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"Automatically ok"? Not necessarily. But in cases where it makes sense, at a stretch even "plot sense" for the character to be there; yeah, I think that is OK.

The Last Samurai isn't a documentary. But, the general historical justification for Tom Cruise's character being in Japan is pretty much valid. Meiji was interested in the West -- clothes, technology, weapons, and military. He actually did hire Westerners to train his army, although from what I read it sounds like they were German, French, and Italian rather than American. Still, the movie portrays the general situation/setting with at least *decent* broad-strokes historical accuracy. LOADS of movies deviate from even this degree of historical accuracy *way* more without drawing complaints; particularly if their main purpose is entertainment and not education / documentary.


Your hypothetical reverse movie makes some valid criticisms. Even though it would have been historically possible for a Westerner to be in Japan at the time -- even to be involved with training a Western-style military -- it would be unlikely for such a person to get captured, run into a Shogun that speaks English, become a badass (or at least passable) samurai warrior, and end up playing a major role in politics and significantly influencing Emperor Meiji.

My defense against those criticisms is that, for me at least, the movie is entertaining; which is kinda the point. Your "Union Samurai" movie might be equally entertaining and therefore given an equal pass on historical inaccuracies by me.

The whole characters as a "lens through which the audience can appreciate a culture/history outside their own" issue is (slightly) more weighty to me. I don't think those are often necessary, but I don't feel like my intelligence is being insulted if the movie maker feels that they are in order to sell tickets.

I love the Chinese historical novel "Three Kingdoms". A few years ago, John Wu made the movie "Red Cliff", mostly about one particular battle in the historical period portrayed in that book. For the Chinese audience, Wu made the movie in two parts, summed up about four and a half hours long. For the US / West, he made a version trimmed to just over two hours. Why? Because he (and a team of market researchers, I'm sure) knew that very few Westerners would go to see a 4+ hour long movie, entirely in Mandarin Chinese (with subtitles), about a piece of Chinese history from ~1800 years ago that very few in the West have ever heard of or know anything about.

I think the full 4+ hour long movie is great. In my personal top 10 favorite movies of all time, ahead of most Hollywood stuff. But I also understand that there's no way that movie would appeal to all but a tiny, tiny fraction of Western viewers in that full-on 4+ hour format. But, even though I personally think the cut-down 2 hour "US" version is drastically inferior to the full cut, I am glad that he made it because it gives a suitably accurate introduction to the subject matter to more people in the West (just like the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Dynasty Warriors" videogames do), and makes that tiny, tiny fraction of Western people that know anything about it a little less tiny. While being entertaining along the way.

For other movies, sometimes the best way that a filmmaker can sell a movie to an audience that otherwise might not accept it (at least in large enough numbers to justify the production costs) may be to insert one of these "lens" characters for the audience to identify with. I don't think there is inherently anything wrong with that. It might not work for movies that are taking a more hardline approach to historical / contextual accuracy (ie., if Tom Cruise showed up in "Red Cliff" in circa 200AD China), but outside of those situations, if that is what the studio thinks it will take to sell tickets... Cool.

The Last Samurai is, like @ChaosEngine said, a movie primarily about an outsider learning a new culture (and accepting his own past). He serves as that lens character, but actually the hows and whys of his character arc are the main points of interest in the movie, at least to me.

I'm sure that an awesome, historically accurate movie could be made dealing with young Emperor Meiji, Takamori (who Katsumoto seems to be based on in The Last Samurai), and the influence of modernization on Japanese culture at the time. It could be made with no Western "lens" character, no overt influence by any particular individual Westerner, and be entirely in Japanese. But that movie wouldn't be The Last Samurai, wouldn't be attempting to serve the same purpose as The Last Samurai, and very likely wouldn't sell as many tickets (in the US) as The Last Samurai (starring Tom Cruise!) did. That wouldn't make it a worse movie, just an apple instead of an orange.

If you liked Suzuki's visuals and cinematography, I can only recommend Tokyo Drifter, a Yakuza movie that was a kind of pioneer in perverting the codes of the genre.

If you like 60s Japanese period flicks with a Sergio-Leonesque take on the Samurais genre, Suzuki also made a couple, but in that case do also have a look at Kenji Misumi's work, better known as the director of the original Zatoichi The Blind Swordsman, and of course as the main director of Lone Wolf And Cub, a.k.a Baby Kart. The two first movies were kind-of-butchered, re-cut and re-dubbed as "Shogun Assassin" in the USA; but the real thing is six movies long, and all of them are worth it in my opinion.

In any of those is the guy who's caring for the baby the whole film get killed at the end of the movie?

I don't think he was ever pushing the baby around in a pram in the movie I saw.

Not Shogun Assassin because my movie was black & white.

It's got to be Lone Wolf and Cub or one of it's sequels.
Maybe Shogun Assassin ?

Not talking about the guilt of the United States and their use of the fucking A-bomb man, talking about their current dysfunction relative to their oppressive history of their version of feudalism and leadership under the Samurai, Shogun etc., and primarily their treatment of females and the leftovers of tradition that shape the current Japanese paradigm-Sure, their utter defeat and cordon from the west shaped their face the last century, but their history of isolation (by choice and circumstance) their take on other cultures, relationship to the Chinese, etc., and their obstinate deleterious sensibilities that's causing the younger generations of Japanese people to forego breeding for a whacked morality devoid of hope. They all need serious therapy and true, a lot of it lies in the way they internalized their humiliating defeat in WW2.

Love Japan, can't stand the way they are still so out of touch with the whole of humanity. They need to start breeding or their culture will be assimilated.

We forced nuclear energy on them? Please, show me-
Show me a country or peoples who treat women and children like shit, and I'll scream fuck-em or fix-em every time. Goes for the U.S. as well, we're just as fucked.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

That's unusual. Usually those guys are pretty liberal with the squeeze bottles of oil.

In reply to this comment by rottenseed:
Went to a restaurant called Shogun today (was called Kobe Misono back in the day). It's like Benihanas. Guess what? The egg stuck to the teppanyaki grille. hahaha

Went to a restaurant called Shogun today (was called Kobe Misono back in the day). It's like Benihanas. Guess what? The egg stuck to the teppanyaki grille. hahaha

>> ^cybrbeast:

X-COM? They raped it? NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo!!!!


Did they ever. Don't try to look up screenshots or watch video of it with sharp objects in your hands.

>> ^Xaielao:
Rage (shown on PC), Portal 2, Crysis 2 (show on PC but they lied and said it was xbox until a crash proved otherwise), Civ V, Deus Ex, The Old Republic, Witcher 2, Brink, Shogun II, Fable III among others. Mind few of these are PC exclusives but they were shown/demod on a PC or have clear PC leanings (or in the case of Fable, were announced for PC when the last one completely avoided it hehe).


Yeah, I suppose it's hard to define what a PC game is anymore. Did think Deus Ex looked very promising, and Brink has always looked good, so I hope they manage to release it eventually. Games of show were Portal 2 and Deus Ex in my opinion. It's a shame they didn't do a public showing of the Deus Ex demo.

>> ^Xax:

>> ^Xaielao:
PC gaming was pretty solid however, and that is nice to see for a change.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH?!?? How in the hell was PC gaming anything but sorely lacking at this E3?


Rage (shown on PC), Portal 2, Crysis 2 (show on PC but they lied and said it was xbox until a crash proved otherwise), Civ V, Deus Ex, The Old Republic, Witcher 2, Brink, Shogun II, Fable III among others. Mind few of these are PC exclusives but they were shown/demod on a PC or have clear PC leanings (or in the case of Fable, were announced for PC when the last one completely avoided it hehe).

>> ^entr0py:

Pretty much sums up why I wasn't too impressed by the Starcraft 2 beta. Just more of the same. They tried very hard not to improve the gameplay any over the least 12 years so as not to alienate any hardcore players.


How can you call a game "more of the same" when more than 1/2 of the units are new, the return units are changed, the campaign is new, there's new RPG and game mechanics in campaign and multiplayer, the engine is new, the physics are new, and the editor is more powerful than ever? That's like saying Street Fighter 4 is "more of the same" as Street Fighter 2, Civ 5 is the same as Civ 1, Gran Tourismo 5 is the same as GT1, Shogun Total War 2 is same as 1, etc.

You might as well skip all sequels to Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and every major game franchise out there since they just offer you "more of the same" content and toys to play with while the gameplay remains essentially unchanged. It's quite sad if according to your standards for gameplay, Fallout 3 is a more worthy sequel than Fallout 2 and XCOM is a more worthy sequel than TFTD.

And what do you even mean by "improving" Starcraft's gameplay? While you can argue subjectively that there are more fun games than Starcraft for you, objectively no other RTS has come close in terms of depth, balance, and skill requirement. When people throw around the term "improve", they usually mean "dumb down for the casual audience". No, having simplified game mechanics like removing base building does not equal better gameplay.

No worries, I agree with you as it is a very bland announcement trailer.

In reply to this comment by marinara:
the Shogun total war Video was disappointing. Sorry pal.

the Shogun total war Video was disappointing. Sorry pal.

>> ^mentality:
@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.videosift.com/member/village1diot" title="member since November 29th, 2009" class="profilelink">village1diot
>> ^village1diot:
>> ^zeoverlord:
>> ^sillma:
that block is karate's answer to pretty much every single attack thrown at you.

Yea, karate is silly

Tell that to Lyoto Machida

Yeah except Machida doesn't use any of that karate bullshit in the ring. You ever seen him do a traditional karate punch or block in a real fight? His stance is a bit unorthodox but it's still not one of the flat-footed stances karate teaches you. And Shogun made him look silly.


Don't tell me, tell him. Then we could see how silly karate is.