The Magnificent Seven gets a remake

For those who don't know about the original, The Magnificent Seven is a remake of Seven Samurai as a western. The new version is directed by Antoine Fuqua with a script by Nic Pizzolatto. It look 100X better then the Ben-Hur remake with no disgusting CGI and bad camera work. Also to James Horner fans he completed the score for the movie before he tragically died and will be the last score to be released posthumously.

I'm digging it.

I hope they keep the original theme song.

The trailer makes it seem like The Magnificent Two + 5 Other People but there are so few Westerns these days that I'll still see it.

@thesteve19: It's been a long time since I saw the original, but wasn't the first one basically The Magnificent 4(Brynner, McQueen, Bronson and the young kid) with the other three not having much of a fleshing out? I could totally be wrong but I definitely need to rewatch it.

@ht101: Robert Vaughn was pretty well established as a washed up gunfighter. I don't remember much about James Coburn's character except he liked to show off his knife-throwing skills, and I don't even remember who the 7th person was.

I just wish they gave the full group a little bit more attention in the trailer. I had to go on imdb to see that Vincent D'Onofrio and Ethan Hawke were there as well.

Fuck yeah! That looks great! Some inspired casting choices, especially for an ensemble.

I thought the song choice was just a style thing and wasn't all that into it, but apparently this thing was filmed in Baton Rouge. I am so fuckin down for this actually being set in New Orleans (err, Louisiana). Oh my god.

Looks decent to me although I'm not a big fan of the way the trailer was put together.

I was amused earlier pointing out to my friend that this was technically a remake of a remake. If you have the patience and sensibilities to enjoy older films I highly recommend Seven Samurai.

Whole lot of Star Wars fans would probably have their minds blown by Yojimbo and The Hidden Fortress.

Today, I learned what posthumously means. Thank you.

Never saw the original but a modern made western sounds like it could be alright. I might end up being into this.

There's not enough Denzel in my life these days, so sure, I'll go watch this!

Meh, looks shitty.

I'm all for another take on seven samurai , but a remake of a remake? not sure about that

Looks OK, which I guess is a good sign? The Magnificent Seven isn't so great anyways, and this trailer isn't really bringing anything new to the table.


Might be a fun distraction though.

I want all remakes to die. You hear me hollywood!?!?!?! STAHP AT ONCE.

That's what I thought. I am going to assume it's in order to sell it to people. Still gonna go see it cause I love Westerns to no end.

That actually looks really really good. Not a fan of the music though. I know it's just trailer music, but uuuuugh

If God didn't want audiences sheared, he would not have made them sheep.

Honestly, the secret weapon of the original film was Eli Wallach, so I'm not really into the casting of Peter Sarsgaard as the villain. But otherwise I'm on board.

As much as I love a good western, I really don't think this is needed. The original still totally holds up.

I don't think that you can ever get more cool than Yul Brenner + Steve McQueen. Maybe if they'd cast Idris Elba and Denzel Washington they could have gotten close, but somehow I can't envision Chris Pratt as the "cool laconic western hero" type.

Also - Nic Pizzolatto? Really? How many wandering monologues about how the tarnish on a character's revolver symbolizes the decay of their dreams and the internalization of their fears is the movie going to have?

I really don't understand why you'd take a movie with a hugely iconic theme song and replace it in the trailer with yet another version of House of the Rising Sun. I swear that and All Along the Watchtower must have an annual trailer quota to hit these days.

Honestly, the more I see Chris Pratt in leading roles, the less I like him. He seems so out of place in this.

I'm loving this movie. But I'm hoping they keep the original theme song.

Could be worse. Could be a remake of Once Upon A Time In The West.

I'd watch a remake of Once Upon a Time in the West (my favorite movie of all time), as long as it was more of a reimagining in the seven samurai to magnificent seven sense. The Good The Bad and The Weird was pretty much that for the Good, The Bad and the Ugly, and it was pretty great.

So are we just matching gunshots to the beats of the trailer music now if we can't get an Inception BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHMMMMMMMMM in there? Has that been mutually agreed upon as a society?

I used to watch The Magnificent Seven in Poland in the 80's, and it's partially how my parents got me to buy into moving to America. I could be a cowboy there!

I rode a horse once and that's it, but I'm always down for a good western.

so you're telling me that we get Cowboy Denzel, Cowboy Pratt, and Cowboy Byung-hun Lee (from I saw The Devil, The Good, The Bad, The Weird)? This seems like a lot of fun. Also its cool to see diverse cowboys. Thats not super common.

Never enough.

This seems fairly different in tone and style to the original, so even though that holds up, there could be room enough for this. It seems to be doing enough interesting different things to stand out, in my opinion. Of course it could totally suck, but you know.

@rorie said:

I still can't get over how good that trench run was in The Hidden Fortress. Or when they use the giant, weaponized fortress to destroy that village.

All kidding aside, the similarities between Magnificent Seven and the Seven Samurai are much stronger than those between A New Hope and The Hidden Fortress. It's mostly the opening up until they meet the stranger, the princess, and the bumbling servants. There really isn't a Skywalker like character nor the wild imagination that produced lightsabers, TIE fighters, the Death Star, etc. That's not to say that Star Wars isn't heavily influenced by many previous films, The Hidden Fortress being the most obvious, but it's more than the sum of its parts.

As for Yojimbo... I love that film and have watched it several times, and I honestly have no idea what parts of Star Wars you think are taken from that film. A Fist Full of Dollars takes a lot of influence from that film, but Star Wars... I guess the Ronin could be similar to Han Solo in a very vague way, but that seems like an incredible stretch.

(As an aside: Yojimbo is easily one of the best Akira Kurosawa films. The Hidden Fortress? Not so much. I also recommend Drunken Angel, Rashomon, and of course Seven Samurai. )

Magnificent Seven, however, hewed so closely to the Seven Samurai that even Kurosawa felt the need to comment on the comparison. It's not a horrible film in its own right, but I think there are several other cowboy films with much more depth. The remake seems to have a good cast, but I can't help but feel that this film is hoping to ride on a trend in recent cowboy films and using the name recognition to get butts in the seats. I'll wait for the reviews.