47 Ronin: Keanu Reeves goes samurai

How about "Good movie" and "respectful of the source material?"

The way you phrased that makes it sound as though you believe Asian Speekee Engrish is Truth in Television and something the actors in this movie had to overcome.

edited 21st Dec '13 7:10:17 PM by Mort08

Yyyyyeeeaaaahhhh... Might wanna rephrase that? IS there a way to phrase it?

I was not insinuating that, but if you don't want to agree with that, I'm afraid we'll never agree to each other. And who says fantasy elements in historical periods are a 'no' when it comes to stories? You're talking about a point in history that already had different takes long before the making of this film, which frankly means it's open game.

My prediction is that this movie is gonna be So Bad, It's Good.

edited 22nd Dec '13 6:50:26 AM by RooTheRipper

Surprise surprise. The movie is lackluster, scatterbrained, and poorly written, and Keanu Reeves all but consumes the second act. As fine a mighty whitey as you'll ever find.

So not even good for mindless entertainment? That's best I was expecting from this.

Oh well. Hollywood will get it sooner or later, I suppose.

Not likely. The current crop will grow old and die without ever learning. Hollywood itself might even lose all relevance before that happens, and places like Vancouver will grow to take up the slack.

New ones will even form, I'm sure. Modern Hollywood is conservative beyond stupidity.

These are the lowest reviews I've ever seen for an action movie. I'm tempted to watch it now out of morbid curiosity.

I happened to get the 1962 Japanese live action film version from Netflix (put it in my queue four years ago) this weekend, and here's a review of that: http://www.skjam.com/2013/12/29/movie-review-chushingura-the-47-loyal-ronin/

A few questions - how is the presence of Keanu's character justified in the movie? I get the impression he's discriminated against for being a baka gaijin, or a "half-breed". Wouldn't that subvert the Mighty Whitey thing everyone keeps mentioning?

Is he some sort of Chosen One again? Is he the best warrior among them? Tom Cruise clearly wasn't in The Last Samurai, he was just the last man standing, but he did get the widow of the guy he killed... ew.

edited 31st Dec '13 8:06:17 PM by fusilcontrafusil

It doesn't subvert it if, instead of having to put up with discrimination forever, he wound up being the only one able to kill off the evil witch. He would be one of the worst Mighty Whitey s ever because he started off a slave and wound up a savior.

Kai is the product of a British sailor (who presumably was on a Dutch ship) and a Japanese woman, who was raised by monsters until he managed to run away and get adopted by Lord Asano. He's discriminated against because he doesn't look very Japanese, and winds up getting enslaved. But despite The Man keeping him down, yes it turns out he's the Chosen One.

And there's what pisses off so many people. He shouldn't be The Chosen One. Ideally he wouldn't even be in the movie, but you know how likely that would have been.

At least we get the brief pleasure of seeing him off himself.

Given wikipedia's page on it, the film is destined to be a catastrophically sized turkey.

Nearly a hundred and eighty million dollars down the crapper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/47_Ronin_(2013_film)

Given that, the bit of text that says where I am from (custom title) seems to be brutally accurate.

Total Massacre!!!!

Nnnnnoooo. If anything they're making it worse.

They're specifically forcing a white guy (Yes I know he's 1/8th Asian.) into the spotlight, pushing the Asian actors to the sidelines, like countless movies about different cultures have done again and again, and then making the story be about the WHITE GUY getting discriminated against. I mean COME ON.

-Captain America voice- I get that reference!

Come on, it can't be that bad. It has monsters and magic and swords and Rinko Kikuchi and stuff.

edited 1st Jan '14 1:26:28 AM by ShirowShirow

And you just know that when it bombs, Hollywood will blame it on the Japanese aspects, rather than all the problems during production and the by the numbers plot and Keanu Reeves and the racism. :I

edited 1st Jan '14 3:44:22 AM by Eventua

I highly doubt that will be the case. If anything, it'll be because of poor marketing and the fact that they could have easily made a good movie out of the original story rather than add all of the honestly pointless bullshit fantasy elements just to pander to the mindless, effects-hungry American audiences.

The 1962 movie shows how to add star power without screwing up the plot: Fan-favorite Toshiro Mifune plays a drinking buddy of one of the 47, allowing that fellow to have some character development, but not directly interacting with the main story. So Mifune can be on the poster (and he is good in his extended cameo) but doesn't become a black hole that sucks the movie into his orbit.

I saw the 1941/1942 version, by Kenji Mizoguchi. Remarkably, it's devoid of any attributes/values associated with Imperial Japan.

I actually read several articles that heavily criticized the use of actual Japanese actors and said that was one of the reasons the movie was destined to bomb sooooo...

What source?

If they weren't going to use ethnically appropriate people, they shouldn't have based it off of someone else's legends. And if them using ethnically appropriate people is a PROBLEM, this country needs a backhanded slap to the face.

Found the links on boxoffice.com. They're all walls of text about a ton of different movies though.

Okay, I'm getting mixed messages about this movie: some folks here are saying Keanu Reeves's character is a Mighty Whitey who takes over the story, but some comments on the movie I read on another site said he was actually absent for large chunks of the movie and was more of a sidekick than a main lead.