7 Movies That Stole Their Plot From Comic Books

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (well late 60s France), writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières began publishing their comic series Valérian and Laureline about a pair of heroic ‘spatio-temporal agents’ who spend their time fighting bad guys and planet-hopping around a universe populated by strange alien races.

A few years later the comic would be adapted for the big screen. No, not Luc Besson’s underwhelming mouthful of a movie Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets but George Lucas’ iconic space opera franchise Star Wars.

It may be hard to believe that some of the most famous films in the entire history of cinema basically ripped off another work but a quick flick through a few issues of Valérian casts Lucas and Star Wars in a more questionable light.

The comics’ titular protagonists traverse the galaxy in a spaceship that could easily pass for the Millennium Falcon and share a dynamic that’s suspiciously similar to Han Solo and Princess Leia’s. As they explore remote galactic locations, the pair come across desert worlds and jungle planets (Tatooine and Endor, anyone) they come up against villains like The Enlightened who wear helmets to disguise their disfigured faces a lot like Darth Vader.

At one point in the series, Valérian finds himself encased in resin similar to Han Solo’s run-in with carbonite while Laureline is later captured by an overweight slave lord who makes her wear a gold metal bikini.

Despite all this evidence George Lucas – who’s admitted to drawing inspiration from many a source – has never officially acknowledged Valérian and Laureline’s influence on Star Wars. But we all know the truth now.