- The Magnificent Seven
- Battle Beyond the Stars
- The Three Amigos
- A Bug’s Life
- Other
0 voters
Your heart-felt views and bitter arguments.
Mag7 by far. Sturges at his peak.
Are they really rip offs?
Magnificent Seven for me, but mostly because of the ones listed, it’s the only one I’ve seen other than Seven Samuri. And I do love Yul Brynner.
Shouldn’t there be two choices for The Magnificent Seven? 1960 and 2016.
“Other,” as clearly the best Seven Samurai rip-off is Xena: Warrior Princess.
No, no there shouldn’t. 
Galaxy Quest!
It wasn’t Battle Beyond The Stars. Hoo boy.
That was a Magnificent Seven pastiche.
None of these were rip-offs, maybe homage, maybe pastiche. Well, maybe Samurai 7 is.
The best? Maybe not, but def the goriest, and a better movie than you would think.
Just rewatched it last night, for the nth time.
I prefer the 1960 movie but the 2016 remake was a good movie.
I don’t think all of the examples that have been given qualify as Seven Samurai rip-off/homages.
Yes, there’s the element of a group being recruited to help a small defenseless community. But I feel an important element of the story is that it’s not an existing group; the members were recruited separately and had not previously worked together. So a major portion of the story is the members of the group learning to trust each other so they can work as a team.
Another element of the story is that the people who are recruited are all legitimate fighters, although their skills may be varied.
So I don’t feel The Three Amigos, A Bug’s Life, and Galaxy Quest qualify. Yes, these are stories about a group being recruited to help a community. But all of these stories are about a group that was recruited under mistaken apprehension; the groups are not as capable as they appear.
So while the Seven Samurai story is about a group of competent individuals having to learn how to be a team, these stories are about a group which is already a team but has to learn how to be competent.
It is kind of arbitrary to choose that as a required element. What I see as basic:
Poor and/or peaceful group.
Resources being stolen by outlaws.
Deadline for outlaws return.
Recruitment of heros on a budget.
Heros train poor group to defend themselves.
Climactic battle where outlaws are defeated.
All the movies I mention have all of the elements.
It’s a matter of interpretation.
I agree with Little_Nemo about assembling a killer team as a major theme, though I haven’t seen The Three Amigos or Battle Beyond the Stars and therefore abstain from the poll.
~Max
Three Amigos not getting enough love.
1960 Magnificent Seven.
The cast … the music … unbeatable in my opinion. 