BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS

BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS. Jimmy T. Murakami, dir. USA: New World Pictures and Orion, 1980. John Sayles, script. Roger Corman, exec. prod. James Cameron, replacement production designer; Gale Anne Hurd, production manager (Inverse).

Science-fictional updating of Akira Kurosawa's THE SEVEN SAMURAI (1954), with some influence from John Sturges' THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960). See for Nel, the motherly computer who runs the spaceship the hero uses, and for the film's ambivalent presentation of technology in general and mechanized environments in particular (good when aiding in the defense of the good people, bad when aiding the villains).

As of July 2025, reported to be available "on Blu-ray in a spiffy new 4K Ultra HD 'collector’s edition'" (Don Kaye, Inverse on line, 17 July 2025). Kaye offers a brief but useful discussion of the film.[1]

RDE, initial; update 21Jul25