I’ve read the Star Wars/ Hidden Fortress theory of bunch of times. But after watching Hidden Fortress I feel that other than the (admittedly) innovative idea of filming the movie from the two side characters point of view, the two movies have almost nothing in common.
The early story treatments for Star Wars follow the Hidden Fortress plot more closely. By the final edit, though, nothing’s left. At least there are actual bits of Dam Busters and 633 Squadron in there. When I hear people equate SW to Hidden Fortress, I know right away they haven’t seen both.
I’ve heard that the main thing Lucas got from Hidden Fortress was an idea of making a science fiction film like a foreign film, where it just assumes the viewer understands cultural referents without explaining them - so you get “My father fought in the Clone Wars?” And not, “My father fought in the Clone Wars, when the Republic raised an army of clones to defeat the Trade Federation’s battle droids?”, much like a Japanese film would reference, say, the Tokugawa Shogunate without needing to explain who Tokugawa was, or what a shogunate is. He wanted to recreate the sense of being slightly lost in a foreign culture, the way he was as an American watching Japanese films.
“Nothing” is a bit of an exaggeration.
The offer is sincere, and even follows the good old fashioned Sith rule of two. Whether or not Vader and Luke together could have beaten Palpatine is another question entirely. I think Vader from ESB plus Luke from The Mandalorian could have pulled it off. The versions from ROTJ might have been successful, but they would have had to get really lucky.
The first time I saw Hidden Fortress I thought the same thing. I suppose the two peasants resembled R2-D2 and C-3PO somewhat, and I think the moved used screen wipes to go from scene to scene, but I wouldn’t say Star Wars really ripped it off.
Today gives us a news story of a politician who got a 14 year old girl pregnant (when he was 18, not now) and who then invoked Romeo & Juliet as part of his defense. Which reminded me of this thread and the point that the ages of R&J were intended to lend an extra layer of tragedy to the story and reflect on their immaturity, not to normalize that sort of thing with “But being hot and heavy with 13 year old girls is just like Romeo & Juliet – how romantic! – so it’s okay!”
I don’t understand how the Beastie Boys maintain that their “Fight” song was a parody of the partying bro culture, when the video hugely glamorizes it. Either they’re lying, or they were misled by their management about the point or impact of the video, or they lost their minds and then somehow thought also that touring with giant inflatable penises on stage would communicate to their audience how much they were NOT part of the party culture.
I was just recently thinking about how my generation is transitioning from “fighting for our right to party” to “fighting for our right to Part A”…
The point of calling a near-in-age-exception-to-age-of-consent law a “Romeo and Juliet” law isn’t that Romeo and Juliet were heroic or awesome or romantic or that we want kids to be modelling their relationships on them… they’re just an extremely culturally-well-known couple who were both teenagers. So it’s just easy to grok shorthand for “having sex with someone under 16 is super bad and statutory rape… UNLESS both the people having the sex are near the same age. You know, like this very famous fictional couple”. There’s nothing more to read into than that, imho.
I didn’t mention age of consent laws at all, much less names for them.
I’m aware of Lennon’s story about Julian’s drawing being “LitSWD”, but the connection between those trippy lyrics and LSD could not be lost on John, and I’m convinced that the story he told is a defense against the pushback from drug-hating parents and media.
Also worth noting that Romeo and Juliet did not have premarital sex—they got married first. And then Romeo slew Tybalt. But only after Tybalt slew Mercutio. Now who the price of death doth owe?
They were also impetuous like most teenagers are. They couldn’t wait for things. If they could have waited like five minutes, they both prolly could have lived happily ever after.
Oh, right you are. Totally misread.
I am so stealing that.
Re-reading my post, I can see how you arrived at what you thought. I meant that he was saying “It was like Romeo & Juliet!” today, not that he used R&J as a legal defense at the time (but I can see how you might have thought I meant that). No harm, no foul.
When I went to high school the school district stupidly made it so the middle and high school were right next to each other and shared the same common area and parking lot. This meant when I was an 8th grader in middle school most of the people my age were dating or hanging out with people they met in the high school area because they could drive to get lunch among other things.
@garygnu The Searchers is a much more apparent template for Star Wars. A film school professor of mine pointed out after a screening of the Ford/Wayne film that plot elements and even specific shots are used in a pile of films from the same general era. Not just Star Wars but also Taxi Driver, Hardcore (Paul Schrader wrote both) and Paris, Texas (as well as some others I can’t recall).
Look at the scene where Luke and Ben find Luke’s homestead attacked and his aunt and uncle dead and incinerated outside. The scene directly echoes the one in The Searchers when the posse is lured away from the house and Natalie Wood’s parents are killed. The climax in which Ethan and Martin disguise themselves as natives to infiltrate the camp and rescue Debbie is echoed in Luke and Han disguising themselves as storm troopers to rescue Leia, Travis Bickle shaving his hair into a Mohawk (another Indian reference) before rescuing Iris…it goes on and on.
Among other things. I think I’m picking up what you’re putting down.