There were a number of notable parallels between George Lucas's Star Wars and Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, encoming story beats, characterization, and even villainous crests. The Hidden Fortress was about a princess committed to rebellion, a shrew old general, and two bumbling comic relief characters trying to escape enemy territory and return the princess to her family. The plot summary alone shared lineage with 1977's Star Wars, also known as A New Hope, but the connections ran far deeper than that.
The Hidden Fortress was one of Akira Kurosawa's samurai movies, a sub-genre of Japanese cinema whose sense of almost mythical adventure can be compared to American Westerns. Indeed, Kurosawa himself was heavily influenced by legendary director John Ford's Westerns, just as Lucas was inspired by Kurosawa when creating his seminal space opera. Lucas, as a self-professed film fanatic, told the Criterion Collection in 2001, "The Hidden Fortress is not top of my (Kurosawa) list, but I was impressed, and I liked it." The Hidden Fortress might not have been Lucas's favorite Kurosawa, but it clearly made a lasting impression given its similarities with Star Wars.
Both Films Open With A Battle Scene
The first similarity is that both opened with a battle scene that immediately set the tone of conflict and turmoil. After its iconic crawl, the malevolence of Star Wars' Empire was introduced by stormtroopers, led by Darth Vader, boarding and massacring a Rebel ship after discovering that Princess Leia had stolen the schematics for the Death Star. The Hidden Fortress opened with the two peasant narrators, Tahei and Matashichi, being captured by the Yamana clan and forced to dig for treasure under Akizuki Castle with other prisoners. The Yamana, effectively an Empire proxy themselves, then suffered a prisoner revolt in a massive battle in which Tahei and Matashichi escaped.
R2-D2 & C-3PO Are The Peasant Narrators
Tahei and Matashichi in The Hidden Fortress bore an uncanny resemblance to Star Wars' C-3PO and R2-D2. Not only were both pairs caught in the crossfire of their films' opening battles, but they offered comic relief to complement the more straightforwardly heroic of their group. Star Wars' R2-D2 and C-3PO shared further similarities with the peasants, including getting roped into helping their respective princesses, albeit the droids knew theirs beforehand, and both were enslaved near the beginning of their films.
Obi-Wan Kenobi Is The Veteran Samurai General
Both general figures end up saving each film's princesses. In The Hidden Fortress, Rokurōta decided to save Princess Yuki of the Akizuki as part of his plan to escape Yamana territory. They aimed to escape to the neighboring state of Hayakawa, where safety was promised by an ally in Hayakawa's lord. Obi-Wan, however, had no idea that Princess Leia was on the Death Star in Star Wars, so his plan was not pre-meditated. Still, there were similarities in their wise and authoritative personalities, as well as their being fallen generals from a side defeated by an oppressive regime in the form of The Hidden Fortress's Yamana clan or Star Wars' Empire.
Star Wars & The Hidden Fortress Use Wipe Transitions
Star Wars was famous for its various wipe transitions, from simple diagonal wipes to a famous clock-wipe that transitioned from the droids being captured by Jawas during Tattooine's nighttime, into a stormtrooper searching the horizon for the droids during Tattooine daytime. Lucas intended these transitions to evoke the pulpy, serial form of storytelling that inspired his space opera, and it became a staple of the series. Every subsequent film and the majority of its subsequent TV shows have used wipe transitions at some stage. However, wipe transitions were also an editing technique that Kurosawa was fond of, which probably influenced Lucas's own affection for them.
Princess Leia & Princess Yuki Lead Rebellions
Perhaps Lucas's most overt Star Wars reference and homage to Kurosawa was the parallel characterizations of Princesses Leia and Yuki. Both were princesses in danger from the Empire and from the Yamana, but neither were helpless damsels in distress. Rather, they were charismatic, shrewd, and hyper-competent leaders of a rebellion against an oppressor. George Lucas also possibly nodded to a key Yuki moment in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, when Pé used a decoy and disguised herself as a handmaiden. The moment evoked a scene in The Hidden Fortress when Yuki had a body double act as a decoy while disguising herself as a deaf-mute slave girl.
Kenobi Fights An Old Student
On the Death Star, Obi-Wan confronted his former pupil Darth Vader in one of Star Wars' most memorable scenes. Around halfway into The Hidden Fortress, the group was spotted by a Yamana patrol and Rokurōta was forced to kill them before they alerted the rest of the Yamana army. As Rokurōta chased stragglers into a Yamana camp, he was spotted by his former student and rival, Hyoe Tadokoro. Tadokoro expressed his regret that the pair never fought in battle and challenged Rokurōta to that belated duel.
There was one crucial distinction between the two. While in Star Wars, the general figure Obi-Wan accepted defeat and death by Vader's hand, the general won in The Hidden Fortress. Rokurōta spared Tadokoro and informed him that they'll soon meet again, before stealing a horse from the camp and riding back to the group.
The Villain's Crest
The family crest of The Hidden Fortress's Yamana clan was strikingly similar to the Empire's scary crest in Star Wars. The Hidden Fortress's plot was partly based on Japanese history, and the Yamana was one of Japan's most powerful clans during the Muromachi period in the 14th and 15th centuries. Their territory, however, was set on the other side of Japan to the Akizuki and there was no recorded conflict between the two, while their real crest looked nothing like the ominous design in Kurosawa's film. Still, the film's crest clearly inspired Lucas. The sequel trilogy's First Order based its own crest on the old Imperial symbol and, in turn, became its own spin on the Yamana's.
The Villain Redeems Himself At The End
Both The Hidden Fortress and Star Wars, or more specifically Return of the Jedi, granted redemption to their central villains during their respective climaxes. Darth Vader was inarguably the original trilogy's main villain, as two decades after Palpatine seduced Vader to the dark side he had become a malevolent and powerful presence in the universe. Yet Vader threw Palpatine down the Death Star reactor shaft in Return of the Jedi to save his son, Luke Skywalker.
Likewise, after being beaten by the Yamana clan lord for letting Rokurōta escape earlier in the film, Tadokoro betrayed the Yamana and freed the imprisoned Rokurōta and Yuki, who were set to be executed. He then distracted the guards so that the heroes could ride away, after coming to realize that the Yamana clan was cruel and that he was complicit in their atrocities. Their villain redemption arcs are just one of the many parallels between The Hidden Fortress and Star Wars.
