Star Wars, Avatar and Prometheus: The Celluloid Debt to Frank Herbert

[Bob]

In the wake of 1977's Star Wars, the push for David Lynch's Dune perhaps became inevitable. Frank Herbert was concerned that many of his ideas from Dune had been appropriated for Star Wars, although beyond the inclusion of the desert planet of Tatooine, I must confess I've never really seen it that way.

Certainly The Jesus Incident, Herbert's 1997 collaboration with Bill Ransom, was raided for the 2009 movie Avatar. The Jesus Incident takes place on a planet called Pandora wherein dwells a native meta-sentient life form known as Avata that maintains a global consciousness; in order to save Pandora from destruction by human beings, certain characters essentially go native and must learn how to communicate with Avata.

Of no less interest in this regard, I think, is the connection between Ridley Scott's new Prometheus film and what we might call the mythos of Dune. As discussed in Frank Herbert: The Works, the origins of the sandworm ecology on Arrakis was always one of the deepest abiding mysteries of the entire Dune saga. The point was made explicitly in Children of Dune that the Old Man of the Desert had been imported from somewhere, by someone, for reasons unknown.

In a discussion of what Frank Herbert's unwritten Dune 7 might have contained, I pointed out:

Possibly: both Terran and sandworm ecosystems are derived from a single genetic stock, and both were introduced into the Milky Way galaxy simultaneously . . . The two ecosystems were isolated in distant stellar systems so that humanity could not discover melange until it had developed an advanced form of space travel . . . The reunion of human and worm is a natural and expected biological event.

Of course the parallels between this speculation about the Dune series and the themes laid out in Prometheus are unmistakable. I think Ridley Scott was influenced by Herbert in much the same way that James Cameron was, although the connection in Prometheus is, perhaps, not quite as superficially apparent.

[Saul]

Bob wrote: "In the wake of 1977's Star Wars, the push for David Lynch's Dune perhaps became inevitable. Frank Herbert was concerned that many of his ideas from Dune had been appropriated for Star Wars.."

I can't think of two movies more different than Dune and Star Wars. I won't even admit the sands of Tattooine and Arakis are the same. So there!

But now you say Prometheus has an unmistakable link to Dune's story arc? Say it isn't so! I could try to see if it's true but I've put off watching Prometheus. It will have to be at some point in the future, on DVD, on a rainy day, and I'd better have nothing better to do. And when I say nothing better, I include things like clipping ingrown toenails.

[Steph]

I must admit that although I've read The Jesus Incident, the connection with Avatar never occurred to me whilst watching the movie (I was reminded more of Roger Dean's artwork for Yes album covers...). I think I need to read that book again!

[[deleted user]]

And there was I always thinking it was a dumbed down reworking of the animated film Battle for Terra. Doh!