The funny thing is, I've been wanting to make a game or novel about this for some time now. The parallels between samurai movies and westerns is not only a source of historic cinematic greatness, it's heaps of fun. I look at the way Yojimbo was turned into Fist Full of Dollars, Seven Samurai into The Magnificent Seven... I wonder what happens when Takashi Miike of all people takes it in mind to drag some back. (synaesthesiaJP)
The funny thing is, I've been wanting to make a game or novel about this for some time now. The parallels between samurai movies and westerns is not only a source of historic cinematic greatness, it's heaps of fun. I look at the way Yojimbo was turned into Fist Full of Dollars, Seven Samurai into The Magnificent Seven... I wonder what happens when Takashi Miike of all people takes it in mind to drag some back. (synaesthesiaJP)
Yes, but Yojimbo was a deliberate response to the Westernification of "7 Samurai" -- he made a Japanese Western.
ReplyDeleteThe oddity, is that the source material wasn't a western, but hard-boiled detective fiction: Dashiel Hammett's "Red Harvest."
And then there's the "Last Man Standing" re-translation....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojimbo_(film)
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/7781/pages/RHarvest.html
Interesting! I'd known about Last Man Standing (a real mess of a film) being a re-translation of Yojimbo, but hadn't known about the Hammett connection. I love crime fiction, so I'll have to find that.
ReplyDeleteThanks!