The Magnificent Seven
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The Magnificent Seven is one of the English language titles for the Akira Kurosawa film Shichinin no samurai (1954), also called The Seven Samurai.
The Magnificent Seven is a John Sturges western film of 1960, a remake of Shichinin no samurai starring:
- Yul Brynner (Chris Adams)
- Steve McQueen (Vin)
- Charles Bronson (Bernardo O'Reilly)
- James Coburn (Britt)
- Horst Buchholz (Chico)
- Brad Dexter (Harry Luck)
- Robert Vaughn (Lee)
vs.
- Eli Wallach (Calvera) and his 40 bandits
Trivia
- The movie's famous theme tune was by Elmer Bernstein, later being reused in commercials for Marlboro and Victoria Bitter beer. The score was nominated for an Academy Award in 1961.
- The shot of the seven gunfighters striding toward the camera is one of the most often-copied shots in cinematic history, appearing in such diverse films as The Right Stuff and Monsters, Inc., and the opening sequence of the animated Justice League.
- The film's success inspired three sequels: Return of the Seven (1966); Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) and The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972), but none were as successful as the original film.
- The movie has also inspired a television series (The Magnificent Seven, 1998), and a parody in which a poor Mexican village hires three Western actors to protect their village from bandits (¡Three Amigos!, 1986, starring Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short).
- In Westworld, Yul Brynner played an android impersonating his black-dressed gunfighter role as "Chris Adams".
- It also inspired the Kazakh film Wild East.
- There have also been adaptations of the film's plot, notably in a German Karl May movie called "Thunder at the Border" (Winnetou und sein Freund Old Firehand) (1966), and in the science fiction movie "Battle Beyond the Stars" (1980), in which Robert Vaughn reprised his role from The Magnificent Seven.
- With the death of Charles Bronson on August 30, 2003, Robert Vaughn (Lee) is the only survivor of the seven main stars. Ironically, his character was the last of the seven hired in the film.
- This film shares three of its stars (Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn), its director and producer (John Sturges) and its composer (Elmer Bernstein) with The Great Escape. Both films also feature one of the stars of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: Robert Vaughn appeared in this film while David McCallum appeared in the later one.
- James Coburn (Britt), Brad Dexter (Harry Luck), Horst Buchholz (Chico) and Charles Bronson (Bernardo O'Reilly) all died within the same ten months.
- Although his character and the rest of his bandits are eventually defeated, Eli Wallach (Calvera) has ironically outlived all of the seven stars of the film, except for Robert Vaughn who is still alive as of 2005, despite being older than all of them besides Yul Brynner.de:Die glorreichen Sieben