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Oh it's ON, baby!!
Nah, it's mainly just a silly goof-con, in which case almost every sci-fi series one might possibly imagine has plainly borrowed from earlier ones in one way or another. At least, I THINK so.
That said, I seem to recall Mézières being pretty upset about this at some point. In any case, he passed on a couple years ago, so hmm...
EDIT: Whoops, pardon. This specifically appeared in the annex of the Cinebook edition of v2, The Empire of a Thousand Planets. There was a text accompaniment that I could post, if necessary. It was pretty rubbish, frankly.
Valérian, Kurosawa, Dune... Lucas borrowed from pretty much everything.
But then again, that's how culture worked for tens of thousands of years until Disney and other “intellectual property” trolls got their filthy rotten claws on it and started doing everything possible to kill what makes us human, so, eh, good for him, they were good films, at least the first three.
The first two, for sure.
The third one kind of limped in without Marcia Lucas' touch, but we still embraced it. ^^
I totally agree. Still one point that is or can be made is that even though every element of culture and art is a result of a chain of remixes, some people who help forging it get rich and famous while others don't get shit.
Like, since creating is a collective processes, it's economy should be, too.