all. the whole lightsaber thing is just stupid. the colours is just so they match their dragons not specific and the lightsabers were completely different from conventional weapon in star wars but in eragon they are just better swords so the riders dont break them with their strength. also the “force” in starwars was limited to use by jedis but in eragon many people use it. and magic is a key feature in most fantasies star wars cannot claim the force/magic as its own. “Darth Vader”? (morzan) is revealed NOT to be eragons father and the sword is therefore not his fathers. At no-point does Vaders other child turn againt luke either. The comparison between han solo and murtagh is laughable as they have virtually no similarities with han solo being a comic releif styled character and murtagh being very dark and secretive. Also you blend multiple charcters into one starwars one. That in itself shows the weakness of your arguement having to swap people about in your points. And the DEATH STAR is being compared with a standard prison in eragon. I beleive the death star destroys planets? wheras this is shown to be a normal prison in eragon. The Death star would be urubaen the evil kings citadel if it was anything but they have had nothing to do with that yet. Whilst i admit there are some similarities EVERY book can be found to have similarities with another be they coincidental or on purpose but implying it is an entire rip off is just stupid cynical an narrow minded

It’s true that Paolini branched his series off in the second and third books, but the similarity in the first book is undeniable.

That said, even the differences you point out are superficial at best. Even on top of that, there are tons more reasons Inheritance is poorly written, that have nothing to do with the derivative plot line.

If you like, I can go into more detail and deconstruct both your arguments and your grammar.

Oooh, snap! :P

I love these articles (I look for a new one every morning to read during breakfast). Please keep churning them out!

The third footnote should be Uncle Ben, not Uncle Garrow.

Otherwise, very nice! ;)

Good catch. It all starts to blend together in my mind.

I loved this, it’s so true.

One thing bothered me however, though I might be missing the point – Brom never sacrificed himself against Durza, he sacrificed himseld against the Ra’zac. Plus, Arya wasn’t there yet.

Sorry to be a hair-splitter. :P

Absolutely love it! Thanks, SlyShy!”

Oh and, actually, the third footnote should be “Uncle Owen”. :p