Peter Jackson studied Kurosawa's Seven Samurai to understand how to shoot desperate, ragged warfare — the kind where mud and exhaustion matter as much as choreography. The Battle of Pelennor Fields learned from Kurosawa's understanding that beauty and brutality can exist in the same frame. Jackson documents this explicitly in the Appendices of the extended edition. Seven Samurai taught him that epic action requires humans who get tired, who hesitate, who fail. The film is streaming on Criterion Channel.
Films That Influenced The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
