I'v been wating for this movie to come out for a while now & finaly the day has arrived . Although the reviews have been kinda up and down, im still gona go see it. Who else was looking fowered 2 this movie & is gona go check it out?
I like epics and the reviews are just good enough for me to check it out. Tom Cruise usually delivers.
I saw this when it was called Dances with Wolves it looks decent but damn can Tom Cruise ever play a role that isn't exactly the same?
Tom Cruise doing Tom Cruise things. Sword play, samurai's, and Japanese speaking english in feudal Japan... I'm in.
I would be excited to see this movie if Tom Cruise wasn't the star. I think he is a good actor, but he is so famous now that I don't see the person he is playing I just see Cruise acting. Does that make sense to you guys?
Ah yes, a movie that is suppsed to be about how great Japan is...about a dunken washup American who goes to Japan and, in a few months, becomes better at their ways than they are. Imperial culture at its best.
Why is this any less acceptable than any of your standard hero fare. Why does Steven Segal mow down 30 armed bad-guys with his bare hands. Why does Russel Crowe take down entire stadiums of gladiators by himself, and also kill an execution squad when he is bound and unarmed. etc. Tom Cruise is the HERO in this movie. It doesn't seem too out of the question for him to be able to adapt quickly to a new culture. Maybe you just have an overexaggerated sensitivity towards the subject matter.
Actually Rimmy it looks to me that Tom's character grows to appreciate the Japanese culture so much after becoming disillusioned with America's treatment of the American Indians that he eventually tries to become more like the "noble" Japanese samurai society. I have yet to see anything that promotes an "Americans can do anything you can do, only BETTER!" attitude. As for the actual movie, the only review I've read so far is the Chronicle, which liked it apart from an apparently cop-out ending. Since I'm a sucker for big sweeping epic movies I'll probably go see it when I get a chance.
A big bonus to this film is the scenery. It seems to be something the critics are raving about. Don't take all of those scenes to be Japan though, parts of it were filmed in New Zealand. I know they built a town somewhere in NZ, can't tell if it was the Samurai's village or parts of old Tokyo.
I think rimmy wanted Cruise to wear some yellow make-up and squint his eyes or some such. You know, kind of like... Heston as El Cid, Donna Reed as Sacagawea, and so on. That's much less offensive, and it shows even greater respect to non-American cultures. Uh huh. Or perhaps rimmy thought the movie could gross over $200 million starring Wanatanabe, a household name... in one household, that is.
I'll wait for it to come out on video. Already been burned by the remake of Open Your Eyes. This sounds like a remake of Dances with Wolves mates with Kurosawa, and I've seen most of Kurosawa's films on video.
Watanabe in Japanese is about as common as Smith in English, so be careful where you mix your metaphors. We can argue about that play on broadway a few years back about Saigon where none of the lead actors was even Asian. We've made small progress, now almost everyone except the leads are non-American in a movie set in Japan. Zwick is batting 1.000 for politically incorrect politically correct movies, he focused on the white character in Glory, a movie about blacks fighting for the North in the Civil War!
Maybe you are just dim. rocks_fan - "noble savage"? Sounds familiar. I won't see the movie, and not for reasons stated in my previous post (or this one). I am simply far too apathetic to gather the strenght to drive myself to the theater...I do declare. Please nobody bring up Kurosawa...
You skipped the greatest of them all.... John Wayne as Ghengis Kahn. ( cue those who know how to post pics, with, it is hoped, an E-Mailed explanation to poor ol' MacBeth exaplining just how you do that.
Here's an idea...we can also make a movie called "The Last Yankee," a Civil War epoch about a Japanese fisherman who washes ashore Gettysburg in 1864 and is nursed back to health by a beautiful women. He then slowly learns the way of the white man, becoming the best soldier on the field, while also teaching them the way of the Samurai. He leads them into battle using their newfound Eastern military strategy and martial arts techniques - eventually winning the Civil War, single handedly reunifying the States and freeing the slaves. At the end he returns home to Japan with his new found love while single handedly changing a nation. How do you like that revision of history? How do you think the American public will take to that movie?
*possible spoilers* Your example is pretty different as Tom Cruise's character doesn't accomplish nearly as much as you asserted with your last Yankee idea. The movie should have ended on the battlefield, that's the only real problem, that Tome Cruise goes to see the emperor at the end.
I think you haven't seen the movie and/or don't understand the plot. Does what you say have anything to do with the reality of what the movie is about? No, but thanks for playing. Regardless, it is the AMERICAN movie industry which primarily finances these movies, so it is no surprise to me that the stories are told from an American bias/point of view. If you don't like it, then move to France.
