Originally posted by mephistodesigns
and, is the Searchers a western? because a lot of western movies in that time were totally ripped from Kurosawa's movies. The Magnificient Seven is basically the US version of the Seven Samurai. So maybe the similarities to the Searchers is actually the same similarities to Hidden Fortress.
Oddly enough, though, the Seven Samurai was based on a Western, which, as Kurosawa says, is why he did not mind.
Actually Ushgarak I'm pretty sure you have it the other way around. Seven Samurai was filmed in 1952 I think and it was ripped off quite allot by American studios at the time. The magnificent Seven was done after Seven Samurai and pretty much took the whole story and just changed it from Samurai to Cowboys.
OOPs should have read the other posts...already mentioned ...errmm
Sigh... please read what I said. I was specifically referring to that thing, I even quoted the post talking about it.
As I said, Kurosawa did not mind that the Magnificent Seven ripped off his story, because he had already based the original on a Western (in fact several, but most notably 1939's Stagecoach). Same deal with Yojimbo, which he based on Westerns and then got bounced back into Fistful of Dollars (and Last Man Standing, which wasn't a Western but may as well have been)... Everyone was just copying the hell out of each other.