Yojimbo (film) - Influence

Influence

Yojimbo ranked at #95 in Empire magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time. Both in Japan and the West, Yojimbo had a considerable influence on various forms of entertainment.

In 1962, Kurosawa directed Sanjuro, in which Mifune returns as a ronin, who claims to have the same given name, Sanjuro (meaning "Thirtysomething") but he takes a different "surname". In both films, he takes his surname from the plants he happens to be looking at when asked his name.

In 1964, Yojimbo was remade as A Fistful of Dollars, a spaghetti western directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood in his first appearance as the Man with No Name. Leone and his production company failed to secure the remake rights to Kurosawa's film, resulting in a lawsuit that delayed Fistful's release in North America for three years. In Yojimbo, the protagonist defeats a man who carries a gun, while he carries only a knife and a sword; in the equivalent scene in Fistful, Eastwood's pistol-wielding character survives being shot by a rifle by hiding an iron plate under his clothes to serve as a shield against bullets.

The 1970 film Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo also features Mifune as a similar character. It is the twentieth of a series of movies featuring the blind swordsman Zatoichi. Although Mifune is clearly not playing the same man (his name is Sassa, and his personality and background are different in many key respects), the movie's title and some of its content do intend to suggest the image of the two iconic jidaigeki characters confronting each other. Incident at Blood Pass, made in the same year, also stars Mifune in a role similar to that of Yojimbo.

Mifune's character became the model for John Belushi's Samurai Futaba character on Saturday Night Live.

In The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984), the mercenary warrior Kain (David Carradine) sets rival warlords Zeg and Balcaz against each other in a battle over a town's only well. The action is set on Ura, a desert planet with two suns.

Last Man Standing (1996), a Prohibition-era gangster thriller directed by Walter Hill and starring Bruce Willis, is an officially authorized remake of Yojimbo.

At the closing of Episode XXIII of the animated series Samurai Jack, a triumphant Jack walks off alone in a scene (and accompanied by music) influenced by the closing scene and music of Yojimbo. In Episode XXVI, Jack confronts a gang who destroyed his sandals, using Clint Eastwood's lines from A Fistful of Dollars, but substituting 'footwear' for 'mule.' The influence of Yojimbo in particular (and Kurosawa films in general) on the animated series has been noted by Matthew Millheiser at DVDtalk.

More recently, both Lucky Number Slevin and Sukiyaki Western Django have the plot of a loner caught between two warring gang bosses.

Indian movies Pokiri and Soldier have aldo borrowed heavily from the ronin archetype, who plays both sides of the antagonists and then eliminate both the parties.