Menace hides Kurosawa's Fortress: "George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars saga, has long acknowledged The Hidden Fortress, by the late Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, as a key inspiration for the whole Star Wars saga.

But seeing Kurosawa's 1958 masterpiece shortly after The Phantom Menace only brought home how much the apprentice, to use a Star Wars motif, owes to the master. The distance is surprisingly small between the Star Wars galaxy far, far way and Kurosawa's depiction of medieval Japan, where the bad guys use the latest death machine -- the rifle. "