Somehow, I had misread a synopsis of the film which gave me the idea that the plot was somewhere along the lines of "two men hear that a princess has been captured and set out to rescue her." It wasn't too long to find out that I had made a mistake, but I was by no means disappointed with the film. I also wanted to see what role Takashi Shimura played in the film.
--
I did see STAR WARS first. Before the age of video and DVD (and even the explosion of cable), the only time Kurosawa's movies were featured were on PBS, and not all of the time. When I saw it available on VHS (in the 1990s), that was the first time I was able to see it, (and of course had heard about how much it influenced Lucas for SW).
SW takes many elements from THE HIDDEN FORTRESS like the two bickering peasants who would evolve into R2-D2 and C3-PO in Lucas' movies.
As for Takashi Shimura, who plays the older general here, this was the time where Toshiro Mifune was becoming the ultimate superstar in Japan, and for the older Shimura, his roles were becoming limited in Kurosawa's films, where as in the past the two were equally billed (much like say Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas here in the States).
Yea, I think the main inspiration was the way in which the story was told through the eyes of lesser characters who bickered with one another. Still, I think that C-3PO and R2D2 are a few steps down from Tahei and Matakishi. Still, one can easily see Lucas' inspiration from Japanese theatre. I heard a bit of trivia somewhere that the term Jedi itself originates from a form of Japanese theatre called, and I know I'm butchering the spelling, Jedi Geki.
Poor Lucas. Star Wars was meant to be a kid's film in order to allow him the chance to get into mainstream cinema and start making his art films and he will never escape from underneath the shadow of Star Wars. Of course, if he ever felt like crying himself to sleep over that, I'm sure his millions will be there to comfort him. :)
--
[deleted]
They wouldn't prevent me from it. They just wouldn't be the main draw.
shareI was originally enticed to see the movie BECAUSE of the STAR WARS connection (well, that and the fact that I had seen SEVEN SAMURAI, and it was AMAZING). I was, to say the least, heartily impressed and am looking forward to checking out more of Kurosawa's filmography.
By the way, maybe it was just me, but I didn't think that THE HIDDEN FORTRESS had as many parallels with SW as a lot of people say; obviously there's some basic similarities (telling the story through the eyes of two bickering/comedic side characters, the feisty princess, the aging General), but I've read reviews that basically claim that SW is a veritable re-make of Kurosawa's film, which is ridiculous.
but I've read reviews that basically claim that SW is a veritable re-make of Kurosawa's film, which is ridiculous.
I think some have mistaken this as being a remake rather than being but just one of many inspirations for SW. Lucas took a hodge-podge of many ideas and melted them into his own stories. Other movie references I can see for SW were THE WIZARD OF OZ, THE DAM BUSTERS and THE SEARCHERS. Even add some other Kurosawa films like SEVEN SAMURAI and YOJIMBO. But it can't be denied that THE HIDDEN FORTRESS was a huge influence so much so that Lucas' original draft called for the two droids, the princess and an aging Jedi general as her protector, before eventually turning that to Luke Skywalker.
Despite what is mentioned in this film's IMDb's "trivia" section...the evidence
seems to suggest that this movie was more of an inspiration for "Star Wars" than Mr. Lucas (now) admits.
The idea of "two men hear that a princess has been captured and set out to rescue her.", can not even be attached to the earlier incarnations of "Star Wars".
Looking at the Ralph McQuarrie conceptual art, created in the pre-production
phase of "SW-ANH", there is little to suggest the "two men and a captive princess" concept. There are suggestions that, at this early stage, the main male character was a combination "Han Solo"-ish and "Ben Kenobi"-ish character. Even more startling, is that early on, the lead character (the Tatooine farm kid) was female! See the main image on McQuarrie's site:
[url]http://www.ralphmcquarrie.com/galleries/SW/sw.html[\url]
In fact, when viewing the artwork, as well as reading the accompanying text
(from editions of items printed and sold back in the late 1970's), there is very little to suggest that Lucas had written (in detail) the entire saga years earlier (as legend likes to tell us).
So, at least the way I see it. Lucas borrowed a lot from "A Hidden Fortress" - more than he now wishes to admit.
Being a "Star Wars" nut and having read a few of "Star Wars" in it's earlier script incarnations I would have to agree with you that "The Hidden Fortress" originally had a very large influence on the story George Lucas was developing.
Although I have to correct you on something. At the earliest stage the lead character (who eventually became Luke Skywalker) was indeed male, but at various points was changed into a female and back again. But the whole development of "Star Wars" is a fascinating and strange evolution, it chopped and change so many times, even when production got underway.
On the interview for the Eastern Eye Region 4 DVD (Criterion in the US/Region 1?) Lucas explained that it started closer and evolved from there, into the "Star Wars" we know. Which is pretty much the truth. Looking at the finished product the strongest influence "The Hidden Fortress" had was definitely on C-3PO and R2-D2, and everything else is secondary or even tertiary.
I am also guilty of watching this because of Star Wars and I was fortunate to get it at the library where I saw some connections but other wise two seperate films both of whom are good.
shareI'm also guilty of seeing The Hidden Fortress because I'm a huge Star Wars fan. I suppose some Kurasawa fans are sick and tired of seeing so many Star Wars fans posting on this forum, and to some extent I can't blame them. It seems The Hidden Fortress is rarely mentioned these days without the Star Wars connection, and perhaps some purists feel the film isn't being recognized on it's own merits. But, as I and others watched the film because of it's direct influence on George Lucas, both this film and Akira Kurasawa gain a larger audience because of it. Having watched the Seven Samurai about a month ago on cable, and now The Hidden Fortress, I've gained an appreciation for Kurasawa's work, and I'm now interested in exploring more of his work. If some people are exposed to The Hidden Fortress and Kurasawa because of Star Wars, and become fans as a result, I don't see that as such a bad thing.
shareI'm a huge fan of Star Wars and I did watch it before I had seen this film, and I'm glad I had seen Star Wars before hand, mainly because I loved the characters so much in the Star Wars movies that seeing so very similar characters again in an even better movie that inspired such a great set of films made it much more enjoyable.
"The world will look up and shout "save us"... and I'll whisper, no"
Yes, that's the movie quote.
Your title question and your post content have nothing to do with each other, it seems. Why not? Why not rather elaborate on your question than explain your experience with the synopsis?
Anyways, it's a loaded question, and I can't really answer it directly without using too many negatives.
But I can say that I am watching it because of Star Wars - I wanted to see how much truth there is to the claim that Star Wars is just a rehash or rip-off of this movie. I mean, I know the famous Yojimbo hand-slicing scene (which contradicts later claims about how light sabers work) is pretty close to the original, and those two peasants walking in a 'deserty' (not sure if this is a word) scenery did have some kind of resemblance to two droids walking in the desert.
I wonder if "Anakin" got his name from those two peasants often saying "Aniki" to the general..
Anyways, I have now watched approximately one hour and 56 minutes, and so far I haven't been able to find much resemblance to Star Wars besides what I mention above.
People speculate in another thread, why the princess yells constantly, and I have wondered the same thing about many old movies. "Tough men" and the princess seem to use 'tough', very rough and aggressive-sounding tone and intonation all the time. I think it's quite ridiculous - the japanese don't really talk that way, not women or men.
Only when they want to be funny, or MAYBE when they get angry, they may deliberately use such way of speaking, but generally, that doesn't seem to be a very natural way of expressing yourself, whether anger, fear, or another emotion.
Like others have speculated, perhaps she talks that way because she's a spoiled BRAT, who tries to imitate how she thinks a male character would speak (but female ideas of what men are like always fail, because they have been indoctrinated that men are aggressive, stupid thugs and brutes, although they have written the most beautiful songs, created the most beautiful buildings (actually, ALL the buildings in the world), endlessly sacrificed and worked themselves to death just so women could have everything they have, all in all are better and more balanced human beings than women have ever shown to be).
It's pretty insulting how quickly people even here started saying things like men are arrogant and aggressive, without really knowing the truth at all. Sure, some men -can- be aggressive or arrogant, but have you ever truly looked at what women are like and what they do in the world? What irrelevant things they pursue! How they treat innocent men, especially those in low status! How much they lust for babies, handbags and shoes!
But anyways, going back to the point..
.. if you ask: "Who watched this because of Star Wars", I could almost answer: "I did" (though not yet, because it's a long movie, and still going on.. but hopefully in the future, you never know).
The reason why I started watching this movie is it's relation to Star Wars, to put it another way.
Though now the princess is singing about 'life of men', as if she could know anything about it, and comparing it to an insect, in a horrible voice (almost as horrible as her 'normal' voice in this movie), so I am not sure if I am going to be able to even endure until the end, there's still approximately 15 more minutes to go..
In any case, the rumors about Star Wars and this movie are false. The two peasants do not do anything C3P0 and R2-D2 do, the dialog is not the same, the motivations are not the same - "two entities in a desert" is not really enough to call it a rip-off. So I don't understand what the fuss is about. Nothing about this movie says "Star Wars" or vice versa.
Just another one of those weird quirks of this planet, I guess. Hard to understand why anyone would think this movie has -anything- to do with Star Wars. I don't expect light sabers and landspeeders, but I did expect a Darth Vader-like character (perhaps with a typical samurai war mask that would resemble it), I did expect some kind of emperor and I did expect AT LEAST a similar storyline.
This post is not very coherent, I know, but I'd like to add one more thing that I realized when reading the 'original synopsis' or whatever - Lucas made it very masonic for some reason. Anyone who deliberately CHOOSES the number 33 for any purpose, can't be doing so purely because of coincidence, but there has to be something behind it.
Also, 'Stormtroopers' originally seemed to be some kind of 'Devil Dogs' (or something, I forgot already), which is a name that seems to be lifted from the movie (or whatever it was) that was mentioned when discussing how Darth Vader got his looks. But also a masonic name, as they do worship that very entity - hence it's nowadays worshipped everywhere. They even made movies like "Hell Boy", which whitewashes demons to be some kind of 'good guys' that you should root for!
But even the original synopsis doesn't really seem to have much to do with this weird film. We don't really even get to see the fortress in this movie, hidden or otherwise. Maybe it means that the fortress is hidden from the camera, who knows.
I consider this movie another Kurosawa waste of time, and would much rather watch any Star Wars movie episode (the "prequels", I-III are not "Star Wars" movies despite the name, Lucas being involved, and whatnot) gladly.
Not that I appreciate Star Wars movies all that much - they are a bit childish, annoying, limited, predictable, corny, and have so many moronic decisions and faults about them that it'd take a lot of energy to list them all (from the stupidly weak Stormtrooper armors to their typically movielike 'amazing accuracy').
But even them are better than this, boring, superficial, materialistic, inhuman yell-fest.
I'd heard a lot about it, ... but I can't say whether the Star Wars connection influenced me or not to watch it.
What I do know is that I love Kurosawa films.
I wanted to watch it (and Seven Samurai) for years because of Star Wars (and an interest in "japanese stuff~") but it wasn't until I started getting into film that I finally watched it. Of course, at that time, I still had something of Star Wars in mind, and the film was disappointing on that front... but only on that front. I love it more and more every time I watch it. When I'm watching The Hidden Fortress, Star Wars is about the last thing on my mind.
shareI love Star Wars, and was interested in seeing how this influenced that, but that's not how I found out about it or why I wanted to watch it. I found out about it because of Criterion Collection, who I can pretty confidently blind buy from, and I wanted to watch it because 1. Kurosawa and Mifune are both great 2. the plot sounded really entertaining 3. like I said, Criterion movies are generally good. Star Wars is just a bonus
However, I convinced my friend to watch it with me because of the Star Wars influence