Muito provavelmente.
Na Guerra nas Estrelas: A Força Desperta Conferência de Imprensa , Lawrence Kasdan, co-escritor de > The Force Awakens , admitiu que Kurosawa é um dos seus cineastas mais influentes:
Mindy Kailing: Is there any movie that you look to or thought about when you were writing this one?
Lawrence Kasdan: Oh yeah. All the movies of Akira Kurosawa have influenced me throughout my career; that's because he was the Shakespeare of cinema: he did comedy, he did action films, he did Shakespearean drama, and all of life is contained in each one of his films. Seven Samurai may be the greatest film ever made, it's... you know, it's a personal drama, it's an action picture. So when J.J. and I were working, we kept referring to that, and then we would talk about the great American movies that we loved and things that had influenced the first Star Wars, which is Howard Hawks, and John Ford, and... you know, all the... Flash Gordon. Because when George [Lucas] made A New Hope, we was influenced very much by Kurosawa and by Flash Gordon and by Wizard of Oz [...]
From Star Wars: The Force Awakens Press Conference (video below; from minute 31:00).