The late Akira Kurosawa has been nicknamed "The Emperor", due to this iconic & influential career as a filmmaker, & the film often considered his finest is 1954's
Seven Samurai. It's influence was recognized almost immediately, too, as it would only take a scant six years for it to be imitated by another country. That film would be 1960's
The Magnificent Seven, which was directed by John Sturgens, of
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral &
The Great Escape fame. The film transposed the basic concept of a town hiring seven men to protect them from a group of bandits from Sengoku Era Japan & samurai to the Wild West & gunslingers. Sturgens' film was successful in its own right (in Europe, as it bombed in the U.S.), which resulted in it receiving three sequels: 1966's
Return of the Seven, 1969's
Guns of the Magnificent Seven, & 1972's
The Magnificent Seven Ride. None of these sequels were anywhere near as successful as the original, & have since become rather obscure & forgotten, only being known most now for being packaged with the original in recent remastered DVD & BD boxsets. In 1980, independent film legend Roger Corman went against his usual low-budget style and spent roughly $2 million to produce
Battle Beyond the Stars, a space opera that was intended to be "
Seven Samurai in Outer Space"; it wound up earning $7.5 million. Finally, in 2016,
Training Day &
Southpaw director Antoine Fuqua lead a remake of
The Magnificent Seven, which wound up doing what the original couldn't & actually become a box office hit in the United States.
Now, only one question remains:
Which of these "Seven" is the "Most Magnificent"?
Just think about it for a moment... We have seven films that are about a group of seven people coming together to save the day & protect the downtrodden, so why hasn't anyone actually tried to rank them & see which of these seven rises to the top? Therefore, I will take that challenge by watching all seven of these films and organize them here, from worst to best. Now, of course, any sort of ranking is going to be inherently subjective & personal, so if you've managed to see all of these films & feel differently about the order I wind up with, then that's perfectly fine; this is
MY list, after all. Also, before anyone asks, I am only relying on these seven theatrical-length films, mainly to keep the theme of the number seven intact, so I won't be including longer interpretations of Kurosawa's concept, namely
The Magnificent Seven's TV series adaptation from 1998 to 2000, nor PlayStation 2 video game
Seven Samurai 20XX or TV anime series
Samurai 7, which both came out in 2004 to celebrate the original film's 50th Anniversary; I can vouch that the anime is really damn good, however. So, with all of that out of the way, let's get this started. First, I'll go over each movie chronologically, & then I'll actually rank them, from weakest to "most magnificent".
