Much talk has been going around here lately about the Inheritance Cycle and whether or not arguments can be made in defense of the series. I’m not going to spend much time on that, however; instead, I’d like to return to an old, much-used argument about why Eragon is terrible: it’s a rip-off of Star Wars.
In discussions of Eragon’s (de)merits, this argument comes up again and again. “Paolini just copied the story.” “Just change the names and it’s the same thing.” Or even “It’s flat-out plagiarism!” Our beloved II even has an article on this very subject, supporting the argument. I think it’s high time to revisit this argument, however, and see if it truly applies.
Before we begin, I’d like to make a couple of disclaimers. First, I’m only looking at the first book, Eragon, which is the most heavily criticized for this. Later books show such divergence from the plot and characters of Star Wars that attempts to show parallels don’t just strain credulity, they flat-out shatter it. There is therefore little need to defend them against this argument.
Second, a little about me. I am a (more or less) reformed Eragon fan. Six or seven years ago, I was an enormous fan and loved them to no end. I ended up joining an Inheritance Cycle fanfiction site, where I began to realize that the books were not quite as amazing as I’d previously believed. I remained a part of the fandom, however, and still admit to a fondness for the books today, although I recognize their flaws. This means that I genuinely know what I’m talking about when I mention the books, having read the earlier ones many times over. It also means that I’m not just writing this because I think they’re perfect; I fully recognize they have issues.
With that out of the way, let’s get into the discussion!
The reasons people make the Eragon-is-Star-Wars claim are based on parallels in plot and characters. The article I linked above is all about this. I agree there are a number of parallel plot events and characters. However, I strongly disagree that the two works are as close as assumed. In fact, I believe that to make the argument, you have to carefully pick and choose plot elements or character traits, as any very close comparison will break down pretty quickly. The two stories match in broad strokes and some minor details, but there are differences of such significance that it’s clear Eragon was not copied from Star Wars at all.
Plot
After a prologue involving a princess carrying something significant, a farmboy living under an evil Empire ends up discovers he has enormous power with the help of an old mentor. His family ends up killed by the evil Empire and the farmboy goes on the run with the mentor. The mentor teaches the farmboy to fight and use his newly-discovered special powers. Along the way, they meet up with a mysterious rogue type. Unfortunately, the old mentor is killed by one of the evil Empire’s most evil minions. The farmboy and rogue end up rescuing a pretty princess and they all travel off to the secret base of rebels fighting against the evil Empire. The secret base has been found out, however, and the evil Empire attacks, only to be stopped by brave actions of the main characters, including the farmboy.
I’m not starting this off too well, am I? Already you’re convinced the two are the same thing. Just look at that summary, after all—there’s not a thing in it that doesn’t apply to both works.
The problem is, however, that this summary is desperately incomplete. While it does describe both Star Wars and Eragon, it doesn’t describe either very well. Where’s the Death Star, for example? Where’s Brom and Eragon’s lengthy journey on their own before they met Murtagh? Where’s Alderaan’s destruction or Brom and Eragon visiting Teirm and Dras-Leona? It’s obvious that it was made by putting up a summary of each and trying to find tenuous parallels.1
Then there’s the sequence of events. With Eragon, Brom, Eragon, and Saphira spend a significant amount of time traveling alone. They travel to a number of places (a few towns are mentioned in addition to the large cities of Teirm and Dras-Leona), covering quite a bit of time and accomplishing a lot.2 It’s only after all of this, when Brom is fatally wounded, that they meet the supposed Han Solo analogue, Murtagh, and Brom dies shortly thereafter. By contrast, in Star Wars, Obi-Wan and Luke travel directly to Mos Eisley and find Han and Chewie quite quickly. It’s only later, when they’re captured by the Death Star, that Obi-Wan dies.
Consider as well the final battle. Even ignoring the fact that there’s no Death Star in Eragon (the closest parallel is Durza, but the two have very different roles in the plot), the final battle plays out differently. In Star Wars, the plan, as formed with the assistance of Leia and Death Star plans she was carrying in the beginning, is to have an assault team attack the Death Star’s weakness while their other fighters distract the Empire’s pilots and the Death Star’s defenses. Luke, as part of the assault team, nearly dies, but Han and Chewie save him by destroying the TIE fighters on his tail and forcing Darth Vader to abandon pursuit, allowing him to hit the weak spot, destroy the Death Star, and save the day.
There are some parallels to Eragon, of course (especially the enemy defeated by hitting a weak spot), but it plays out in a very different manner. There, the Varden’s arrayed armies hold defensive positions against the Empire’s mind-controlled Urgals. In the middle of the battle, Eragon is called away by the traitorous Twins, is lured into a trap without Saphira or Arya where he must face Durza one-on-one. The Shade nearly kills Eragon, but Arya and Saphira burst in through the ceiling (literally), creating enough of a diversion for Eragon to kill Durza.
Okay, so both have the hero defeating the enemy only because of a distraction, but they’re still quite different. Characters hold different roles, and the way the battle actually works is different (Varden defending against mind-controlled Urgals as opposed to rebels going on the offense against the Stormtrooper-crewed Death Star).
My point is that while yes, there are clear parallels here, there are also important differences, differences so large that it’s hard to say the plots agree in more than broad strokes and drawing from the same clichés found in a thousand other stories. To really say something was copied, it’s not enough that you have a handful of parallel scenes and characters. You’ve got to have an overwhelming amount of them, and they’ve got to be very close parallels. Otherwise, the worst you can say was a person was inspired by a previous work or built their own story out of someone else’s—and honestly, that’s not all that bad of a thing.
Characters
Turning away from plot for a bit, let’s look at the characters of each work, another piece of evidence put forth for the Eragon-is-Star-Wars theory. Those who claim this theory say that the main characters of Eragon are clear analogues of those in Star Wars and were obviously copied. I say that’s nonsense.
Well, all right, mostly nonsense. I’ll concede that Eragon and Luke are pretty similar, unless we go into specifics about family members. I’ll even go so far as to say Brom and Obi-Wan are similar, although Obi-Wan never tried to hide that he was a Jedi like Brom hid that he was a Dragon Rider. But as for everybody else, though…
Murtagh is often said to be Han Solo. Both are mysterious, both are good-looking with enormous numbers of fangirls, both have a more fluid concept of morality than the hero does… and both are completely different in every other way. Murtagh is a little ball of angst, the son of the (deceased) righthand man of the Big Bad. He’s impressed and interested in magic, the Riders, and elves, and he ends up angry at the Varden for not trusting him. Han Solo, on the other hand, has little to no angst, has no connection with Darth Vader or any other of Palpatine’s high-up minions, doesn’t believe in or doesn’t care about Jedi or the Force, and has no interest whatsoever in helping the rebels, even though they are completely fine with accepting his assistance.
Arya’s parallel is said to be Leia. Again, however, I think that’s mostly because the hero shows romantic interest in her, she’s a princess, and she’s rescued from the enemy by the hero (and dashing rogue). They’ve got very different personalities and roles other than that, though. The most obvious is that Leia is Luke’s sister while Arya is certainly not closely related to Eragon. But there’s also how Arya spends most of the book dying, Leia’s role as a senator (as compared with Arya’s ambassador/glorified courier status), Leia having to deal with Alderaan being destroyed, and Arya’s much more significant role in the final battle.
Beyond that, we start to have problems. Galbatorix is obviously Emperor Palpatine, but so little is seen of either in Eragon and Star Wars that they’re impossible to compare. Darth Vader is of particular concern; while his most obvious parallel is Morzan (both are of an earlier order they helped overthrow, both were the father of a significant character, both were the Dragon to the Big Bad), Morzan is dead by the time of the book, killed by Brom years before. His next closest parallel would be Durza, but Durza dies at the end of Eragon. Finally, he could be the Ra’zac, but they’re alien3 and are significant for being immune to magic, not users of it like Darth Vader more or less is. One could argue he’s split over all three of these, maybe with some Grand Moff Tarkin mixed in, but that would mean he was at worst remixing pre-existing material in a new way, not just copying it wholesale.
And that’s not even getting into the real problems… someone like Chewbacca doesn’t exist at all in Eragon; Murtagh is a complete loner when he meets Brom and Eragon (although he does have a sweet horse). R2D2 and C3PO also don’t exist in Eragon. The closest you could get is saying Saphira is R2D2, but I don’t think that parallel works very well. Conversely, there’s no Roran, Angela, Solembum, Jeod, Ajihad, or Nasuada in Star Wars4, or even Saphira,5 as mentioned above.
Finally, primary character motivations are drastically different, even when they lead to similar events. Luke and Obi-wan are trying to take the Death Star plans to Alderaan. Eragon and Brom are seeking the Ra’zac to kill them. The Urgals were mind-controlled; the Stormtroopers… weren’t.6 Han Solo was after money to pay off his debts and doesn’t much care who wins the war, Murtagh simply wants to escape the Empire and prefers the Varden to Galbatorix.
The list goes on, but I think I’ve covered the major points here. To sum everything up, Eragon and Star Wars do have superficial similarities. Despite this, the two also have important differences that the “they’re the same” argument completely overlooks. In my opinion, the two are no closer than any other cliché-influenced works, as they show clear differences both in plot and character. Therefore, Eragon is the best book ever.
I kid, I kid. But it’s at least OK.
1 Convenient, seeing as that’s exactly what I did.
2 Specifically, staying a lengthy period of time at Jeod’s, infiltrating Dras-Leona and spying on the Ra’zac, fighting Urgals in Yazuac, etc. The point is that it wasn’t a day or two, it was half the book.
3 Strange and different from everyone else, not from another planet. Darth Vader was at least human and occasionally acted like it.
4 You could argue Ajihad is Mon Mothma, which I guess would make Jörmundur Admiral Ackbar. (Unless King Hrothgar was Admiral Ackbar… hmm.) And Nasuada could be Wedge Antilles, but now I’m just being silly.
5 No, she’s not the Millenium Falcon. The Millenium Falcon is inextricably linked with Han Solo and is primarily used as a means of transportation. Nobody ever considers her to be sentient. On the other hand, Saphira is undeniably intelligent, inextricably linked to Eragon, and rarely used for transportation, especially at the beginning, when Eragon is afraid to ride her. Luke was never afraid of the Falcon, nobody ever called Saphira a bucket of bolts (or equivalent), and the Falcon is a very commonplace ship while Saphira is literally one-of-a-kind (the only female dragon known to be in existence).
6 Clone troopers sorta were, in that they were indoctrinated to be completely loyal, but by the time of the Battle of Yavin, the majority of stormtroopers weren’t clone troopers anymore, and I believe ordinary stormtroopers weren’t indoctrinated in the same fashion. Greater Star Wars fans than I, correct me if I’m wrong.
ThePrimordialSuck on 28 May 2012, 20:04 said:
As my English professor used to say, “show your goddamned evidence!”
Well done—let’s see somebody try to flame you now. I’m surprised how nobody commented on it yet. Oh, and:
F1RST LOL!!!!!111!!!111!!
Asahel on 28 May 2012, 20:57 said:
I guess a lot of this hinges on what your threshhold is for “rip-off.” I wouldn’t count it as plagiarism because that has a technical threshhold that Paolini did not cross. However, in my personal taste, Paolini did definitely rip-off Star Wars in the first book even if he did diverge from it in the following books.
To me it’s not an issue of “Aha! There are some minor characters in Star Wars that are not in Eragon and vice versa!” and “There are some things that happen in Star Wars that didn’t happen in Eragon and vice versa!” It’s that there are several tangent points beteween main characters and main events.
Let’s say I gave you the plot synopsis for a story idea. An evil king forged amulets of power and distributed them among the leaders of the world, but secretly he had made an amulet of power above all the others to give him total control. He was defeated in a great war, but the Prime Amulet was lost. Now, it has fallen into the hands of an unassuming gnome. Once the gnome realizes what he has is the Prime Amulet, he knows he must destroy it, but when he goes to the Elves, they tell him that the only way to destroy it is to cast it into the Lake of Sulfurras—which is deep in enemy territory. To help him, the Elves send their best ranger, the Dwarves send their best axeman, the Humans send their best knight, and the Gnomes send their best wizard. Along the way, the Group of Five is pursued by the Nine Walkers—terrifying ghosts of human kings that had been given amulets of power before the war. The first story will end when Lukas Starblazer (that’s the name of the gnome with the Prime Amulet) is separated from the rest of the group during an enemy attack.
What would tell me? A rip-off of Lord of the Rings?
What if I said, nu-uh, in Lord of the Rings there are nine people in the group, in mine there are only five. I don’t have a Merry, Pippin, or Sam parallel; there’s no Boromir (or possibly Aragorn); a the wizard is a gnome, not Maia like Gandalf. Plus, my hero is called Lukas Starblazer and he makes a Sword of Light, so he’s not like Frodo.
What would you say? That I’m basically ripping-off LotR with elements of Star Wars? Because I sure would.
Taku on 28 May 2012, 22:25 said:
I agree with Asahael, a story does not have to be a carbon copy to be a rip-off. The problem is that, in the broad superstructure of the story, the plot points and themes are eerily similar to those of Star Wars.
As to Obi-Wan never hiding that he was a Jedi… Ben?
TheArmada on 28 May 2012, 23:50 said:
My brain was going full tilt Eragon rage. Then I read your article and it did the equivalent of shifting from sixth gear to reverse without using the clutch.
swenson on 28 May 2012, 23:56 said:
@Taku – I should have clarified, I meant he never hid it to Luke. (or Han/Chewie, for that matter)
Tim on 29 May 2012, 06:27 said:
Where’s the Death Star, for example? (…) Where’s Alderaan’s destruction
This actually highlights a problem with Eragon, which is that Paolini didn’t understand that for the story he was copying to actually work there needed to be some proof of the bad guy’s power. Because there’s no analog to the Death Star or destruction of Alderaan, the common criticism arises that Galby doesn’t actually do anything much, evil or otherwise, which means we only really have the Varden’s word that he’s any worse than the dragonriders were.
The things he didn’t copy break the story because the parts he did depend on them. It’s like copying the deck of a suspension bridge without the cables or supports.
Tim on 29 May 2012, 06:31 said:
Also, Saphira is simultaneously the Death Star plans, Luke’s Jedi abilities, and his X-Wing. Star Wars did not do this because it is stupid.
Fell Blade on 29 May 2012, 08:40 said:
Great article swenson! I’ve been getting the same impression while reading back through Eragon. It is beyond doubt that Paolini was influenced heavily by Star Wars, but it’s not a scene-for-scene re-enactment. I think Paolini really thought he was trying to come up with his own story, but while Star Wars was a well done cliche, Eragon was a poorly done cliche. The main similarities to me are between Brom/Kenobi, Luke/Eragon, and the beginning through the hero leaving home after the death of his uncle. That’s just too many similarities for most people (especially fans of Star Wars) to accept as anything but a gross example of plagiarism.
@Tim, I agree that omitting those things probably hurt his story, but I think he did that because he was stuck in Tolkien mode and didn’t want to switch the POV away from the hero. But I do think that saying Saphira is the Death Star plans, Force abilities, and Luke’s X-wing is a bit of a stretch. While there are definite similarities (farm boy discovers a secret and is hunted by the Empire for it), both move in different directions from that point.
Tim on 29 May 2012, 10:21 said:
Yeah, but then Tolkein constantly reminds us of Sauron’s power to control and corrupt, with everything from the Ring itself to Gollum, the Ringwraiths and the wavering of good, admirable characters at just a hint of his power showing how fearsome and evil he is. Galbatorix gets the worst of both worlds; we don’t really see his evil actions (as we do with the Empire) or his evil power (as with Sauron). In addition, because the dragonriders were the actual ruling class of the old order rather than just serving it like the Jedi, Brom’s reminiscing about the Good Times Before comes off as far more self-serving; it’s more “it was better when we were in charge” than “it was better before all this.”
As for the latter, it’s more that Saphira is just a confused mess in storyline terms; she’s introduced like the Death Star plans (something hurriedly cast away by a kidnapped princess which lands in the hands of a simple farm boy), gives him powers which he needs to train (the Force) and thereafter is just his cool method of transport. This is a problem because in the original plot the Death Star plans serve as a non-personal motivation for Luke (they were specifically not addressed to him, after all), and it leaves Eragon without one. Luke leaves because he wants to help Obi-Wan deliver the Death Star plans to the Rebels, Eragon because he wants to find the Nazgul who killed his uncle and make them pay.
Sweguy on 29 May 2012, 10:58 said:
I like your points, Swenson, though I still consider Eragon a Star Wars-rip off (Asahel summarized it very well). Adding small factors here and there won’t cover for the major key points in the story, which is pretty much the same in between those stories.
Fell Blade on 29 May 2012, 11:20 said:
I agree with that; while Tolkien was able to convey how evil and dangerous Sauron was without breaking the hero POV, Paolini wasn’t really able to do that. I think he tried, but it seemed like he hadn’t really settled on just what made Galbatorix evil aside from overthrowing the dragon riders and making himself king. There were some attempts at it (showing slavery or talking about heavy taxes) but it didn’t carry a lot of weight. I think he also tried to show Galbatorix as something of a strategist by having him use the Urgals but pretend to defend the country from both them and the Vardan. But it was kind of “iffy” and unconvincing.
I agree that all of those parallels exist, but I think that is more coincidence than really derivative. They are noticeable only because other parts of the two stories are so similar. The introduction of Saphira/R2D2 and then Eragon/Luke joining the Vardan/Rebels are very similar (and derivative). But I don’t think Saphira herself is derivative. It’s more a result of Paolini using so many other elements similar to Star Wars, and when you start comparing them it’s easy to go “Oh, this is similar to this, and so that is a parallel of that…” I think the same thing is true of Murtagh being a parallel to Han Solo as swenson mentioned above.
One thing that I see a lot is that the dragon riders are stand-ins for the Jedi. While I do admit to the similarities, I don’t necessarily think that it’s a bad thing. The reason being that the Jedi are not that unique. There are many examples in both literature and history of a class of society that rises to prominence, rules for a period of time, and then is overthrown and replaced. If the nation was doing well during the rule of that class, it would be natural for certain elements of society to want to return to that structure. I personally have nothing wrong with this being used in stories, even if it is cliche, because it really does happen (it even happens to a certain extent in the Bible during the time of the judges). I do think that Paolini went overboard by having too many similarities between the dragon riders and the Jedi (magic/Force, colored swords, being betrayed by one of their own, etc.) but even these wouldn’t really bother me too much because they aren’t all unique to Lucas and Star Wars.
M on 29 May 2012, 11:31 said:
I would just like to point out that Star Wars itself is an adaptation of what is known as the Monomyth, or the Hero’s Journey. The Monomyth is the basic pattern which is found in hundreds of narritives all across the world. There are 17 stages of the Monomyth, though very few stories use all the stages. The stages can be put into any order, though generally they follow the standard pattern. I’m not going to type up all the stages, but I encourage you to read up on it yourself to see just how many modern and ancient stories are based off of the same pattern.
Some ancient stories based on the Monomyth include the legends of Osiris, Prometheus, Gautama Buddha, Dionysus, and the story of the Odyssey.
Modern stories containing elements or based on the Monomyth include the Star Wars movies, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Ender’s Game, and, yes, Eragon.
It may seem that Eragon is a rip-off of Star Wars, but that’s because they’re both based off of the same legendary pattern, the same pattern that’s been used for centuries, the traditional Hero’s Journey. Eragon isn’t a rip-off, it is simply a representation of the same journey heroes of literature have taken since the beginning of time. That’s why it all seems so familliar, because we’ve taken the same journey before. Star Wars just happens to be the easiest story that also uses the Monomyth to compare Eragon to, since there are some comparable characters. The situations very slightly, but both Star Wars and Eargon use the same progression of the Monomyth, which isn’t strange at all. It’s tradition, the same story repeated over and again since humans began writing, and the same one that will continue until the end of time.
I never thought I’d thank my Lit professor for lecturing about this for three classes straight!
Kyllorac on 29 May 2012, 11:37 said:
Adding onto what M said, The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell is a book worth looking up. It describes the monomyth structure and character archetypes in detail, as well as some of the variations.
Tim on 29 May 2012, 12:04 said:
One thing that I see a lot is that the dragon riders are stand-ins for the Jedi. While I do admit to the similarities, I don’t necessarily think that it’s a bad thing. The reason being that the Jedi are not that unique. There are many examples in both literature and history of a class of society that rises to prominence, rules for a period of time, and then is overthrown and replaced.
Thing is that’s not actually what the Jedi were. They were a monastic order that served the government, not the actual rulers; they were rather like the Eastern warrior-monk archetype. Paolini’s changing them into the ruling class actually undermines them, as said, because it means rather than mourning a time when the Jedi served the people as Obi-Wan did, Brom is talking of a time when they ruled the people, and this is far more self-serving.
This, again, is why it comes off as plagiarised; the elements Paolini copied show he only had the most supeficial understanding of what made the original work, and since he didn’t understand why it worked he can’t integrate it into something new.
See, a story, in the end, is a machine made up of dozens of interlocking mechanisms which (hopefully) fit together and work to tell it. Motivations provide the power that drives it, while personalities, background and such are the wheels and pulleys and cogs. Groups of individual mechanisms form into things like characters, the larger ideas, but none are truly distinct from the whole if it’s well-written (since anything truly distinct from the whole which relies on nothing else and which nothing else relies on is redundant). Now, taking an idea as a basis, in this example, would be studying how other people have made their machines and trying to design yours to do the same thing, while still having everything link together. This means adapting both the idea and the rest of the machine until they fit together, until the idea is a part of the greater whole.
The plagiarist, like Paolini, just rips a chunk out of someone else’s machine and slams it into his own, hoping for the same effect. But the pulleys are the wrong length, the belts don’t match up, and cogs are trying to turn in the same direction. Ultimately rather than achieving the same effect it spits out a few cogs and teeth, then shits itself and dies. The result is just a patchwork of stolen components which lacks either unity of form or unity of purpose.
This is what we see in Eragon; elements of plot which don’t work because they were copied wholesale with no understanding of the things they needed in order to actually mesh with the rest of a story, including whole sections void of any function in the overall story. Paolini grabs the start of Star Wars, but doesn’t understand that the Death Star plans are supposed to do something and so the hunt for the egg ends up trailing off into Eragon looking for the monsters who are looking for him. He has the evil Empire but never really shows us why it’s evil in unequivical terms. He grabs Obi-Wan but makes him mourn a time when he was master rather than servant. He grabs Tolkien’s expansive descriptions but never makes any of them matter.
Because the elements don’t mesh we perceive them as separate. Because we perceive them as separate, we know we’ve seen them before. That’s why we see Paolini as a plagiarist.
The Monomyth is the basic pattern which is found in hundreds of narritives all across the world.
Alternatively, it’s a list of guidelines so vaguely defined they can be applied to almost every narrative in existence. Much like the prophecies of Nostradamus are so vaguely defined they can be back-fit to almost anything after it happens.
Danielle on 29 May 2012, 12:26 said:
While I would agree that Paolini simply copied elements of story without knowing what made them work, I would quibble with your use of the word “we.” You might see Paolini as a plagiarist, but I have reservations.
There is no argument that Eragon bears an eerie resemblance to Star Wars. The latest Star Trek movie also bears resemblance to Star Wars. The difference between those two—the reason why no one is calling J.J. Abrams out for plagiarism the same way they’re calling Paolini out for it—is because J.J. Abrams knew enough to hide the gems he stole. He knew how to make them work within a story. Paolini did not; he took them and put them in his story, expecting them to work their magic without his having to do anything.
If you meant that Paolini is simply seen as a plagiarist, then I would agree. If you meant that he is a plagiarist, I would disagree. He is simply more inept at hiding his stolen gems in a forest, so to speak.
Fell Blade on 29 May 2012, 12:37 said:
I agree that it was Paolini’s handling of the story elements that destroys most of the potential in Eragon. The elements you pointed out about not understanding the meaning of several important parts that inspired him I think are pretty accurate, although I would add to this that Paolini did not consider all of the real life implications for those scenarios. For instance, when the Ra’zac destroy Eragon’s home while looking for the egg, it’s pretty obvious that they don’t find it. But if they were desperate enough to destroy a home and murder an old man to find the egg, they probably wouldn’t leave town right after that. Also, Saphira mentions later that the Ra’zac are probably know that they are following them and are trying to lead Eragon into a trap. If she was right and that was the reason they left Carvahall, then why did they travel so fast and not slow down, allowing Eragon to catch up and actually setting a trap for him.
It’s things like this that make me say, “Yes this story is derivative, but that’s not the main reason that it falls apart.” It’s not only that Paolini didn’t grasp the material that inspired him; he failed to grasp what the real life consequences would be. This is one area where I think the age card is applicable. Paolini just did not have the life experience to understand those things and think outside of his own ideas about how the story should play out.
As far as the dragon riders being the same as the Jedi, in my opinion they are more comparable to Ann McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern than Lucas’s Jedi. The story that Brom tells about the dragon riders is similar to that of the Jedi, but the riders themselves are more McCaffrey than Lucas. Even so, it doesn’t really bother me to see those types represented in the story. There are many, many things that Paolini could have done to make his dragon riders unique (personally I think the Thirteen Foresworn should have been alive still, although people would have said they were a rip off of the Nine Nazgul) but the fact that they are somewhat similar to the Jedi didn’t ruin the story for me. I thought that it actually could have worked.
Puppet on 29 May 2012, 12:50 said:
I’ve always thought that Durza was Eragon’s equivalent to Star War’s Death Star. Both were extremely dangerous weapons at the Empire’s disposal, and both could only be killed by being struck in a specific location.
It’s a bit ridiculous to compare a Shade and a battle station, but when you look at Star Wars and Eragon side by side, and the role the Death Star and Durza played in the story, you’ll start to see the similarities.
Tim on 29 May 2012, 12:51 said:
I think the reason Eragon is so much more frustrating than Maradonia is that unlike Tesch (who simply cannot write) there are shades of a story under all the stolen elements that might have actually worked if Paolini had just knuckled down, thrown aside all the attempts to directly ape the stories that inspired him, and focused on it instead. While it’s far from perfect, early on the growing relationship between Saphira and Eragon works since the kid doesn’t yet have every magical power under the sun and people aren’t falling over themselves to say how awesome Eragon is, but ultimately it falls aside to the point Saphira isn’t even particularly important anymore. Even the terrible movie knew better than that, much as the fans criticised it for changing the precious original.
Personally I’d rather that the riders hadn’t been perfect and that Saphira’s (inherited) assumptions about what her Rider should be would start reflecting what they actually were, and that ultimately the old order wasn’t nearly as different as Brom (a man who always had the luxury of viewing the old order from the top and is seeing Galbatorix’s reign from the bottom) recalls it being. This would lead to more complex questions about what they ought to do to honour the memory of a man Eragon respected while simultaneously realising he was speaking of the past through the rosiest of rose-tinted glasses.
That and limit both the magic and the amount of ridiculous powers stacked on Eragon (you should never have a magic system with no defined limits since it means the reader is aware that everything is subject to deus ex machina and so nothing matters), and do enough background research that you’re not writing scenes with a bow that would only work if it was a gun (stringing = loading, drawing = cocking), horses that work like cars and peasants who aren’t peasants.
And make the proof of Galbatorix’s evil something less utterly ridiculous than kicking Vrael in the nuts. obviously.
Danielle on 29 May 2012, 12:59 said:
Actually, if done right, that could’ve been awesome. Had Paolini not taken himself so seriously, that bit could have been the book’s Crowning Moment of Funny. Of course, had he played it up, it probably would have turned the entire book into an affectionate parody of the fantasy genre….but what’s wrong with that? :P
Tim on 29 May 2012, 13:05 said:
Well yeah, if it was a parody that would work, but for a serious book to have the Evil King defeat the Good Leader using the power of slapstick is just silly. Much like all the ridiculous double entendres that sneak into the text, it’s more proof of why not running something past editors (or at least observant friends with suitably dirty minds) doesn’t tend to turn out well.
Fell Blade on 29 May 2012, 13:12 said:
Haha, very true Danielle!
You know, I think Star Wars gets more credit than it really deserves in regards to “showing that the Empire was evil”. While Paolini didn’t really show us anything about why his Empire was evil, it seemed like Lucas was trying to ram it down our throats every other scene. I know that there have been evil rulers like Vader and the Emperor in history, but even so, you can only destroy so many planets before you start really hurting your own cause (both politically and economically). While Lucas did a good job of “showing”, having the villain kill his own aides on a whim isn’t the only way to do that.
I think that happens a lot with these types of stories (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings) because they are larger-than-life myths, where pure good is pitted against pure evil. The hero and villain are polar opposites, and it’s more like story telling on the spiritual level than the natural level. That’s why I think the dragon riders in Alagaesia actually could work. Paolini wanted to go for that same mythological feel, so he used the classic story line of: good guys rule during peace; they are betrayed and evil gains control; the hero strives to return control to the good guys and bring peace. It’s a story that people love and want to hear over and over and over.
Tim on 29 May 2012, 13:27 said:
Dude, it was Grand Moff Tarkin who ordered Alderaan destroyed, not Vader or the Emperor; Vader isn’t even very important in the first movie to the point he’s taking orders from Tarkin and one officer makes fun of his religion to his face. Think you need to watch the old movies again (but make sure to watch the old versions). Bear in mind that the bad guys in A New Hope are the Empire rather than the Emperor (who I believe is only mentioned once as having disbanded the Imperial Senate, and certainly isn’t important to the plot), as opposed to Eragon having the massive exposition dumps more or less specifically blame Galby for everything even though he just sits on his ass doing nothing for the entire book.
As for the second paragraph, yes, it could work, but we’d need clear proof that Galbatorix and the empire he represents is evil rather than just the word of people with every reason to lie about how it used to be. And I tend to prefer stories where things are a little more morally complex, but that’s just me.
Danielle on 29 May 2012, 13:27 said:
I think what works about those stories is that they show what we wish real life was like. You have pure good vs. pure evil, and the differences between them are very clear. In Lord of the Rings, good is beautiful (Aragorn was a very gorgeous man) and evil is ugly (does anyone want to wake up next to an Orc? Anyone? Show of hands?) and that’s the way we wish it was in the real world. Yet in reality, good is beautiful and evil even more so. Sometimes, good looks downright ugly next to the shiny evil. But eventually, they show their true natures: good people are beautiful, even if it’s not physical beauty; and evil people are so ugly you can barely stand to be in the same room with them.
That’s why I liked Eragon when I first read it. Because it spoke to that part of me that wants everything to be simply, the part that wants a myth with clear-cut sides. But when its cracks began to show, the cracks in the myth showed, too.
swenson on 29 May 2012, 16:49 said:
Well, technically Aragorn looks foul and feels fair, as he himself says—he’s not necessarily physically attractive (in the books; the movies are a completely different story!), but he’s still “fair” (in the sense of attractive, beautiful, etc.) and good inside, where it counts, and he certainly appreciates beauty (nature, the elves, etc.).
Anyway, I’d be suspicious of Eragon if it was all clear cut (even LotR has a lot of subversions), but yeah, I think I’d be better with it than the feeble sort of nuance that shows up in the book. Sure, murdering kittens is a stupid way to show a person’s evil, but at least if Galbatorix did it we’d actually have proof he was evil…
Also, to respond to some earlier comments, I concede that it’s more about the big set pieces than the small details, and in that sense Eragon does follow a similar arc to Star Wars. But I wanted to refute the argument that the two are exactly the same or that it’s obvious Eragon was plagiarized or whatever. Those arguments rely on a lot of supposed small details that are the same, so that’s why I talked about that. But even with the big set pieces, what do we really have—a princess captured by the enemy, an old mentor who dies partway through the first in the series, a MacGuffin that falls into the hero’s hands by coincidence, a mysterious stranger with a hidden past… none of these are unique to Star Wars or Eragon. (Distressed Damsel, The Obi-Wan with Mentor Occupational Hazard on top, obviously MacGuffin (specifically an Egg MacGuffin), Mysterious Past, and Dark And Troubled Past... that should be enough to get you started)
Betty Cross on 29 May 2012, 16:54 said:
This has been a very thought-provoking exchange and I thank Swenson for starting it.
Tim on 29 May 2012, 17:34 said:
Actually the egg isn’t a MacGuffin since it does something other than drive the plot (the trope “Egg MacGuffin” is a horrible pun on “Egg McMuffin” and as usual for TVTropes making sense comes a distant second to the lame pop culture reference).
Danielle on 29 May 2012, 17:41 said:
Okay, Tim, now we know you don’t like TVTropes, either. Thank you for telling us, but does it really add anything to your argument?
Tim on 29 May 2012, 17:52 said:
Fact is it’s given swenson the wrong idea with a trope name which misuses a term to describe something that is categorically not a MacGuffin. A MacGuffin is explicitly defined as an object which does nothing except act as a motivator for the plot. The trope description states the egg hatches, while it would only be a MacGuffin if it didn’t.
It bastardises a term in a way which has demonstrably confused someone intelligent and observant into misusing it in the same way, all for the sake of a crap pun. This is Not A Good Thing.
Danielle on 29 May 2012, 17:56 said:
I’m not even going to argue. It’s not worth it, and there’s no point in cluttering up the thread.
swenson on 29 May 2012, 18:24 said:
Oh come on, I only found out there’s a trope named “Egg MacGuffin” today. How could I possibly resist linking to it?
However, I think that especially prior to hatching/adulthood, Saphira does fit the description of a MacGuffin. Her sole importance is as “thing Galbatorix and the Varden both want because it will win the war” to explain why Arya gets captured, why Eragon’s family dies, why Eragon and Brom set off on their adventures, etc. She quickly gains more of an independent role (which is a rather significant difference from the Death Star plans, which never stop being the thing everyone wants), but at the very beginning, she’s largely just the thing everyone wants.
Tim on 29 May 2012, 18:44 said:
I don’t know, I think the definition of MacGuffin tends to resist applying it to all but the most useless characters, and since the plot focuses on Eragon and Saphira’s relationship at first even the young dragon doesn’t really qualify. It’s also a problem because we don’t really have any searching for the egg until after it hatches. You could say the egg remains a MacGuffin for quite some time after it hatches since everyone is still looking for it, though it’s stretching the definition a little to have a MacGuffin which no longer exists because it’s turned into something that does something.
I also don’t think the Death Star plans qualify since ultimately they reveal the station’s weakness and allow the final attack to happen, which is at least something. I find Lotus X from One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing is closer to the proper definition, since at no point does anyone but Southmere have the slightest idea what it even is.
Asahel on 30 May 2012, 00:05 said:
I have to take issue with this. I’ve heard this before and I get concerned that it could end up being one of those “gets repeated so often everyone thinks it’s true” things (and I wouldn’t want that to happen).
Notice that it’s a self-defeating argument. Why, Eragon isn’t a rip-off of Star Wars; it’s just based on the same Monomyth as Star Wars! That’s why the similarities! Yeah, except notice what else is based on the Monomyth: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Ender’s Game, etc. There are nowhere near as many parallels between Ender’s Game and Lord of the Rings as there are between Eragon and Star Wars (despite being based on the same legendary pattern). There are nowhere near as many parallels between Harry Potter and Star Wars as there are between Eragon and Star Wars for that matter! There aren’t even anywhere near as many parallels between Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings as there are between Eragon and Star Wars!
There’s just far too many similarities for me to say that Eragon did not rip-off Star Wars, and it has nothing to do with this Monomyth.
Fireshark on 30 May 2012, 01:19 said:
Actually, I think that Star Wars is one of the purest examples of the monomyth, as Lucas actually read Campbell’s work before making his movies. In other words, Star Wars is purposefully generic in some ways. So the more a story is like Star Wars, the more it is like the basic monomyth, and vice versa. Eragon and Star Wars are both generic, thus they are both more similar than other monomythic works.
On the other hand, there are some things that can’t be attributed to the monomyth. For example, the prologue of Eragon and the opening of Star Wars don’t tie into the monomyth, yet they are highly similar in every way (That’s when Saphira’s egg is still a MacGuffin, and all the comparisons still fit perfectly).
Minoan Ferret on 30 May 2012, 03:37 said:
So, all things considered, is it “bad” for a story to contain elements of the monomyth?
Tim on 30 May 2012, 07:02 said:
No, it’s practically impossible for a story based on a quest to not contain them because the points are so vaguely defined they can be applied to almost anything.
On the other hand claiming the monomyth excuses Eragon shows you have no idea what it is since Paolini steals stuff which has nothing to do with the monomyth from Star Wars too.
Fell Blade on 30 May 2012, 07:57 said:
I think it would be foolish of anyone to deny that Paolini was influenced by Star Wars. Saying that they used the same monomyth structure simply doesn’t cover it. Paolini was clearly inspired by Lucas’s version of the monomyth, and borrowed some of the plot points from it. However, what swenson was saying (and where I agree with him) is that there were enough differences between Eragon and Star Wars that one is not a direct rip off or plagiarism of the other. The elements that swenson mentioned set Eragon apart from Star Wars in many ways. Although that still doesn’t make it a good book, because Paolini just didn’t write it very well, it’s not the atrocious “cut-and-paste” that many people claim that it is.
@Tim, as an avid Star Wars fan for more than 20 years, I could take offense at that statement. But I won’t. I’ve watched Star Wars more times than any other films, and actually have access to the original VHS releases of all three films in the original trilogy. So I know the story. I did not say Vader or the Emperor ordered the attack on Alderaan. I said “I think Star Wars gets more credit than it really deserves in regards to “‘showing that the Empire was evil‘”. That includes storm troopers, star ship captains, Grand Moffs, Vader, and the Emperor himself. Destroying Alderaan was not something that the Emperor ordered, but it was allowed because that was part of the Empire’s policy. The Emperor even ordered the construction of two Death Stars just so that his armies would have the capability to destroy a rebellious planet if necessary. So even if he didn’t order the attack himself, he was still responsible for it by ordering the weapon’s construction and introducing a policy that allowed for planets to be annihilated.
Now, my point is that Star Wars didn’t do as good of a job at showing why the Empire was evil as we often give it credit for. Aside from destroying Alderaan, most if not all of the hostilities were directed solely at the Rebellion or at soldiers within the Empire who had somehow failed their leader. We don’t really see if the Empire was oppressing other planetary systems or allowing corruption and injustice to take over the legal system. We don’t know if the Empire was making life better or worse for its citizens. We don’t know if the Empire was acting aggressively towards independent systems. We don’t even know why the Rebellion was trying so desperately to restore the Republic aside from the fact that many of its leaders were former senators. Now I’m not saying that Star Wars didn’t show us anything; it did show us some very cruel, ruthless actions taken by the soldiers and several leading members of the Empire. But we really don’t see as much evidence that the Empire is evil as we possibly could. It is not the ultimate example of “what makes the villain’s side evil”.
Tim on 30 May 2012, 08:53 said:
Well, I was going off
there have been evil rulers like Vader and the Emperor in history, but even so, you can only destroy so many planets before you start really hurting your own cause
Which implies you thought Vader was in some way responsible, when as noted, in the first movie he’s neither a ruler nor really even particularly important. What I’m talking about aside from that is taking the first movie on its own to directly compare it to the first book; we only really know about the Emperor there as the nominal leader of the Empire, he doesn’t really do all that much and the bad guy is very much the Empire rather than the man himself.
What Paolini does is combine a leader who did a lot of his evil acts entirely under his own power (like, say, Sauron) with an evil empire like Star Wars, but has neither the generalised evil of the Empire nor the immense, personally corrupting power of Sauron to show why Galby is anything but the guy Brom is angry at for kicking his leader in the nadgers.
Now, I’m not saying Star Wars gets the empire’s evil acts perfect, I’m saying Paolini didn’t realise his plot needed either generalised or localised evil (more so than just saying “Galby did all this, btw” right at the end) to cement ousting Galby as a noble venture rather than the self-interested quest of a bitter old man who wants to get back to the top of the pecking order again.
We don’t really see if the Empire was oppressing other planetary systems or allowing corruption and injustice to take over the legal system.
Sure we do, the only real thing we hear about the Emperor doing in the first movie is disbanding the elected, apparently rebel-sympathetic Imperial Senate and handing absolute authority to his sector commanders instead. Establishign a fascist state is pretty oppressive.
Fell Blade on 30 May 2012, 09:25 said:
I think a lot of our perception of the Empire being evil, though, comes from a Western/American mindset. Anything that smacks of being imperial or totalitarian is “EVUL!” Yes, the Emperor dissolved the Imperial Senate in ANH, but what is inherently evil about that? It plays to the sentiment of the audience that a government must be made up of multiple elected representatives in order to be “good”. While I recognize the dangers of totalitarian regimes, an “empire” is not inherently evil, nor is a “republic” inherently good. Both can be equally guilty of oppression, corruption, and injustice. Lucas relied on the view in his audience that “Empire=Evil”, then focused on the ruthlessness of its leaders without showing much about what made the Empire as a whole evil. Tarkin said that “Fear will keep the local stations in line”, but what was going on in the Empire that would make the systems want to rebel in the first place?
All the same, I agree about Paolini’s version. He needed to show what was evil about the Empire. To a point I think he tried, but the most evil things he showed were high taxes and slavery. He needed to expand this to show real corruption among the imperial officials and military, as well as any oppressive and injust policies of Galbatorix.
Tim on 30 May 2012, 09:33 said:
Yeah, especially since high taxes aren’t exactly the height of magical kingdom evil and slavery is pretty damn normal for the era. Nevermind not having it causes problems since abolition of slavery tends to result in that whole industrial revolution thing that fantasy kingdoms tend to have not had on the basis they’re fantasy kingdoms. Even the ancient Greeks could built primitive steam engines, but it’s only when slaves stopped being a source of cheap replaceable labour that someone said “Hey, how about that things-doing-contraption?”
Solar on 30 May 2012, 11:08 said:
Hello everyone, long time lurker, first time commenter speaking.
I would argue that the Death Star equivalent in Eragon is the massive Urgal army and the Alderaan equivalent the devastated village of Yazuac with the baby-on-a-stick. Durza actually acts as the DS’s exhaust port as upon his death the Urgal army falls apart completely and loses its power. I mean, we even have Arya swooping in at the decisive moment to give Eragon the chance to land the final blow a la Han Solo.
So I have to disagree at least in this instance with the topic starter concerning Paolini’s orginiality.
Lone Wolf on 30 May 2012, 13:03 said:
since abolition of slavery tends to result in that whole industrial revolution thing that fantasy kingdoms tend to have not had on the basis they’re fantasy kingdoms.
Not really. Quite a lot of non-industrial societies didn’t have slaves, or had them play a tertiary role in the economy (most of Medieval Europe, for instance). Slavery, however, isn’t the only form of personal dependency.
swenson on 30 May 2012, 14:45 said:
Yeah, the reason most fantasy kingdoms don’t have slaves is because (chattel) slavery was relatively rare in Middle Ages Europe. By the late Middle Ages, pretty well the only slavery left (in Northern/Western Europe, anyway, which is what most fantasy kingdoms are based on) was debt/criminal slavery.
Fell Blade on 5 June 2012, 08:33 said:
To me, the fact that different people can come up with different interpretations for what character “X” or scenario “Y” corresponds to in the Star Wars universe means that those parts of Paolini’s writing was not plagiarism. For instance, Eragon is universally recognized as a Luke Skywalker rip off. I’ve not seen anyone arguing that he is a rip off of Han Solo or Obi-Wan or whoever. An argument could probably be made that that was plagiarism. It might not be true, but there is enough agreement over the similarity of the two characters to at least be a starting point for that discussion.
Other characters, like Sapphira and Durza, have multiple interpretations depending on who you talk to. Sapphira is said to have been Luke’s lightsaber, the Death Star plans, the X-wing, Luke’s Force abilities, etc. Durza is said to be Darth Vader and the Death Star. Because there are so many possible interpretations, I don’t think that we could say that those characters are plagiarisms of Star Wars. They may have elements that are derivative of or similar to parts of Star Wars, but there are enough differences to keep them from being direct rip offs.
Asahel on 5 June 2012, 10:21 said:
Ok, here’s the thing, though: Having so many elements that are derivative of and similar to so many parts of Star Wars is what makes it a rip-off. Just because Paolini sprinkles in a handful of differences doesn’t keep it from being a rip-off. It’s still a rip-off; it’s just less of a rip-off than something like, say, Turkish Star Wars.
Catflap on 5 June 2012, 22:16 said:
“It may seem that Eragon is a rip-off of Star Wars, but that’s because they’re both based off of the same legendary pattern, the same pattern that’s been used for centuries, the traditional Hero’s Journey.”
“The Horse and His Boy” (one of the Narnia books)
The legend of Scyld Scefing in “Beowulf”
The Gilgamesh Epic
Romulus & Remus
The Birth-Legend of Sargon of Akkad
The Moses story
the Perseus legend
- and a lot more, all contain the motif of the infant foundling who is discovered on a beach or shore by a stranger who takes the child & fosters him, after which, the child eventually becomes a ruler.
The motif is over 4,000 years old, and very widespread. The point is, one can read about Perseus, or Sargon, or the finding of the box containing the corpse of Osiris (a variation on the theme), or King Arthur, & not make the connections.
The problem with Eragon & Star Wars, is that the connections can be difficult not to make. The similarities stand out. What’s worse is that they are emphasised by other similarities. Tolkien can get away with taking a dwarf-name like “Gandalf” from the Elder Edda, along with 13 more dwarf-names from the same source, because the settings of the dwarf-list in the Elder Edda & in the Hobbit are so widely different: Bombur & Balin & Thorin have distinct personalities in The Hobbit – not in the Edda.
In Eragon OTOH, the Leia-character & the Luke-character & others re-inforce one another, so that the reader of Eragon who is familiar with SW, is not allowed to forget the similarities. Paolini needs to put in a lot more material that is not like SW, in order to allow the reader to get away from reminders of SW. Otherwise, he looks derivative, and not as though he has a story to tell. Which is a pity.
There is a simile about fallen leaves in Paradise Lost which had been used by Dante, who got it from Virgil, who got it from Homer. All of these poets use the same simile for different purposes. That is how to give new life to old or traditional material. Using familiar material is not a flaw – failing to use it well and inventively, is.
Rhymes with Orange on 13 July 2012, 06:07 said:
What I find particularly interesting about most of the comments in response to this article seem to be forgetting one very important fact. Namely that Star Wars is itself nearly a re pmake of Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress but set in outer space rather than feudal Japan. I personally have never understood why so many people hate Paolini’s work with such passion, unlike Smyer or Tesch his works are mearly mediocre novels that happened to resonate with some people and benefitted from smart marketing. I think some of the rather voracious criticisms of his books are driven by, to be frank, people jealous of his success and their own lack of success as authors. YMMV
Pryotra on 13 July 2012, 08:29 said:
For me, it was his fanbase. They took even the most mild criticism of his work and screamed about how we were just jealous of a guy who got published at fifteen and how we should try to publish a bestseller and so on. They pretty much made their own hatedom since all I wanted to do afterwards was rip the guy to shreds. Even if before his dancing bear was kind of amusing. That and as he continued, his books became less stupid yet inoffensive and more obnoxious.
Also, Paopao claiming that his writing was somewhere between Tolkien and one of the translators of Beowulf was…shall we say irritating.
Not really. The biggest critic of Paopao is probably Kippurbird, who flat admits that one of their characters used to be a stu. They’re not jealous, just appalled at him for his writing…and of course I think Kippur likes to harass Paopao’s fans too. It’s really fun, in a very sick way.
truesilver9 on 16 July 2012, 22:40 said:
First of all, let me say thank you Asahel for being the most sensible person in this discussion. Not that many of you haven’t made valid points, it’s just Asahel I agree with wholeheartedly. First of all, let me say that the whole discussion of the hero’s journey being the reason for the similarities is a bunch of crap. They involve orphans becoming kings frequently, ala King Arthur and other epics stories, not orphans being the last of an ancient order dedicated to preserving peace across the galaxy/land. Second of all, you guys are ignoring that Paolini’s story does not diverge after a New Hope into a completely different story, it continues to travel the Star Wars story until the end of his series. And what few differences I can see in the story, mostly in details, can be copied and pasted straight from Lord of the Rings, everything from the battle in the Dwarfs capital/the battle of Helm’s Deep to the final battle at Urbaen (spelling?), where Roran’s defeat of Galbatorix’s super human top general is eerily similar to Eowen’s defeat of the leader of the Nazgul. The queen of the elves/king of the Rohan is killed provoking Roran/Eowen to take a stand again an opponent they don’t completely have faith they can beat. Meanwhile, on the Death Star, the emperor taunts the hero that his friends, the rebels, are walking into a trap. Murtagh and Eragon fight to the amusement of the king, until Eragon(Luke) manages a winning blow against an arguably stronger opponent. The emperor is later enraged due to the actions the hero takes after the defeat of Darth Vader/ Murtagh and attacks the hero with lightning/painful twist of a dagger in the mind and it is only with the help of Darth Vader/Murtagh that the emperor is defeated.
I admit that there are several differences, most notable being that Darth Vader actually killed the emperor while Eragon was the one to cast a spell that caused Galbatorix to take his own life in order to escape (which from the description, seems awfully similar to the explosion of a death star or the implosion of Sauron). But that was not a general plot that I described, that was a play by play of the actual happenings of the story, and this is at the end of the fourth book when Paolini is 27 years old (I believe) and has no excuse for such blatant cutting and pasting. There are so many example of this throughout his books that I would take up several pages just writing them all down generally, much less in detail so people would understand. For example, also in the fourth book, why would a respected teacher of Eragon’s tell him to leave behind his weapons (“you will not need them”) like Yoda told Luke? Why would Eragon need to go on a walk in a dangerous area (the rider’s old island, which btw is an exact copy of the Numenorean’s island in LOTR, much like the elf city is a blatant copy of Tolkiens’) without any weapons, in a discovery of self exactly like Luke did. The only difference is Luke choose to take his weapons and saw what he could become rather than what he is. But the line itself: seriously Paolini?
Not to meantion Aragorn/Eragon who are both part elf (in different ways) are in love with an elven maiden, who is the daughter of the leader of the elves in the ancient wooded realm of the elves, and are both rejected at first due to their young age and inexperience while the elf is older and more experienced. After this, since Aragorn ends up with Arwen, Eragon’s love life is more like Luke’s in that he crushes on a princess immediately after seeing her in a message/vision, rescues her, befriends her, fights alongside her, and it is only in the last bit that we discover that he can’t be with her and he ends up alone, though Luke and Eragon end that way for different reasons, arguably.
After the first book/movie, the roles of Han and Leia move from Murtagh (Darth Vader) and Arya (Arwen though with Leia’s role still to some extent) to Katrina and Roran. Roran being Leia, surprisingly. Seriously, the beginning of the third book/movie starts with the hero and his remaining good family member getting ready to save the family member’s beloved, who is important to the hero too.
Arya was Arwen with Legolas’ action scenes and friendship with Gimili (Orik) and Eragon (Aragorn) added in.
And last but not least of the similarities I have decided to write down (there are far far more and if I need to I’ll put every one I can think of in a later post) the hero returns home (for differing amounts of time, as Eragon does not linger there). It is also in the last book that he no longer can return home in his heart and be at peace as it no longer holds him, despite his home being that which he thought he wanted for most for the majority of the length of the series, and leaves on a white ship for never before seen lands with a bunch of elves, leaving behind those he loves. Whoot, go end of Lord of the Rings…. I mean, Inheritance Cycle.
Paolini is not an original author in his first book, but he can’t even claim that later. Not only that but people believed what with his having written the story at 15, it was such a big deal, he was so young! But guess what, not only did his parents edit at least Eragon, they rewrote it!!! And did they tell their son to lay off the Star Wars? Or Lord of the Rings? Plenty of authors out there can claim original works of their own at a younger age and he still can’t despite the extensive help of two older people, not to mention whoever else read it before it was published.
Paolini is almost a crossover fanfiction author. Sure he made his character’s a little different than their cannon selves and added an OC (outside cannon) character here and there, gave a line or bit of action to a different character, switched a few characters here and there blah blah blah ohh look, it’s a new story let’s publish it instead of putting it on fanfiction.net. But you can still trace many happenings in the Inheritance cycle back to where they were “inspired from” back to the original’s, many down to the details, not just the general plot. He took the idea of an elven language, mixed it with the black tongue for the general power bit, and mixed it with pigeon German to make a “language”. He mixed Lord of the Rings and Star Wars characters, plots, places, and peoples to create an “original” world.
Hmmm, I seem to be forgetting something, a key element of Eragon, Saphira, and Arya’s tale…. Oh wait! It IS Saphira, well of course her and the other dragons. I didn’t use hardly any parallels for them!!!!!! Hmmmm, oh wait I seem to remember a story that was written a long time ago which uses dragons with human riders, who bond telepathically and patrol the world maintaining peace…. Oh ya, it’s the Dragon Riders of Pern. Who would have thought, one of the main remaining elements of Paolini’s story that seemed semi original is almost a bigger rip-off than many other elements.
But I’m rambling. Sorry for going off on the Dragon Rider’s of Pern and LOTR, I realize this is a Star Wars discussion. And don’t get me wrong, I do like Paolini’s work despite it errors in writing and the fact that it is copied. But it is plagiarized and saying that it’s not and it’s all a bunch of coincidences and subconscious copying is like saying that low fat Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream doesn’t have any chocolate in it and it’s just a mistake of the manufactures that some bits of chocolate ended up in Mint Ice Cream.
SlyShy on 17 July 2012, 00:11 said:
Hey truesilver9,
Want to write an article here?
truesilver9 on 21 July 2012, 14:13 said:
Lol, sorry that was a bit of a long post.
Aaron A Aaronson on 16 August 2012, 06:07 said:
I asked Paolini this in person at a Q&A convention:
Farm boy discovers something wanted by an evil emperor and goes to see an old story teller who was once apart of a mystic group of peace keepers that were betrayed by one of their own. Teaming up they travel to a enemy fortress filled with a training sequence where they rescue a captive princess, but the old story teller dies. Return to the rebel base the protagonist fights in a battle in which he becomes a hero. Ignoring the family related bad guy twists in the second book, is this the plot to Eragon or Star Wars: A New Hope?
Want the answer?
Pryotra on 16 August 2012, 06:42 said:
Oh yeah, I’d love to know how he justifies it.
Fell Blade on 16 August 2012, 08:29 said:
Definitely want to hear what he said to that.
swenson on 16 August 2012, 09:05 said:
Boy who enjoys hunting finds ancient item that grants him enormous power. He teams up with an old mentor and his partner and all three have many travels together before they are ambushed by servants of the Big Bad and are rescued by a mysterious stranger. Unfortunately, the mentor dies from his injuries in the ambush after revealing he secretly had a connection to aforesaid ancient item the boy found in the first place. The boy, the partner, and the mysterious stranger travel on together but the boy alone is captured, only to be rescued by the partner and mysterious stranger during a battle with another significant servant of the Big Bad. They escape along with a dying woman and finally find the rebels, who save the woman’s life, and then prepare to defend against an offensive force from the Big Bad. Finally, during the battle, the boy is lured into fighting the significant servant and is gravely injured, but is saved by the woman and his partner. Eragon or Star Wars: A New Hope?
See look, I can pick and choose plot elements too!
(For comparison, here’s a pick-and-choose version of ANH: A boy’s family makes a purchase that turns out to hold information of significant value. The boy discovers this only after speaking with an old man living out in the wilderness. Together, the two travel to a dangerous place and hire two guys to take them in their vessel to another place for the sole purpose of delivering the information to the rebels. They discover the place has been destroyed, however, and then are all nearly captured by the Big Bad’s Doomsday Device. Inside, the mentor works on securing their escape while the others rescue a captured politician. The mentor ends up buying the rest time by fighting the Big Bad’s Dragon—and dying—and the others escape. They get to the rebels, who analyze the information and decide to go on the offensive against the Big Bad’s Doomsday Device, with the intention to strike at its weak spot with the boy’s help, while the two guys leave. They return, however, in time to divert the enemies’ attention enough for the boy to slip in and attack the weak spot.)
Tim on 16 August 2012, 21:33 said:
Yeah, but arguing it’s not plagiarised because it isn’t a photocopy of the ANH screenplay is a pretty poor strawman. There are too many obvious parallels to claim it’s cherry-picking to point them out, and these include almost every important event and element of structure.
Tim on 26 August 2012, 17:15 said:
I think as I said above the majority of the problem is not that Paolini copies so much as that he isn’t very good at forming a cohesive whole out of the things he copies.
To take an example from Star Wars: A New Hope: looks at the sttack run on the Death Star. The sequence is very heavily influenced by one of Lucas’ favourite aviation movies, the 1955 movie The Dam Busters, to the point it actually remakes some sequences shot-for-shot and directly quotes it. So, why don’t people recognise that as plagiarised?
Put simply, it’s because it all fits. At no point in the sequence does anything happen which makes you suddenly realise you’re watching Lancasters dropping bouncing bombs on a German dam rather than spaceships firing proton torpedoes at a giant space station’s exhaust port.
This doesn’t happen in Eragon; all the rough edges the author hasn’t smoothed off mean you recognise that that part is from Star Wars and that one is from Lord of the Rings and so on.
swenson on 26 August 2012, 17:41 said:
I’d agree with that. Everybody borrows things they like from other people, whether it be character archetypes or general plot arcs or specific things like attack on the Death Star that you mentioned. That’s how we end up with cliches and tropes in the first place. The key is to be really good at hiding what you stole.
For another example, I decide hey, the Poetic Edda is really famous Norse poetry, I think I’m going to try my hand at reading it. I get like a page in and I suddenly realize where every single name in the Hobbit came from. The secret is that nobody actually has read the Poetic Edda, so no one ever notices…
(For clarification, if anyone asks, I’m not denying Paolini borrowed a great deal from other sources. Star Wars may well have been one of those sources, although I think it was more the impact of Star Wars in general than a direct influence, but “borrowing” and “plagiarizing” are two very, very different things, and I feel Paolini changed what he borrowed and added to it sufficiently that it isn’t plagiarism at all.)
Tim on 26 August 2012, 19:21 said:
I’d say the issue is that what he borrowed and added came from something else for the most part, and his compulsive looting tends to suffocate the parts of the story that actually are his with things he thinks he needs to do in order to Write Proper Fantasy. Such as having what are effectively ringwraiths, having them built up as scary and then having Eragon chase them around for no better reason than he wants revenge.
Rachel on 26 August 2012, 23:07 said:
Common rookie mistake, I’d say. I wrote my first “novels” when I was fifteen, and I thought epic, otherworldly, sword-and-sorcery was the only type of fantasy there was, and that a fantasy novel had to have certain ingredients to be a fantasy novel. So most of what I wrote ended up being shameless, thinly veiled ripoffs of Tolkien. While I think that there are ways to take the sword-and-sorcery genre to new levels, it’s always going to be sword-and-sorcery. It’s always going to have a certain feel to it. And while it can run the gamut from romanticized and idealistic to gritty and cynical, it will always have the same ingredients, the same types of characters, the same general plot lines.
Now, can you make all of that original? Certainly. I think that where Paolini went wrong is he was so infatuated with LOTR and Star Wars that he didn’t stop to think, “Now, how can I make this my own?” He just ran with it.
truesilver9 on 28 August 2012, 23:17 said:
Also where Paolini went wrong was that he didn’t stop with just an action sequence or a few names from the something else, he continued until the copied parts were all that was there in terms of plot developments etc.
truesilver9 on 28 August 2012, 23:30 said:
Not to mention (I said it in my first post), Paolini does not have the excuse of being a rookie past the first two or so books, yet his copying continued extentively. He was 27 when the last one came out for pete’s sake. JK Rowling (who also copied quite a bit but did it skillfully and only in minor details in a few instances) was an amateur writer, yet you could see large jumps in the quality of the books. With Paolini, you only see minor improvement and no stop in the large scale copying. Just saying.
Nate Winchester on 30 August 2012, 19:12 said:
I think I’ve found what Eragon did rip off.
XD
Serina on 6 January 2013, 04:37 said:
Frankly, sounds like the Dragonriders of Pern and Star Wars dish it out in Middle-Earth.
tb95 on 23 March 2013, 21:29 said:
just putting it out to anyone who says galbatorix was never proven to be evil, it gets pretty obvious hes evil when he;
arranges the town of yazuac to be burned and looted, (which i will admit is a similarity to alderaan)
tries to get murtagh killed for not wishing to join him
enslaves the entire race of urgals
enslaves hundreds of thousands of men for his army,
tortures Nasuada to try to enslave her,
In fact kills, enslaves or tortures anybody who doesn’t wish to pledge themselves to him, proving him to be a power-hungry warlord throughout the whole series…
Asahel on 24 March 2013, 00:30 said:
Ok, I’ll bite.
Was never proven to be done on Galbatorix’s orders. We know that Durza was leading the Urgal army, and we also know that Galbatorix hates Urgals because they killed his first dragon, and we further know that Durza offered Eragon a chance to join him in opposing Galbatorix, so it’s not just possible, but entirely likely that Durza was acting on his own in opposition to the king.
The uber-powerful Galbatorix tries to get someone killed? Tries? If Galbatorix wanted him dead, he’d be dead.
Again, not proven to be him. Entirely likely to have been done without his knowledge by Durza in an attempt to overthrow him.
Conscripts are not slaves. Unless you’re going to try to make the case that the United States enslaved however many tens of thousands of its own citizens to fight during World War II (and that after slavery was made illegal!), which I would love to see, by the way.
This is the only one that I’ll concede shows that Galbatorix was the villain, and I only concede it because the torture seems absolutely pointless, which means it can realistically only have its basis in sadism, so I’ll give you that one. Pity it first shows up in book 4—the last book.
Enslaves, sort of (I’ll get to that in a moment). Tortures? No. The only person Galbatorix tortured was Nasuada and we’ve already covered that. Now, about enslaving the lords of the cities in the Empire. He does extract oaths of loyalty. Other than that, they seem autonomous. Functionally, it’s not much different than having strong laws against treason and being able to enforce them effectively, so you can’t really make the case that that’s evil. However, the way it’s able to enforce loyalty is by an abrogation of free will, which I would consider a violation of moral law (some would disagree with me). At this point, I (though not everyone) would consider the action wrong, but it still wouldn’t make him a villain. If he’s doing this for what he sees as the greater good, he’d fit more in the role of a misguided hero, but, as usual, his motivation for his actions was never examined in the books, so we really can’t say he was malicious in extracting these oaths.
More like: proving that he was finally given one trait that could qualify him as a villain by the end of the series.
Pryotra on 26 March 2013, 09:31 said:
And proving that Paopao is actually listening to his critics. Even if the action was just pointless and ‘Oh. Right. I didn’t give you guys a good enough reason to think that he was evil. Well, here you go.’
Apep on 26 March 2013, 11:51 said:
Hey, he did more than some authors I can think of. Some bury their heads in the sand and have a sibling screen all their email.
tb95 on 27 March 2013, 22:25 said:
Lady Lorana SPECIFICALLY said she didn’t want to make an oath to galbatorix…
Asahel on 27 March 2013, 22:33 said:
And? I never claimed she did…
Taku on 28 March 2013, 04:38 said:
One minor noble not wanting to swear fealty to hewr king does not a tyrant-king make.
Also, that doesn’t actually support your arguments or rebut Asahel’s arguments in any way.
lilyWhite on 28 March 2013, 14:53 said:
You know, to be fair to Paolini, Eragon really isn’t the most egregious Star Wars rip-off ever. That honour goes to Final Fantasy II.
Takugifian on 28 March 2013, 17:54 said:
Plagiarism isn’t measured on a comparative scale, though. “Yeah, he ripped off most of his story from Star Wars, but it’s okay, Final Fantasy did it worse”. It doesn’t excuse Paolini at all. I mean, we don’t say “well, he stole a lot, but it’s okay, other people have stolen more and more blatantly.” The law isn’t applied like that, and neither should literary criticism.
Asahel on 28 March 2013, 22:27 said:
Actually, I kind of have to take issue with that. First of all, the absolute most egregious rip-off of Star Wars is Turkish Star Wars.
That said, I also think there are far more parallels to the Star Wars narrative in Eragon than Final Fantasy II (or, as it was called in Japan, Final Fantasy IV).
In Eragon, we have very strong parallel characters for Luke Skywalker, Obi Wan, and Princess Leia; a somewhat strong parallel for Darth Vader; and weaker parallels for others. In Final Fantasy II, who is Luke Skywalker? The main character is Cecil, but he starts off Dark side as a servant of the Empire, and switches to Light side about halfway through. Not really the same path Luke took. And who was his Obi Wan? Kain? Hardly. There was that unnamed NPC elder, but he’s a very weak parallel, not having been a paladin himself. Who’s Princess Leia? Rosa? Kind of, but she was with Cecil while he was still Dark, and remains his love interest throughout the story, which is clearly not like Leia’s relationship with Luke even before the reveal in Return of the Jedi. In fact, I’d say the strongest character parallel between the two is Golbez as a Vader character since he was Dark, a close relative of the main hero (brother instead of father), and redeemed himself by going Light and dying in the fight against the Big Bad.
So, yeah. Eragon is still more of a rip-off from what I can see.
tb95 on 29 March 2013, 15:17 said:
But simply what he did so long ago means he is evil! Had Hitler won ww2, and years later all he wanted to do was own the whole land and keep it in peace, would that mean he wasn’t evil and didn’t deserve to be punished?
Pryotra on 29 March 2013, 17:33 said:
Not necessarily. We don’t know much about the Riders, other than that they’re supposed to be the good guys. We know that they were racist against the dwarves, didn’t seem to do much to curb slavery, and didn’t seem overly concerned with anyone else. In the hands of another writer, Galby could have been a freedom fighter.
The problem is that we never see any sign that the Riders were all that much better from my memory of the books. Actually, I remember characters saying that the Riders had had some major flaws, and it wasn’t as much of a golden age as Brom had said.
We don’t even know much about the rebellion, and what Eragon’s being told could just be lies fed to him by the losers to make him look better. The country appears prosperous, and there are no groups discriminated against (which makes invoking Godwin’s Law kind of pointless) and no signs that he did anything that was more evil than a lot of monarchs have done in the past.
He took power, sat on it, and ruled the country.
Big deal.
Tim on 29 March 2013, 17:52 said:
Your argument is more like “some nasty things happened during the American Revolution, how can you not say this makes George Washington an utterly evil man?!”
Pryotra on 29 March 2013, 17:55 said:
…You know. You’re right.
After all, George Washington attacked the Germans on Christmas when he knew that they wouldn’t be prepared. He was totally evil!
And here was me thinking that Washington was just a pragmatist.
Taku on 29 March 2013, 20:54 said:
The way I read it, Galbatorix has far more in common with Phillip II of Macedon than Hitler. It’s not specifically mentioned in the books, but I prefer to think of the empire under the Riders as a series of independent city-states ruled over from a distance by the Rider faction; Galbatorix overthrew the Riders and united the individual city-states under a single banner, therefore opening the avenues for increased trade and economic cooperation.
I guess that would make early Surda the equivalent of Sparta?
lilyWhite on 29 March 2013, 21:27 said:
I was referring to the actual FFII, not FFIV. Final Fantasy II starts off with a group of orphans who flee their hometown after it is destroyed by an evil Empire ruled by an evil Emperor. They join a group of rebels fighting against the Emperor led by a Princess, who ends up getting captured by the Empire. The orphans infiltrate the Empire’s superweapon, the Dreadnought, and rescue the Princess before launching Sunfire into the Dreadnought’s engine to destroy it. Also, the Emperor has a Dark Knight serving him who turns out to be the brother of one of the orphans, who eventually redeems himself and fights against the Emperor.
While Eragon does evidently draw a lot of inspiration from Star Wars, it does have its differences. It’s similar to the SMIZEs in Modelland in that the inspiration is obvious, but the author does put a bit of a twist on it. (Even if the twists and complete work are kind of stupid.)
Asahel on 30 March 2013, 10:38 said:
Ah, ok. The confusing FF numbering system strikes again! (I guess nowadays I should assume people are using the correct pre-7 FF number instead of assuming otherwise.)
I didn’t even think of FFII as having much of a plot, and I kind of latched on to Golbez as a strong Vader parallel (and, of course, there’s the whole Light side/Dark side thing going on in IV), which led me to think it was IV you were referring to. My apologies.
It’s true that FFII is much closer to Star Wars than IV, and I suppose it’s also perhaps a bit closer than Eragon. At that point, it’s more six of one, half dozen of another. The very first time I read the book, the biggest thing that drove home Eragon as a rip-off of Star Wars was when Uncle Garrow was attacked by agents of the Empire looking for the lost MacGuffin. In the part that followed when Garrow was not quite dead, I actually thought he was going to survive because if he died it would be way too similar to Star Wars. When Garrow died, I thought, “Oh, I suppose that means Brom is going to die, too.”
Eragon really starts off way more like Star Wars than FFII and gets its differences later (it turns out Luke is Obi Wan’s son, not Vader’s!), while FFII starts just a little bit more distinctly than Eragon (there’s no Uncle Owen or Obi Wan and the main heroes join the Rebels before the Princess is captured), and becomes much more similar later.
So, as I said, which is one more similar to Star Wars than the other is too close to call for me, but I definitely see your point.
At least i admit that i'm biased on 23 December 2013, 18:03 said:
the whole thing about how Cp doesn’t show that the Galby is evil adds depth to the story, well, at least for me, because that makes you the reader question the whole story. this is really put into play when Nasuada is in the torture chamber with galby and he is making her question things that she grew up believing, and in doing so makes the reader question everything!
Also, with Galby knowing the name of the ancient language, with plans to basically prevent magic use, (how is this like the emperor?) CP plays on the fact that most of his audience is american, and sees any restriction put upon the people absolutely horrible, but at the same time makes you think about how magic users are really problem, because not everyone can use magic.
Finally, i have yet to see a convincing parallel from Saphira to any other character, given that Sapphira is LIVING, fully sentient, not possessing a sense of humor, not used for comic relief, and she is actually real, important (beyond being a MacGriffen in the beginning) character.Please, someone, just give me a good parallel to Saphira.
To conclude
Eragon and Star Wars;
Similar? Yes.
Very Similar? Yes.
Rip-off? Maybe.
Plagiarism? No.
Eragon and Star Wars;
Good book (judged by pleasure and satisfaction gleaned from reading)? Yes.
Good Movie (see above)? Yes.
If you hav a less then 12 year old relative who likes fantasy, would you recommend both? Maybe. (i would recommend both)
Tim on 23 December 2013, 20:35 said:
So you go the usual route of focusing entirely on that it’s not exactly the same to address claims that it’s derivative?
Asahel on 23 December 2013, 22:58 said:
Good Movie? No.
Good Movie for a Rifftrax? Oh, heavens, YES!
Leanne on 28 April 2014, 15:29 said:
To say that Paolinii plagiarized Star Wars is going too far, I won’t deny that. The book is kind of in that weird zone where it rides the line between rip-off and generic unoriginality. Honestly, despite how suspiciously similar the two stories are, I have the feeling that when Paolini was first writing Eragon, the similarities came about subconsciously. I have no real desire to look up personal information about the guy, but I’m willing to bet that as a kid he was a big Star Wars fan, or was at least pretty familiar with the basic story. And as he was trying to create his own original tale, these familiar plot elements influenced him in a significant way. At least, that’s my theory. Maybe some or all of the similarities were completely intentional, I don’t know.
The point is, deliberate or not, it’s still a clear sign of lack of originality and creativity. You can argue until you’re blue in the face that Eragon is a blatant rip-off if Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Dragonriders of Pern, and so on, but that the end of the day it’s just a terribly generic fantasy story. And the reason for this is because every single aspect of the book is dependent on tropes and stereotypes that were created or codified by those earlier (and better) fantasy works.
I think my theory is somewhat supported by the fact that after Eldest was again just as suspiciously similar to Empire Strikes Back as Eragon was to Star Wars, Paolini wised up and realized that he needed to try for something more original plot-wise. That, or he read what people were saying about his books and realized he couldn’t get away with ripping off Star Wars anymore. But in any case, the books (awful though they are) are no where near as much of a blatant Star Wars rip-off as the MOVIE. In addition to being an atrocious insult to cinema in its own right, Eragon the Movie played up the Star Wars similarities even further by making Eragon blond and blue-eyed, lifting the “staring dramatically into the sunset” scene wholesale, and ripping off the scene in Empire where Luke goes on a rescue mission against Yoda’s advice.
swenson on 29 April 2014, 14:34 said:
Oh man, that movie. I don’t even wanna think about it. Even the most hardcore Eragon fans hated the movie. It took everything cliche in the book and made it a thousand times worse. And it made it literally impossible to have a sequel, even if it had been an okay movie.
Leanne on 30 April 2014, 13:19 said:
Oh man, that movie. I don’t even wanna think about it. Even the most hardcore Eragon fans hated the movie. It took everything cliche in the book and made it a thousand times worse. And it made it literally impossible to have a sequel, even if it had been an okay movie.
I watched it once long after I was already over my love of the books just to see how bad it was. Well… at least it met my expectations, I guess. I’m still not quite sure if it’s “The Last Airbender” level of bad, but I don’t want to watch the whole movie again to figure it out. Everything about it was awful, from Saphira’s instantaneous transition from baby to adult, to the epically horrendous action-shlock final battle. They really couldn’t shove any more fantasy cliches in there if they tried. Considering I’m not a fan of the books anymore I really wouldn’t have minded all the deviations from the source material had they actually been done well, but pretty much nothing about the movie made any sense.
And of course it’s not like I would’ve wanted a sequel, but I was under the impression that the studio was probably banking on the movie to be a big enough success to warrant one. Maybe the realized what a horrible mistake it was and re-filmed the ending after showing the rough cut to test audiences? Maybe the screenwriter really just didn’t care at all?
Juracan on 6 May 2014, 09:32 said:
NOTHING is Last Airbender level of bad.
But yeah, the Eragon movie looked like a big budge SyFy original movie.
Lev on 6 September 2014, 09:40 said:
Why are there websites over websites devoted to what Paolini did wrong? He is a very young author. He wrote the first book when he was twelve.
Epke on 6 September 2014, 10:25 said:
He started Eragon when he was 15 and finished it at 18. And my guess is that they want to point out that if a book (series) like Eragon can become to hugely popular, then any claptrap you can churn out should be able to, as well. Oh, and to show you the difference between good and bad writing.
Pryotra on 6 September 2014, 11:54 said:
Because his fandom had the tiresome habit of dismissing even the lightest critique with ‘HE WAS JUST A KID WHEN HE WROTE IT! DON’T BE SO MEAN’.
If you’re going to publish something, then you get held to the same standards that everyone else is held to, and because no one would, sites showed up to mock.
Also, we’ve kind of drifted away from Paolini. For one thing he hasn’t done anything for a while. For another, there are so many OTHER bad writers to snark.
swenson on 6 September 2014, 17:11 said:
I find it amusing that this comment is posted on the most pro-Eragon article on the site. Couldn’t dear friend Lev have picked the EWW article, or one of Kitty’s lovely comics?
EDIT: Also, he was 15 when he started Eragon, not 12, and he was 27 when Inheritance was released.
The Smith of Lie on 7 September 2014, 13:29 said:
And we all know that he isn’t even the youngest published novelist. That’s Gloria Tesch, as she’ll gladly tell you.
anonyms on 14 September 2015, 19:31 said:
Eragon is still a good book and it may be a bit like the lord of the rings and starwars. Just so you know though I’m trying to write my own fantasy book and it is actually really hard to not sound like your copying on book or another. I love fantasy.
Turner on 12 January 2016, 19:52 said:
To all those claiming that there wasn’t enough evidence Galbatorix was evil: You’re forgetting how he sent the Ra’Zac, who were basically flesh eating demons, to get the egg. Also, he had Durza enslave the entire Ugal race. I think that qualifies as evil.
Asahel on 13 January 2016, 11:49 said:
Yeah, I already mentioned the thing about the Urgals, and the answer to the Ra’zac is basically the same. There’s no scene showing Galbatorix ordering Durza to do what he did. Not one. There’s not even a scene where Durza reads a message or receives a telepathic communication or anything from Galbatorix ordering him to do what he did. So, for all we know, using the Ra’zac and enslaving the Urgals could’ve entirely been Durza’s idea—and that’s a notion that becomes entirely more plausible when you recall that when Durza captured Eragon, he tried to persuade him to help him overthrow the king. That shows (shows, not just tells) us that Durza was not a loyal servant. And, if he would go so far as to try to enlist Eragon’s help in open rebellion, who’s to say that he wouldn’t have gone behind the king’s back and employed the Ra’zac and Urgals without Galbatorix’s knowledge or consent?
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that Paolini didn’t want us to think Galbatorix was evil. What I’m saying is that he didn’t show us he was evil until the 4th book.