Playing the reverse Uno card, Star Wars has gone onto inspire dozens of novels. That number balloons if comics, graphic novels, and other reference books are included.
To be fair, the official novelization came out in November 1976, a full six months before the release of the actual movie. Maybe some people guessed wrong because of that?
There definitely is a lot of Kurosawa influence... and Buck Rogers... Flash Gordon... Beowulf... lots of other things... but at the same time it really is almost straight-up plagiarizing Dune.
As a fan of Dune, I don't see much of it in Star Wars other than the broadest of strokes, i.e. spaceships, desert planet, chosen one, mystical force, evil empire; none of which are enough to qualify it as a rip off.
It sounds just as ridiculous as those who say SW rips off LotR (trilogy, mystical mentor who dies but not really, temptation of corruption, innocent protagonist, badass companion - Aragorn and Han Solo - who would be the protagonist in a more conventional story).
In the book, Billy (the grandson/narrator) has a much more fleshed out and significant story, and isn't just a sick kid being read a book in bed. Though there is still the story-within-a-story.
It sounds just as ridiculous as those who say SW rips off LotR (trilogy, mystical mentor who dies but not really, temptation of corruption, innocent protagonist, badass companion - Aragorn and Han Solo - who would be the protagonist in a more conventional story).
It's a story within a story that's based on another story
Never knew Gone with the Wind was a book and the Princess Bride is a film I only hear about on forums so no chance!