I've been reading
The Secret History of Star Wars recently. (A free PDF download. Informative book, but very poorly written. 524 pages that could be easily cut in half with better editing.)
Anyway, the book talks about how
Hidden Fortress influenced Lucas in the story and style of Star Wars. So I gave it a watch. Pretty good movie. I liked it. According to The Secret History of Star Wars, the plot and storyline of the first draft scripts of the Star Wars were taken directly from Hidden Fortress. The theatrical release of Star Wars doesn't have the same plot, but it has some similar elements that remain. What's interesting though is, from what I saw, there are even elements from Hidden Fortress that seemed to show up in Phantom Menace. The swipe cuts in all the Star Wars movies also seemed to be taken directly from Hidden Fortress.