Movies; Kung Fu, Karate and SciFi are one of my obsessions, and yesterday was a good movie day.

Why? Because I caught the new Keanu Reeves version of 47 Ronin, in 3D. What did I expect before going? Previews made it look more… out there than typical movies in the genre. Being a fan of the genre I knew the idea behind the Ronin– Samurai without a master– but I don’t remember ever hearing of the 47.  

Speaking of the film overall, it was quite different than the previews portrayed– thankfully. The 3D effect never felt like a distraction as it tends to happen more often than not. The CGI was impressive and mostly believable. Overall, a fun film to watch.

The story line was the traditional warrior’s revenge tale that is the core of so many great films. The part of Kai played by Keanu Reeves felt a bit forced. Not his acting, which fit the film well, but the inclusion of the character didn’t really fit the story. Was the character intended to be a way to westernize the film? To make it more attractive to US audiences? I believe it would have been a stronger story without Kai.

There are other elements that didn’t make a lot of sense either. The 47′s leader was thrown into a pit after his master was killed by Lord Kira. Then for some unexplained reason a year later– one week before Kira was to assume control over the province– he is released, gathers his men and begins the path to avenge his master. What?!

Anyway, the resulting raid of Lord Kira’s castle appeared too easy, and the 47 amassed a formidable army… somehow. Did I fall asleep during the explanation of their loyal followers? Maybe I was distracted by the ever increasing need to pee thanks to the overly carbonated 32oz soda. Either way the castles siege appeared too easy.

Lastly, Kai uses magic to defeat the evil witch who was in league with Lord Kira. She turns into a dragon, threatening Kai’s love interest, Mika. After a relatively short battle scene the dragon witch is defeated, but Mika does not look surprised by Kai’s use of magic, nor does she question him about it.

All-in-all it was a good movie, and one of the few 3D films I believe worthy of the feature and price of admission. The problems with the story are easily enough overlooked when you consider the tale has been represented many times in film: The 47 Ronin, 1941/ The Loyal 47 Ronin, 1958/ 47 Ronin, 1962/ 47 Ronin, 1994. This 2013 adaptation is a worthy successor to its predecessors… just be sure to visit the restroom during the previews~

So far I have only seen Pre-views (trailers) of 47 Ronin and thought it would be a fantastic movie to see in the theater due to the prospects of it containing a lot of action and great cinematography.

I watched this movie over winter break with my boyfriend. I didn’t want to make any critiques on it until I heard the opinions of my class mates and professor.

 

Update:

I am basically going to be categorizing this as the pro’s and the con’s of the movie.  I’m not sure which to start with so maybe I’ll start with the cons.

Cons:

When I initially first saw the movie (today was my second time seeing the film) I didn’t really think that the film focused too much on Keanu Reeves (Kai) saving the day. But after seeing it again, I am realizing now that if the ronin were viewed as a tall building, then Kai would be playing the role of  the strong base of the building. The reason I say this is because he saved  Yasuno from the beast at the beginning of the film, he warned Ôishi about the witch and later received an apology from him, he provided most of the weapons for the ronin and planted the seed in Ôishi’s head about using their death status as an advantage into sabotaging Lord Kira.

Throughout the film, we were shown on numerous occasions that we should really pity Kai. That these people were treating him as an outcast or a freak. Also, we are shown to feel sympathy for Kai because of his love for someone with higher power than him (Lady Asano).

Dragon lady stereotype. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Lady

Lady Asano’s costuming seemed very strange and not correct with the time period (but I am also stating this without full knowledge of what sort of clothing was worn in that time period).

Overweight character to be seen as comedy relief. Most likely a favorite character among people, shown from the beginning he has a good heart but what the hell, let’s kill him off anyway.

The narrator at the beginning says that we first needed to know the story of old Japan but apparently old Japan had dragons?

White director.

They should have really just stuck with the original story of the 47 Ronin instead of adding the whole mystical element to it. I highly recommend people to do their own investigation and read the original story.

Pros:

There were only two characters aside from Keanu, Ôishi and the Shogun that I had seen in various other movies. Everyone else on the other hand was pulled right out of Japan. Rather refreshing. Great to finally see in our modern times that the casting director can utilize talented actors from other countries!

The movie was originally filmed in Japanese. Would have been better if they had just KEPT the movie in Japanese. But I also understand why they would need to dub it over in English for U.S. audiences.

The colors were beautiful.

One thing that I noticed and this could be me looking too far into things is that the samurai’s from Akô were all clad in red, whereas those from Lord Kira’s land were dressed in a very deep dark blue. It reminded me a lot of the Montagues and Capulets from Romeo and Juliet.  Once the Akô Samurai’s were stripped of their rank, when we see them later, they are all wearing grays/blacks and then at the end of the film I found that most of them were primarily wearing black but with small pieces of red back into their costuming which I thought was great symbolism of their growth.

I also enjoyed that they kept the seppuku ritual at the end of the movie. We, as an audience are so used to seeing happy endings where everyone lives, so it was nice that they steered somewhat away from the happy ending and did what they had to do.

 

So that’s all I can think about for now. I might come back and edit here and there but I just wanted to get this all out before I forgot. Sorry if nothing makes sense as well, I’m running on about 4 hours of sleep. Gonna go take a nap now.

My pre-impressions of this film, 47 Ronin is that I have only seen a few previews of the film. I also did some background research on the topic of what a “Ronin” is. I am very interested to see what this film has to offer in terms of a storyline, plot, characters, ect.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I honestly don’t know a whole lot about this film and haven’t seen a single trailer outside of just passing by it at a store or something. I haven’t seen Keanu Reeves in a film since, I dunno, the Matrix movies so it will be kind of cool to see him on the big screen again. Whoa.

 

I have never seen 47 Ronin, nor have I heard of it until now.  I’m interested to get to see what it is about and how it relates to our class this quarter.

Pre-Impressions of 47 Ronin

This is a movie that I have been looking forward to seeing for quite some time now. As a big fan of the work of Rick Genest, I cannot wait to see what he has in store for the viewers during this film, or what his acting skills are. As I have only seen him in small projects outside of this, it will be a treat to see him in a full-length film, especially one that fits into the criteria of our class as well as this one does.

This post is also going to be used as my opening post. I detest the generated posts that sites will put up for you when you first create them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Today as a class we went to see 47 Ronin. I have to say going to the movie I thought it was going to be really lame (the movie itself) because I don’t really like Keanu Reeves as an actor. When I actually sat down to watch the movie I felt myself getting really into it (I jumped at some scenes). I didn’t have a lot of background information about the history of the Samurai but it wasn’t confusing figuring out what they were fighting for. Last quarter we had big discussions about how the white man is portrayed to be the saver, the hero. In this movie I can see where people would think that Keanu Reeves is that character but in his defense he is 1/4th Chinese. All in all I enjoyed the movie. I thought it was educational and entertaining.

This movie I thought was so awesome because it had action, adventure and showed the history of Japan. The form of equality then deception for conquering a kingdom and then a much bigger plot that was in mind. The quest for revenge for honor and against the orders of a empire. Check out the trailer for more info.

As seeing 47 Ronin again, I assume the very same of action, adventure and history. The movie was very good in the skills of deception and illusion. The movie I know is a big part of Japanese culture and I wanted to know what happened after the 47 Ronin.

I was not very impressed with the film 47 Ronin.  The plot seemed to be built around Keanu Reeve’s character as the white or ‘white-ish’ savior. …