Akira Kurosawa

Do you like Star Wars? How about Lord of the Rings? Harry Potter? Dune? What about The Matrix? Would you like to see elements of all of those and more in the skeleton of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai? If the answer to any of that is yes, Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire is the movie for you.Rebel Moon is a cacophony of sci-fi tropes. Pieces are clipped from every inch of sci-fi history and put back together into one big package. Which, admittedly, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Every film you’ve ever…

When Rebel Moon releases in theaters this week (and on Netflix next week) it’ll mark the end of a 10-year journey. A journey that began with a 2013 rumor that director Zack Snyder was working on some kind of Star Wars movie. That rumor, it turns out, was not true. At the time, Snyder had the idea of taking one of his stories and putting it into the world of Star Wars, but it never got much further than that. You can’t help but wonder though, in the words of another Disney-owned franchise, “What if?” Andor Episodes 1-3…

In the early 2010s, not long after Man of Steel, director Zack Snyder met with Lucasfilm to pitch a stand-alone Star Wars movie to be directed by him. The partnership didn’t work out, but a decade later, Netflix embraced the idea with open arms, a sizable budget, and the option to turn Rebel Moon into two movies. But the bones of Star Wars, like the rusting remains of an AT-AT, still remain inside. The question is, how much does Snyder realize they’re still there?Spoilers of the Week | June 3rdIn a sprawling look at the…

Image: Lucasfilm/Cartoon NetworkDuring last week’s Star Wars Celebration, Lucasfilm provided a brief look at its upcoming series The Acolyte. The new show bucks the trend of other recent shows in the franchise by focusing on the Sith during the time of the High Republic. And one of the big quotes going around at the time came from showrunner Leslye Headland, who revealed how she pitched the show to Lucasfilm: “It’s Frozen meets Kill Bill.”The Rings of Power | First FandomsThat’s an interesting comparison to use, and when…

The Assassin’s Creed franchise has been going for so long that a good amount of its fanbase has literally grown up with it. Ever since it first stealthed its way to audiences’ hearts in 2007, the games have used its sci-fi memory hopping framing device to jump around from time period to time period. Those time periods are paramount to the franchise, and at this point are one of the biggest factors in determining if a particular entry is worth picking up.But if there’s one notable gap that Ubisoft has avoided across the…

Sony’s determined to make as many of its first-party PlayStation games into films or TV shows as possible, with the most immediate of the bunch being Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us becoming a TV show for HBO. Also on the hypothetical adaptation docket is the samurai open-world game Ghost of Tsushima, who locked down John Wick’s Chad Stahelski to direct earlier in the year.And while the film is a ways off, partially because Stahelski is a pretty busy man, he did reveal that his plan for the film involves the film being…

Ghost of Tsushima — Reviewed on: PS4. Release date: July 17, 2020. Price: Rs. 3,999 (India), $60 (US), £55 (UK). Director: Nate Fox, Jason Connell. Cast: Daisuke Tsuji, Kazuya Nakai, Patrick Gallagher, Minae Noji, Hira Ambrosino, and Keisuke Hoashi. Rating: 18 (PEGI), M (ESRB). PS4 Pro Enhanced: Yes.Yellow ginkgo leaves blow across the screen and tall pampas grass swirl in an unrelenting wind. A murder of crows circle a battlefield drenched in blood. Giant waves crash onto rocks along the shore, spraying water in every…

Star Wars creator George Lucas has never been shy of acknowledging his debt to the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. In the early ‘70s, as Lucas began developing the first film, he looked to Kurosawa's 1958 Edo-era period drama The Hidden Fortress. It tells the story of a civil war through the eyes of two peasants, the lowest characters. It's why Star Wars is told from the viewpoint of two droids, the lowest characters. The Jedi, meanwhile, are essentially Lucas' take on ronin — masterless samurai — who were…

When racism shows up in fandom, it becomes an issue that everyone has to deal with, but the burden falls hardest on fans of color. While social media support is great, and videos addressing racism are even better, it’s simply not enough. Something’s got to change.In late May, Lucasfilm released the first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi and held its premiere at Star Wars Celebration, the first of the franchise’s official conventions since 2019. Fans were thrilled to see Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen return to square…