Time for a movie history lesson!

Most movie fans are well aware that samurai movies—most notably Akira Kurosawa‘s 1958 film The Hidden Fortress—heavily inspired George Lucas in making 1977’s Star Wars, but it goes much deeper than that. Many don’t know the history behind it all, and a new video is here to educate all those who are interested in acquiring a little knowledge on the topic.

You can check out the video, created by YouTube channel CineFix, below.

Rubicon
Hardcover
Written by Dan Capel, Mark Long, Christopher McQuarrie
Based on works by Akira Kurosawa
Art by Mario Stilla
Archaia Entertainment
Release Date: August 20, 2013
Cover Price: $22.45

Akira Kurosawa’s work is legendary and rises beyond the test of time. It’s long lasting, and has been reinterpreted millions of times in a manner of ways, from Spaghetti Westerns to a “Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away.” Along comes Rubicon, a graphic novel from Archaia Entertainment – the newest reimagining of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, though placed in the environment of the modern Afghanistan war.

Rubicon focuses (mainly) on a group of SEALs and Special Forces, in a situational conflict in Afghanistan that is very loosely based on the Kurosawa classic. Facing a group of insurgents largely supported and controlled by the Taliban, the group of elite troops opt to focus on safeguarding a small village that harvests poppies, rather than their own base of operations.

Before those of you who are not fans of the director’s previous films and particular shooting style start to hyperventilate that Zack Snyder is not directing Star Wars: Episode VII, it looks like there’s more news on that front. The man who helmed the remake of the horror classic Dawn of the Dead and the comic book adaptations 300 and Watchmen as well as the forthcoming Man of Steel might be taking a trip to a galaxy far, far away soon after his Superman reboot hits theaters this June. He will just taking a slightly different path.

According to Claude Brodesser-Akner at Vulture, Snyder is at work on a Star Wars project over at Lucasfilm that will be “set within the series’ galaxy, though parallel to the next trilogy.” The still-untitled film will be a Jedi-heavy adventure and be loosely based on The Seven Samurai, the classic 1954 Japanese epic directed by Akira Kurosawa, the celebrated filmmaker whose movie The Hidden Fortress has been acknowledged by George Lucas as a huge influence on the original Star Wars.

Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic The Seven Samurai is undoubtedly the greatest samurai film ever made, so the news that The Weinstein Company was planning a remake was not exactly well-received by fans. But John Fusco, who was hired to script the updated version, told Geeks of Doom that his story is not a remake, but rather a re-imagining.

“I would never be crazy enough to attempt to write a remake of one of the greatest films of all time,” Fusco said in a recent interview with Geeks of Doom while promoting the upcoming DVD release for The Forbidden Kingdom. “It is simply a re-imagining.”

Kurosawa’s original film took place in feudal Japan, where a group of seven masterless samurai warriors are hired by a village of poor farmers to protect them from maraudering bandits. In 1960, director John Sturges remade the film into a Western set in Mexico called The Magnificent Seven which replaced the samurai with hired U.S. gunmen. Fusco’s re-imagining will also nix the samurai in favor of a modern-day tale of Blackwater-like paramilitary contractors defending a Northern Thailand town from an imminent attack.