AAlthough The Magnificent Seven is modeled so closely on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (also originally released in the USA under the title "The Magnificent Seven") that they share even some dialogue (in different languages), there are several notable differences:* Samurai's villagers are sent to town to hire swordsmen. In this remake, the villagers are sent to town originally to buy guns. Chris tells them that in fact, it will be cheaper to hire gunmen than to buy guns. Howard Hughes in Stagecoach to Tombstone says that the original screenplay for The Magnificent Seven followed Seven Samurai on this point, but was changed on the insistence of the Mexican censors.* In Samurai the reason of using a total of seven ronin was based on tactics. In Return of the Seven, Chris says "luck" is why seven gunmen are needed; implicitly it's the same reason in all the films.* Katsushiro, the aspiring young samurai, and Kikuchiyo, the would-be samurai whose hatred for the farmers hides a painful past, are combined into the single character, Chico. Unlike Kikuchiyo, Chico is not killed at the climax of the film.* The combination of Katsushiro and Kikuchiyo opens a slot for the Robert Vaughn/Lee character - a gunfighter who has lost his nerve. His pursuit of perfection in his gunplay does mirror Kyuzo.* The Katsushiro and Kikuchiyo combination also opens a slot for the character of Harry Luck, the gunfighter who is convinced there is some financial gain in protecting the village. There is no comparable character in the original (though his first scene mirrors Gorobei's first appearance), all the samurai take the job knowing there is nothing more to gain from the job than what's promised.* Another combination of sorts takes place with Bernardo O'Reilly - his first appearance is based on Heihachi's debut (chopping wood perfectly, until he hears about the opposition they face) while his scenes with the children place him closer to Kikuchiyo. Incidentally, Charles Bronson (Bernardo) would later co-star with Toshiro Mifune (Kikuchiyo) in the movie Red Sun.* In the original, the samurai make a pre-emptive strike against the bandits' campsite, losing one of their own in the process. Thus, when the bandits attack the village, the samurai are short one man, and three more are killed in the battles. In this version, that attack takes place after Calvera's band are initially driven off, and they find that the camp is abandoned.* In Seven Samurai, the village is fortified to keep the bandits out until the climactic battle. In the remake, Chris states that the new walls were built to trap the bandits inside the village.* The bandit leader Calvera plays a much larger role than any of the unnamed bandits in the original.* Chico and Katsushiro both fall in love with a farmer's daughter, but in Seven Samurai, Katsushiro's relationship with the girl leads to a dramatic confrontation, and by the end the girl recognizes the impossibility of bridging the class divide and must ignore the samurai once the fighting is over. In The Magnificent Seven, Chico's relationship never results in scandal, and he stays behind to be with the peasant girl, purposefully rolling up his sleeves in order to start laboring.* In Seven Samurai, the village elder is killed by the bandits when he refuses to abandon his house, which is an outlying house that the Samurai determined could not be protected. In The Magnificent Seven, the village elder likewise refuses to abandon his house but suffers no repercussions for it.* In Seven Samurai, when Kikuchiyo attempts to impress the other samurai by deciding on his own to infiltrate the bandit camp, he is sharply rebuked. He believes he deserves praise because of the success and daring nature of his mission. Instead, Kambei berates him for failing to operate as a member of the team, which Kambei stresses is paramount in a war effort. In The Magnificent Seven, Chico receives no such reprimand upon returning from his reconnaissance mission to the bandit camp, and in speaking about it later, he says that he is certain that the other gunmen were impressed by what he did.* In The Magnificent Seven, neither the villagers nor the gunmen initially expect a battle to the death with bandits, resulting in internal conflict when it becomes clear that such an assault is pending and not all are in favor of risking their lives. This leads to the fearful villagers betraying the gunmen in order to prevent the deadly engagement, thus allowing Calvera to capture the men. Only at the very end of the film, after the climactic battle has already begun, do those villagers who had been against the battle finally take up arms and join in the fight against the bandits. By contrast, Seven Samurai features no such competing factions among the villagers and samurai. Although the villagers in Seven Samurai are also portrayed as frightened of the samurai and momentarily regretful for hiring them, all involved know from the outset that there ultimately will be a full-scale siege of the village. As such, after the initial acceptance of the samurai into the village, the villagers and samurai remain united throughout, with all of the villagers fully participating in the conflict from the beginning. [wikipedia]
