This marked a radical departure from Kurosawa's earlier films, many of which balanced pessimism with hopefulness. Only "Throne of Blood", an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, had as bleak an outlook. Even "Kagemusha", though it chronicled the fall of the Takeda clan and their disastrous defeat at the Battle of Nagashino, had ended on a note of regret rather than despair. By contrast, the world of "Ran" is a Hobbesian world, where life is an endless cycle of suffering and everybody is a villain or a victim, and in many cases both. Heroes like Saburo may do the right thing, but in the end they are doomed as well. Unlike other Kurosawa heroes, like Kikuchiyo in "Seven Samurai" or Watanabe from "Ikiru", who die performing great acts, Saburo dies pointlessly. Gentle characters like Lady Sué are doomed to fall victim to the evil and violence around them, and conniving characters like Jiro or Lady Kaede are never given a chance to atone and are predestined to a life of wickedness culminating in violent death.