Akira Kurosawa’s unstoppable influence on ‘Star Wars’
While the Star Wars films are cultural forces in their own right, as with any cinematic works, they also drew heavily in terms of their inspirations from several other parallel realms of film. Take, for instance, the dusty landscapes of Tatooine and their rather obvious homage to the golden age of the western and their creaking saloon bars.
While this much is true, one particular point of influence for George Lucas’ Star Wars offerings appears to be from the master of Japanese cinema, Akira Kurosawa, and his 1958 film The Hidden Fortress. Kurosawa’s adventure film focuses on two peasants who help a man and a woman cross enemy lines without knowing that they are a general and a princess.
Immediately, this sounds familiar. While The Hidden Fortress is told from the perspective of the peasants Tahei and Matashichi, Star Wars arguably used R2-D2 and C-3PO to represent them in its universe, as perhaps droids are the equivalent of peasants. After all, they are used as commodities, even though they clearly have unique personalities.
Lucas once told the BBC: “The one thing that really struck me about The Hidden Fortress was the fact that the story was told from the [perspective of] the two lowest characters. I decided that would be a nice way to tell the Star Wars story, which was to take the two lowest characters, as Kurosawa did, and tell the story from their point of view, which in the Star Wars case is the two droids.”
So too, are the characters of the general and the princess used to significant effect. When the peasants are wandering in the forest, they come across and old, wisened army general by the name of Makabe Rokurota, but they do not know his history. In many ways, this is similar to the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi; he is an old, hardened and now-anonymous Jedi Knight.
Interestingly, George Lucas had considered frequent Kurosawa collaborator Toshio Mifune (who played Makabe in The Hidden Fortress) for the role of Obi-Wan (and later Darth Vader), but he turned it down. At the climax of The Hidden Fortress, Makabe confronts his old enemy Hyoe Tadakoro after sneaking into his clan’s camp. And let’s not forget that Obi-Wan faces his old foe, Darth Vader, in Revenge of the Sith.
Similarly, as with Obi-Wan and Makabe, perhaps Princess Leia is analogous to Princess Yuki of The Hidden Fortress. After all, they are also both secret princesses, both in danger and both the unacknowledged leaders of a rebel cause. One particularly glaring similarity comes when Princess Yuki’s true identity is covered by swapping places with a young female slave, while Princess Leia is switched with Padme in The Phantom Menace.
Yet the characters are not the only analogy between the two films. So too, do the enemy forces in both Star Wars and The Hidden Fortress don a crest of striking similarity: the Galactic Empire is undoubtedly akin to the Yamana Clan in this light. And elsewhere, Lucas was apparently inspired by the editing choices of Kurosawa as Star Wars’ iconic ‘wipe transitions’ are almost definitely in homage to Kurosawa’s 1958 classic. So evidently, this is a case of one legendary filmmaking paying homage to another.
