This weekend I watched one of my favorite Westerns, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. For the first time, it fell in my eyes... why? Because, for the first time, I'd watched it back-to-back with THE SEVEN SAMURAI, on which it was based. I'd seen the Akira Kurosawa film once before and was impressed, but thought it went on too long. This time I found an increased appreciation for it. And right after, the next movie I pulled out was the remake. All of a sudden, I could see what came from where, what had been added, left out, changed completely, and which scenes now seemed "forced", "awkward", or just didn't make much sense! I'd never thought it about it much before, and let little things slide because the film as a whole works so well. But I was really surprised at the problems I found with it-- now, after all these years!
By the way, the biggest "change" may be that 2 of the main characters in the original (the young man who looks up to his older colleagues and falls in love, and the wild, cranky ex-farmer who fights for acceptance, played by Toshiro Mifune) were COMBINED in one part (Hort Buchholz), while the leader of the bandits, who was virtually faceless in the original become one of the biggest personalities in the remake (Eli Wallach's "Calvera"). Typical "Hollywood" rewrite!
By comparison, when YOJIMBO was remade as A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, Sergio Leone kept so close to the original, in places it was almost a shot-for-shot redo-- except with LESS humor. (Gonna have to pull THEM out next! After 23 years, I STILL get a kick out of having a VCR...)
