LOTR Ripoff

[Tar-Elendil]

my brother is currently reading the harry potter books..he is a fellow fan of tolkien and brought something well, interesting to me..in the third book Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (hope spelling is right), there are things called "dementors" which wear black robes which cover thier faces..people can feel the presence of these "dementors" with a sense of dread and cold inside them, or some crap like that...is it just me or is this almost exactly like the Nazgûl? i mean even the principal of Harry potter's school (alvis dumbdore or somethin like that) reminds me of gandalf! this is beyond the point of saying rowling was "inspired" by tolkien...i think her books (this one atleast) is a complete ripoff..theres even a character that can turn into a dog and one turns into a werewolf (something reminds of beorn and sauron... ) what does everyone else think about this?

[Wulažg]

Harry Potter is a silly version of LoR for small children, with a few differences, mostl silly ones.

[Comic Book Guy]

J.K Rowling had only read the Hobbit when she was writing the First Harry Potter book. I don't know if she read the Lord of the Rings before she wrote the third book or ever. Anyway, I doubt that she would copy ideas from another very popular book when her own series was famous enough for rip-offs to be obvious.

Maybe Nolendil can shed some light, he's a fan of Harry Potter.

[Wulažg]

You underenstimate the power of the Dark Side...

No really. Tolkien affected a whole lot of stuff in our society, especially the fantasy genre. Some things are going to be similar since Tolkien is one of the foundations that all other fantasy is written on, presumably Harry Potter as well. It doesn't even matter that Rowling may not have read the books. LoR has changed fantasy and so there are going to be some things that will be similar if not identical. Poeple think alike.

[Tar-Elendil]

yes ofcourse peeps may think alike..but this is just too much for me to believe it a coincidence..::sigh::

[Elf Girl]

I like Harry Potter. The dementors have nothing in comman with the Nazgul. Black is a symbol of evil in many books, so the robes are no surprise. The fear, well, it is important for at least some allies of the Dark Lord in either book to be terrifying, to show his power.

[Elf Girl]

And by the way, she had the entire story planned when she wrote the first one, so, having only read the Hobbit, the dementors cannot be based on the Nazgul. She could not have altered their appearence to be like the Nazgul on the spot, because they play such an imporant part in the story that she must have known all their quirks before she wrote it.

[Menelvagor]

Yeah, I noticed that too. Also Strider and Sirius have strikeingly similar roles (shadowy guy in bree/convict and murderer turn out to be gaurdian figures), the Mirror of Galadriel vs. the Mirror of Arised, and Saruman and Wormtail are both the sidekick mini-baddie and both of them have a white/silver hand. All it shows is what a big impact Tolkien had on the fantasy genre, all of those characters/concepts have become the norm, they are part of the definition of fantasy.

[Aragorns Dimple]

I haven't READ Harry Potter books NOR seen the movies so I have no opinion whatsover on that. ^_^

I agree with the above, the Themes and Characters are often of a certain type that are already familiar to everyone, thereby making the story-telling a little easier.

When Viggo Mortensen was offered the role of Aragorn and the part was described to him, he said he recognised similar traits in the Hero's of Nordic myths & legends that he had grown up with hearing as a kid, so he was not totally unfamiliar with the kind of man Aragorn would be.

(P.S. Everytime I see your dancing cat's eyes ava, Menelvagor, I nearly fall off my chair laughing! That is truly hilarious!)

Game on and peace out.

[Radagast The Brown]

originally posted by Elf Girl

I like Harry Potter. The dementors have nothing in comman with the Nazgul. Black is a symbol of evil in many books, so the robes are no surprise. The fear, well, it is important for at least some allies of the Dark Lord in either book to be terrifying, to show his power.

right. just because there's one thing that's the same not mean that there are the same creature or on the same base. examples:
1) the Nazgul DON'T bring memories from the past, and the dementors do.
2) the dementors could fly without help, and the Nazgul can't.
and another different between the books: in LOTR every one know that there's magic and spells, but in Harry Potter the Muggles don't know.

[Menelvagor]

Originally posted by Aragorns Dimple

(P.S. Everytime I see your dancing cat's eyes ava, Menelvagor, I nearly fall off my chair laughing! That is truly hilarious!)

Why thank you.

[StrawberryIcecream]

Ok I can see now that i'm going to get a whole lot of hate mail for this.

Literacy is about finding inspiration and using it! Who knows where Rowling got it from? Terry Pratchet mentions the Auditors a lot in his books which are basically the same as the dementors, i think(i read Harry P a long long time ago).


How do we know that J R R Tolkien didnt steal any of his ideas from other people? Irs certainly possible. *watches hate mail come through* I'm not saying i think so, i think its incredibly unlikely but surely everyone has the same ideas some times. Basically the dementors, nazgul and auditors are all supposed to be dark, scary and evil. Its not that hard to come up with a character like that!

[GandalfTheWhite]

i think rowling was probubly inspired by tolkien but thats a good thing! she used the inspiration to create another good piece of literature, nothing close to tolkien but still a good story

[Elfhelm]

Influence, even imitation, isn't rightly called stealing. There are many fantasy authors who lift ideas, even creatures, out of each other's books. The point of good writing isn't to make up your own outlandish creatures. The point is to write well about them.

I can show you where Tolkien "stole" from, where he got Gandalf's name, for instance, and why he calls goblins "orcs", and where elves exist pre-Tolkien who are tall like humans and live forever and have closer aquaintance with the gods, etc. But even if Tolkien hadn't used those sources, his rich style and carefully detailed descriptions would still make him a great writer. And his wisdom spoken through Sam quoting the gaffer, too.

[StrawberryIcecream]

That is exactly what i meant elfhelm. I didnt mean 'stealing' as such. It was a bad choice of word.

[barrelrider110]

Much of LoTR and Harry Potter comes out of the same Northern European tradition. Gandalf and Dumbledore are very Merlinesque, wouldn't you say? Mysterious figures in hooded cloaks aren't original to Tolkien either. Dicken's Ghost of Christmas-yet-to-come comes to mind. And the name thing? Authors use that all the time: e.g., E.B White, T.S.Eliot, etc.

I like the Dementors way of dealing with their enemies-- their "kiss" sucked out your soul. That's original.

No, I would say that J.K.Rowling borrowed from the same traditions, rather than borrowing directly from J.R.R. Tolkien.

[GandalfTheWhite]

Very nicely put elfhelf, couldnt have been said any better!

[Elfhelm]

Originally posted by StrawberryIcecream
That is exactly what i meant elfhelm. I didnt mean 'stealing' as such. It was a bad choice of word.

Maybe it was based on that famous quote (I don't know who by) that I can only paraphrase as: hacks borrow, geniuses steal. ??

I think what Gary Gygax did when he made D&D back in the early 70's was actually enough of a rip-off to warrant a lawsuit. That's why he had to call Ents treants and Hobbits halflings. But now that stuff has entered the collective subconcious, so if it pops up in dreams or other fantasy writing, it may have taken some strange paths.

[crickhollow]

member my three fishes (merry, pip, and sam)? Well, a tragedy befell them last night.

Last night I went to bed late, and when I when down to my room I found myself in the middle of a crime scene. Linus and Daisy (my plants) were on the floor, and dirt was scattered everywhere. Even worse, my fishbowl in the box that I took it home in was dumped on the floor. All the water out of the bowl, and Merry, Pip and Sam were nowhere to be found. I turned on all the lights, and searched for a glint of gold that would give away where my poor wittle fishes were. I found the first one, and when I moved to put it in a container, it flopped! I quickly deposited it in the bowl, and ran to the bathroom to put some more water in the bowl. Somewhat encouraged upon finding one live fish, I renewed my search with much vigor. I stepped back to turn on another light, and as I did so, I came upon fish number two (you remember that while they each have individual names, I cannot remember which name goes with which fish). He had two little puncture marks on his side, and most certainly did not flop when poked. At this point, I burst into tears. Laugh, if you dare, but I have become very attached to my little friends, and as I cleaned up the rest of the crime scene, I just kept muttering to myself through my tears, “Stupid cat! She killed my wittle fishes.” When the third fish was nowhere to be found, my mantra changed to: “Stupid cat! She ATE my fishes!” I went to bed crying, and in desperate need of a kleenix.

I couldn’t decide which one of the three was the live one, and which two had died, so I renamed my lonely little buddy “Liver” (because he lived)

[Elf Girl]

That's too bad. But why post it in this thread?