Monday, March 22, 2010

Star Wars vs. The Hidden Fortress: a myth debunked


There's no doubt that the films of Akira Kurosawa have been very influential in the West, sometimes to the point of all-out imitation. His Seven Samurai was turned into John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven. Yojimbo was turned, virtually shot for shot, into Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars. Rashomon was remade in 1964 as The Outrage (starring Paul Newman) and its non-linear storyline has influenced everything from Courage Under Fire to Pulp Fiction.

Yup. The guy was good.

But perhaps the most misunderstood of these influences is the legend of the impact The Hidden Fortress had on Star Wars.


Do these movies have similarities? Sure.

The Hidden Fortress is the story of a general trying to smuggle a load of gold and the princess of his beaten homeland across hostile territory with the help of two lowly goofballs, who as much as the princess and the general are the main characters.

Sound familiar?

The movie is also just a fun romp, with plenty of chases, sword fights and humor. And like Star Wars, it was a huge international hit. The biggest of Kurosawa's career.

But despite all the hubbub, and all you've probably heard, that's really where the similarities end.

For example, let's take the character of the general, Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars and Rokurota Makabe in The Hidden Fotress. Kenobi is very old, almost ancient. More wizard than general. Reserved, patient, with secrets to tell. Also -- and this is a point really worth noting -- he gets killed at the end of the first act.

Makabe is mysterious, but forceful. He always seems on the edge of killing the two goofballs. His duty and shame at being defeated has led him to sacrifice his own sister so the princess could more easily escape, and at one point he nearly sacrifices himself. But above all he is a fierce, strong, youthful warrior. By my count he kills at least 10 people in hand to hand combat by the time the movie is over.

The characters of the two princesses in each story are more of a comparison. Both are young, entitled, well... bitches. But where the princess in Star Wars is captured and has to be rescued, and is a loudmouth, the princess in The Hidden Fortress is merely in hiding (in a hidden fortress, get it?), and has to be smuggled across enemy lines to help restore her kingdom. Also, for much of the movie, she passes as a mute, to hide herself better.

Perhaps the most celebrated similarity between the two movies, and the one George Lucas readily points to, are the characters of the two lowly goofballs. Kurosawa's characters were called Tahei and Matakishi. Lucas made his into robots and called them R2D2 and C-3PO.

"My main influence," Lucas says. "Was Kurosawa's decision to tell his story from the viewpoint of the two lowest characters."

Though not quite this low.

And we see this from the opening shot of both movies. Kurosawa starts with Tahei and Matakashi wandering in the wilderness, complaining and arguing about a war they fought in -- and lost -- and the fact that they haven't eaten in days. As everyone who's seen Star Wars knows (which means pretty much everyone. Except my friend Eric Thelen), Lucas also starts with his bickering robots, wandering the ship during a battle, complaining about those things robots complain about.

But even here, the difference are vast. C-3PO and R2D2 are comic characters who do a bit to drive the plot. But basically, like most movie robots that aren't the villain, they're good natured servants who are basically there to add sci-fi window dressing and make the well-trained actors who portray them feel like idiots.

"I. Will. Get. You. For. This. Compute."

Tahei and Matakishi, though they're amusing fraidy cats, are not good natured or well meaning. They're desperate thieves who take any opportunity to fight with each other, abandon the group, steal the gold or sell out Makabe and the princess, leading of course to Conflict.

The only reason they stick around is because they think they're going to get some of the gold they're transporting, and the only reason Makabe doesn't kill them is because they think of a route to the homeland any idiot should have been able to think of, and because he needs someone to help carry the gold.

None of this sounds like the comparably lovable and loyal R2D2 or C-3PO, and it shouldn't.

So despite all of the myths, calling Star Wars a rip off of The Hidden Fortress really boils down to lazy scholarship of the worst kind. Scholarship that seems to be repeated without end.

The two Criterion Collection essays on The Hidden Fortress refer to it as "the major influence on Star Wars" and owing "much of the scenario" to it, respectively. The second essay even seems to think that Han Solo is the general character comparable to Makabe.

Humbug.

Perhaps most egregiously, this line of thinking completely ignores the fact that Star Wars is not a story about Kenobi, or the princess, or the two droids. It's first and foremost Luke's story, which borrows from a hundred Boy-King legends -- especially the Arthur legend -- none of which The Hidden Fortress has nothing to do with.

The Hidden Fortress doesn't even have a Luke character, for crying out loud. Or an Emperor character. Or Darth Vader. Or Han Solo. Or Jabba the Hutt.

On the plus side, it doesn't have Ewoks, either.

So how about we all (again, not including Eric) stop this totally out of control myth, huh? And get back to just enjoying movies for what they are.


13 comments:

  1. "Lazy scholarship" is right. If you knew anything about the development of the first "Star Wars" movie, then you'd know that the Luke character was created relatively late in the process. The original plot more closely resembled "Hidden Fortress," and Han Solo (originally conceived as a Jedi) more closely resembled the general. Lucas recycled his unused ideas from the early drafts of "Star Wars" into "The Phantom Menace" - hence the Liam Neeson character who resembles the general in "Hidden Fortress" and the princess who uses a doppelganger to conceal her true identity.

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  2. No one who'd watched "The Hidden Fortress" would say that the Qui Gon character from "The Phantom Menace" resembles Makabe. Nor does the princess in that movie use a double by her own design and the double's execution takes place off camera and within the first 10 minutes.

    But that's okay. It's clear you haven't seen "The Hidden Fortress". Maybe next time you should consider it before you fall into the amusing hypocrisy of calling someone else lazy.

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    1. Joe you are lazy and ignorant.

      All you have to do is spend like 30 minutes googling the development of Star Wars and WHY the comparisons are made.

      You sound like a scrub when you attempt (and fail) to characterize the movie as a "fun romp" but this isn't even a question of your critical ability or lack of taste.

      LITERALLY ALL YOU HAVE TO DO is be AWARE of Lucas' first 2 drafts to understand what academics, and film historians are talking about.

      It's not even a question of Qui Gon or whatever other nonsense you are arguing about. Lucas literally SET OUT to remake Hidden Fortress. It's like you're the dork in the back crying that Sturges' Magnificent Seven wasn't influenced by Kurosawa. Just lol. Star Wars literally started as a Magnificent Seven of Hidden Fortress

      Your entire ARGUMENT and your APPROACH to the argument belies an EXTREME CLUELESSNESS of what the DISCUSSION even is. You wrote a post, but you literally do not UNDERSTAND what you are responding to.

      Star Wars underwent 4 major revisions... and undoubtedly you are ignorant of the process (like everything else) but as the stages developed, and different people got involved and the studio mandates some changes, and as Lucas refined his story changes were made to the characters, names etc.

      But the INFLUENCE of Hidden Fortress remained... everything from the structure of the storytelling, to the thematic representation of the Jedi as future Samurai

      terrible post. embarrassment really

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  3. And... you're a douche. Qui-Gon's use of greed as an ally is indeed paralleled by the actions of Rokurota in the scene which graces the DVD cover. You also seem to have tellingly overlooked the lightsaber fight and the Jedi mind trick scene. You're calling the influence on ANH a "myth" based on nothing other than the fact that the characters are not identical or lined up in one-to-one correspondence. By this ridiculous logic, no film can be influenced by another without being a carbon-copy remake. Strawmanning about the differences between Tahei/Matashichi and R2/3PO is amusing but irrelevant. No one ever said they were identical characters or possessed of the same morality. Their separation and reunion on the sandcrawler is simply a direct parallel to events in the Kurosawa film. Then again, it's clear I "haven't seen" the film, because I noticed more of the ANH connections than you did and failed to engage in knee-jerk lazy-minded denial of the Lucas influence... because no one who had actually "seen" the film could possibly dare to disagree. ( In fact, according to the above I don't actually exist. Denial much? ) And.. Ewoks? Really?

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  4. In all honesty....why bicker about this? Both are reasonably good films, and if you look at it today....nothing can be truly original. No matter how original scriptwriters/producers try to be we are still influenced by other sources. The impact of these influences will vary from creator to creator.

    -OToole42

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  5. The writer of this really tried hard to pick out the differences instead of pointing out the GLARING simularities.

    Magnificent Seven is not a remake of Seven Samura. The cowboys don't use Katana, and all the names are different. Plus the title is different, and several characters of the supporting cast aren't in both.

    Writer FAIL.

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  6. I saw the DVD of Hidden Fortress (Criterion Collection) with additional features including an interview of George Lucas himself stating that Hidden Fortress was the basis of Star Wars. Straight from the horses mouth.

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  7. I just finished reading "Scaramouche" by Rafael Sabatini. While it's true that "Star Wars" borrows some stylistic elements from "Hidden Kingdom," the plot lines were (insert your verb here) from "Scaramouche." Even the act of (insert your verb here) was lifted from "Scaramouche." Believe it or not. But read the book, available for free on Project Gutenberg.

    The second "Star Wars" movie cements the ties to Sabatini's book (there is a recursive element to the borrowing of plots and themes). The only difference is that of consanguinity between love interests in "Star Wars."

    "Star Wars" was truly a masterpiece of unoriginality.

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  8. Leave this here, hope you like it!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEH11VwC86A

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  9. "Star Wars" was truly a masterpiece of unoriginality.


    therefore, it's the worst film ever made, I agree

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  10. Blog fail, watch the movie and George Lucas interviews, the movies are very different, but the influences are bigger than the death Star.

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  11. Total blog fail since Lucas admitted he was influenced by hidden fortresses. Total hack and lazy writing, but it's a blog so what do you expect.

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