Almost everyone you know loves - or at the very least knows - Star Wars, making George Lucas one of the most popular directors around.
What about your favourite director’s favourite film though?
When George Lucas was making Star Wars, what was his go to watch to inspire him to bring the characters of Luke, Leia, and Obi-Wan to life? See the trailer here:
The answer is Seven Samurai, a legendary film with a perfect Rotten Tomatoes that is responsible for Lucas’ sci-fi masterpiece.
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The film may be an old one – but trust me when I say it is an absolute must watch.
Seven Samurai may seem full of tropes, but that is only because the Akira Kurosawa epic was the film that made all those tropes happen.
It follows a group of villagers who hire samurai to protect their village from bandits who continually raid the area.
Similar thematically to a western, it was the most expensive Japanese film ever made at the time, and is considered one of the most influential ever.
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It has a 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, and it was so influential to George Lucas that he tried to cast the lead of the film in two different iconic Star Wars roles.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Seven Samurai star Toshiro Mifune’s daughter Mike said that her father turned down the role of both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader.
She said: “I heard from my father that he was offered the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but he was concerned about how the film would look and that it would cheapen the image of samurai, on which George Lucas had based a lot of the character and fighting style”.
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Lucas has openly spoken in the past about how both Seven Samurai and Hidden Fortress, another film by the same director, heavily influenced his film.
Seven Samurai is not just beloved by critics though, with the movie being the fourth highest rated film on Letterboxd, ranking above icons such as The Godfather: Part 2, Shawshank Redemption, and Schindler’s List.
Legendary film director Roger Ebert gave the film a perfect four out of four in his review of the film back in 2001.
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The Guardian’s film critic, Peter Bradshaw, said in his 2021 five star review of the film: “Akira Kurosawa’s tale of ascetic mercenaries brought together for a single job inspired endless imitations, but the original has lost none of its magic.
“Having been inspired by Hollywood westerns, Kurosawa saw his own film remade as The Magnificent Seven, going on to inspire films from The Dirty Dozen to Ocean’s Eleven; it was originally six samurai, but like Ingmar Bergman and Walt Disney, Kurosawa was to see the totemic power of seven.
One of the highest liked reviews on Letterboxd gave it five stars, stating: “One of those where you finish it and kinda just sit there in disbelief that this is a movie that exists. Sheesh, what a monster.”
Topics: Star Wars, Film, TV and Film
Michael Slavin