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Here's a question for you that is less war and more straight culture. What makes a piece of media truly inspiring? What qualities does something need to possess so that things based on it will be great? I don't mean this in the sense of expertly turning your IP into a multimedia franchise through judicious licensing or whatever. I want to know what happens in the case of something like Dune where licensing doesn't seemed to be handled well at all. Yet it still not only managed to spawn a great movie. It also inspired a legendary board game, hugely influential video game, etc.
What makes Dune such fertile ground compared to, say, Lord of the Rings?
This paragraph threw me for a loop. My impression is that Lord of the Rings is way more of a cultural Thing compared to Dune. Like, there also LotR video games? Action adventure, turn based RPG, RTS, even an MMORPG! There are movie series both live action and animated. All these vary wildly in quality so I'm not sure savvy licensing is the reason for their existence and success. Not to mention Lord of the Rings influence on the development on fantasy as a genre of media in general.
Apologies for not commenting on the more general question on your post, which I don't have many thoughts on, but feels like a very specific cultural bubble to regard Dune as more fertile ground for inspiration than Lord of the Rings...
Right, but that is why I chose Lord of the Rings for comparison. For all of its impact, for all the media based on it directly and indirectly, it has a much worse pound for pound showing than Dune. Sure, it has a forgettable RTS, but Dune II practically invented the genre. Sure, one of the Lord of the Rings board games ended up being great, but Dune has, again, a hugely influential game that people loved so much they were still playing it when it had been print for nearly 30 years.
Was this just luck that Dune has such a stronger showing than a more popular, older IP? Or is there some quality that can be analyzed?
It is not obvious to me that "a Dune video game created the RTS genre" and "there was a Dune board game so popular people played it decades after it was out of print" is sufficient to conclude "Dune had a stronger showing" than Lord of the Rings in terms of cultural inspiration.
The influence Tolkien's worldbuilding and method of storytelling on fantasy as a genre seems difficult to understate. Not just on directly LotR inspired works but across a range of intellectual properties and media types. This is not to say Dune wasn't influential or inspirational but it does not really compare, to my mind.
But this is just vague handwaving. I'm not arguing the popularity of Lord of the Rings or its cultural impact. I'm talking about the impact, in turn, of the licensed media that followed.
Lord of the Rings, as a book series, is hugely impactful on the culture. Lord of the Rings the multimedia franchise is, on average, middling and most of it will be forgotten. Dune, on the other hand, has been less impactful overall. Yet, despite having far less adaptations and licensed media (before the most recent movie. I'm not young and free enough to keep up with everything that is coming out now), what exists is both of a much higher average quality and often hugely impactful on their own mediums.
Just shrugging that off is simply being obtuse and ignoring the actual subject.
I think there's two different things being claimed.
Is the tie-in media for the Dune franchise better than the stuff produced for LOTR? Possibly. If you mean Rings of Power oh hell yeah.
Is the tie-in media for the Dune franchise more influential? Again, maybe, but I think it's more in the "niche sphere where people really really care about the RTS genre" and not "general game-playing public". I haven't played any of the LOTR games and I remember back when they were issuing board games under the licence, but I've heard about them and seen them advertised. I honestly don't remember seeing anything for Dune media.
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What you said at the end there - that there’s Dune related media that’s “hugely” impactful isnt clear at all. I can’t think of any.
Dune has produced one bad movie and one good movie.
LOTR has hugely influenced fantasy, music, video games and mich more. Dune has nothing much
I'd say Dune's resulted in some bangin' music.
Before clicking the link, my guess was this.
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Then maybe that is where I'm misunderstanding what you're asking. I was thinking of the two works in terms of their broad cultural impact, not of just the impact of their licensed multimedia. In that case I think there is a case to be made for the original Lord of the Rings trilogy of films but that's about it innovation wise. I have enjoyed a lot of the Lord of the Rings games but I don't think they did anything particularly innovative, certainly not compared to what Dune seems to have done (I haven't played it myself).
On the one hand, I'd say this actually must be my fault in writing clearly because almost everyone is responding with a focus on the books themselves rather than the larger multimedia franchises.
On the other hand, I am mostly getting a lot of tears about how the Lord of the Rings trilogy is better and posters didn't even know that the board game existed so how impactful could it be? All without even engaging the question. High decouplers? Yeah, okay.
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Are we forgetting Peter Jackson's LotR movies? They were far more impactful and frankly better than any Dune movie.
Also, LotR basically spawned the fantasy genre. Even within the LotR franchise, there are countless books that spun off from the main series.
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