At 05:56 PM 1/2/97 -0500, Harold Ancell wrote:

  From: jhedge@waterw.com (Jeanne Hedge)

Actually, the major inspiration for the first Star Wars movie was a
relatively obscure Kurosawa movie titled "The Hidden Fortress".  The
headstrong princess and buffonish robots are lifted straight from it
along with some of the plot, and Han and Luke were split from the role
played by Mufune.

I'm told the end of Star Wars was lifted from the end of "The Dam
Busters" (about an engineer and an air force unit trying to zap a well
defended dam during WWII), but I haven't seen that movie yet.

I *think* I've seen it - or something like it.  British nighttime bombers
trying to blow up a dam.  They did, and the movie was over.  Could have been
a different movie I saw though.

One other non-Hollywood Kurasawa remake is "A Fistfull of Dollars"

>from "Yojimbo".  However, the credits to a recent David Drake novel

(maybe "The Sharp End"?) lead me to believe Kurosawa lifted the plot

>from Dashiell Hammett.

Hey, everyone lifts stuff from everyone else in the movie industry.  I think
many of those Sergio Leone-Clint Eastwood "spaghetti westerns" owe homage to
Kurasawa and the samurai films.

  and the Samurai Trilogy starring Toshiro Mifune were among the major ones.

I don't believe Kurosawa did the Samurai Trilogy.

Could be.  Still, they're pretty good. (and I like Mifune's work :)



Jeanne Hedge

Asst. SysOp - CIS Anime/Manga Forum
http://www.accsyst.com/jhedge/
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