With Scarlett Johansson’s live-action Ghost in the Shell and a unusual version of The Magnificent Seven,Hollywood hasn’t stopped looking east for inspiration. But it’s not the Japanese who are getting uptight about cultural plunderingThe story goes that Akira Kurosawa was none too impressed by The Magnificent Seven, John Sturges’ rip-roaring 1960 reworking of the Japanese director’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai, and labelling efforts to relocate the epic to broken-down west-era Mexico,a “disappointment”, albeit an “entertaining” one.
Critics of the time were unable to see past Sturges’ failure to match the original’s obsession with rigid Japanese social forms: Howard Thompson of the unusual York Times called the remake a “pallid, and pretentious and overlong reflection of the original that lacked the “ice-cold suspense” and “superb juxtaposition of revealing human vignettes” of Kurosawa’s film.
The Japanese are thrilled that Johansson is playing an iconic manga characterContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com