Fri Aug 22, 2003 9:12 pm by Tawakalna
although it is crud, I enjoyed Battle Beyond the Stars and still do. Bob and George were good, Sybil Danning was magnificent, John-Boy was crap though.
Incredible pedigree that film, bad as it was. Based upon The Magnificent Seven (and also starred Robert Vaughan) which in turn was based upon Seven Samurai.
Indeed without Kurosawa we might not be discussing any of this at all. His films esp. The Hidden Fortress were the inspiration for much of Star Wars and also Spielberg's output; both Lucas and Spielberg were great admirers of Kurosawa and once they'd both made it big in the late 70s they paid tribute to him by financing Kagemusha: Shadow Warrior cos AK couldnt get any backing in Japan after Dodeskaden nor abroad after he walked off Tora Tora Tora. Kagemusha paid and paved the way for AKs masterpiece Ran. And of course without Lucas and Spielberg would the SF surge of the 70s/80s ever happened? The resurrection of Trek happened only because Paramount needed a Star Wars production of their own, Battlestar Galactica because Columbia wanted one too, so there'd have been no DS9, no Voyager, no Babylon 5 (if you check the production credits you'll find a lot of BG staff later worked on TNG/DS9/Voyager/B5 hence the thematic similarities)
so without Akira Kurosawa there'd possibly have been no SW, no Trek, and poss sod all space sim PC games. Quite something that really.