the Star Wars Sequels Were Based on a Kurosawa Movie Just Like the Original Star Wars?
by Brilliant Building / Published by Brilliant Building
Copyright 2015 Brilliant Building
DISCLAIMER
This book has not been endorsed or authorized by Lucasfilm, Disney, or the estate of Akira Kurosawa
What If the Star Wars Sequels Were Based on a Kurosawa Movie Just Like the Original Star Wars?
George Lucas has long had an open appreciation for the movies of Akira Kurosawa, and nowhere is that influence felt more keenly than in 1977’s Star Wars, an interpretation of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress set in space much in the same way that Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars resurrected Kurosawa’s Yojimbo in the Wild West. While it is tempting to see Western appreciation of Kurosawa’s films as exoticism at play, Kurosawa’s movies were domestically seen as having been tainted by the overbearing influence of Hollywood and other foreign influences (Kurosawa’s own Throne of Blood was a sturdy rendition of Macbeth), and so it isn’t so much exoticism, but a sense of underlying familiarity that drew Lucas in.
“People want more of the same, but in new dressing” is a truism that not only describes Lucas’ fascination with Kurosawa, but also the popularity of genre sequels, of which Lucas plays no small role in its domination of the average worldwide movie-going experience. The poor fan response to the prequels, however lucrative they may have been, shows that Lucas was not able to execute the “same, but in new dressing” formula for the Star Wars prequels (or the LeBoufian treatment of Indiana Jones), but perhaps his mistake was in attempting to “rhyme” with his earlier successes, instead of going back to his source material: Kurosawa movies.
A Fistful of Dollars proved that a near shot-for-shot remake of Yojimbo could work in a new setting, and could even launch the career of an iconic actor in Clint Eastwood that rivals his source counterpart in Toshiro Mifune as the titular bodyguard in Yojimbo. It would be a safe bet, then, that a Star Wars sequel also based on Yojimbo, when executed properly, would revitalize the series in a fashion in keeping with its derivative roots.
Let us first examine the “Man with no name”, Eastwood’s character in the film which echoes the pseudonymous nature of Mifune’s identity in Yojimbo. It is tempting to create a new, nameless counterpart in the Star Wars sequel -- a cool, stoic, badass Jedi protagonist. A profound skill with the light saber would be a fitting tribute to Mifune’s swordwork in Yojimbo. Could this nameless Jedi be the offspring of Luke or Leia? An interesting path to consider, but before we go too far down this road, let us remember that Yojimbo is a mercenary, with no magical powers but his training and his wits. There is clearly one character who already fits this bill; his name is Boba Fett. (Rather fittingly, the actor who played Boba Fett modeled his physical performance on Clint Eastwood.)
When we last see Boba Fett, he is the victim of the Sarlacc Pit, to be slowly digested over a millennia, so to resurrect him for the sequel, it appears some explanation is in order (in several expanded universe works, Fett's escape from the Sarlacc Pit is indeed explained), but let us not forget the mistake of the prequels in over-explaining, among other things, the origins of Boba Fett, thus severely diminishing his stature in pop culture. To restore some semblance of dignity and enigma to Boba Fett, let us refrain from making the same mistake. After the familiar Fox fanfare and title crawl, Boba Fett is introduced sans explanation with perhaps a few more teeth marks on his helmet.
Boba Fett, being already named and familiar to fans is a problem if we are to re-establish him as “The Man with No Name” but if we step back and examine what is the quintessential nature of Boba Fett, we realize he is just a suit (of Mandalorean origin). There could be anyone underneath that suit, and so long as the helmet is never removed, this uncertainty and namelessness could be maintained. Is it truly Boba Fett under that suit and vocoder, or is it a new stranger who has appropriated his effects? Let’s take some measure of care not to lean heavily one way or the other, but for the sake of continuity, let’s continue to refer to him as Boba Fett.
By the end of Return of the Jedi, we are left with the fall of the Empire and the rise of the New Republic, mirroring the conditions at the beginning of Yojimbo, where the ruling class found themselves unable to retain their samurai, leaving them to become wandering, masterless mercenaries, much as our protagonist Boba Fett does. Naturally missing from the subtext will be this particular samurai's change in status from secured retainer to masterless ronin, for Boba Fett was always a masterless ronin. Nonetheless, this installment should see Boba Fett adapting to the new times. In the original trilogy, Boba Fett is portrayed as a single-minded profiteer, pursuing Hans Solo with the generous purse of the Empire at his disposal, with the implication that once Boba Fett accepts a job, he is honor-bound to finish it. This dynamic can no longer hold in our latest chapter, in which the protagonist must constantly switch allegiances and pit two sides against each other. Yet, we must maintain the throughline that this is or could be the same Boba Fett that bested Han Solo.
So we must emphasize the other aspects of Boba Fett to maintain this continuity: his bad-assery, his fearlessness in addressing even the dreaded and mistake-intolerant Darth Vader. Moreover, his utter inscrutability might be his single most distinctive trait. Yojimbo and Fistful both play off Mifune and Eastwood as deadly rogues with an obvious (to the audience and to both movies’ respective innkeeper characters) conscience. Our adaptation must be less on-the-nose. Boba Fett is many things that we do not know or understand, but he is not a softie. We the audience must empathize with Boba Fett not through sentimentality but through his wit and cunning at survival and manipulation.
Who, then, can the audience champion as their ethical avatars? Another constant in Star Wars is the presence of the bickering “lowly” characters from Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, namely the droids C3PO and R2D2. These are elements that are in neither Yojimbo nor A Fistful of Dollars. Will they become problematic appendages to the story, as they were in the prequels, or can they enrich it? We’ll find out.
Another story problem: the two sides that Boba Fett must toy with cannot be the Republic or the Empire, as the Republic has, by the end of Return of the Jedi, dealt a most final blow to the Empire (never mind what occurs in Expanded Universe spin-offs). On the outskirts of civilization, Tatooine was never a candidate for a major Republic territorial acquisition so soon after a major military excursion in any case, so the two warring factions must rather be local, petty powers. This is a problem with an obvious solution: Jabba the Hutt has been recently killed (thanks to the chained garot of Princess Leia), leaving a power vacuum for control of the merchant district of Tatooine. There are two convenient candidates for this: one should be a smaller, less physically impressive runt of the Hutt clan vying for the throne. Rotta the Hutt has already been established as a canon offspring of Jabba. Who should be his nemesis? Bib Fortuna, Jabba’s obsequious and sinister Twi’lek majordomo, is an excellent candidate. With his master gone, and Fortuna presumably well practiced in handling the affairs of his late boss, Fortuna is well positioned to seize control.
Upon entering the town in the beginning of Yojimbo, the title character enlists the services of a reluctant and cantankerous elderly innkeeper. Let us have Boba Fett, weary from his unspoken ordeal, do the same. Who from the existing suite of Star Wars characters could fit the bill? The job naturally falls to Watto, the winged, ethnicly-problematic scrap dealer from the prequel, now appr
opriately aged and running an empty inn on the outskirts of Mos Eisley. This area of Mos Eisley is not like the bustling marketplace we’ve seen in A New Hope; it is run down and the streets are vacant, the area being the staging ground for a power struggle between Rotta the Hutt and Bib Fortuna.
Watto has seen better days. His inn is stuffed to the gills with parts from his more lucrative earlier career as a scrap dealer. To match the decrepitude of his environment, Watto’s wings have weakened and withered, and thus he can no longer fly, but rather lurches about on a cane. A great introductory shot would be to hear Watto’s distinctive gravelly voice, yet focus at the height level of what we’d expect the Toydarian to be in his more flight-capable days to see just a background of junk and parts, then pan down quickly to reveal a white-bearded Watto whose movements and lowered-height recapitulate that of Yoda, in deference to Lucas’ obsession with “rhyming.”
Outside Watto’s inn, let’s meet an annoying human who reminds us of young Luke Skywalker’s impatience to get away from a farmer’s life to join the excitement of being a gangster. This unnamed
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