Comment by dataviz1000

This is an interesting take. Did Lucas ever actually admit he didn’t know about *The Hero with a Thousand Faces* before he wrote Star Wars? My understanding is he read Campbell after the motorcycle accident, and then it became a big influence.

Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised if Campbell was the one making the connections—between Life of Milarepa (which, in my opinion, is the closest pre Campbell example of the hero’s journey to Campbell’s original framing) and The Wizard of Oz. Meaning the stories all have the parts of the journey but the Life Milarepa has a 1 to 1 correlation.