I have seen and very much enjoyed this, but never saw dances with wolves, how similar are they in terms of broad story strokes? If I enjoyed one will I likely enjoy the other?
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Why is the Last Samurai sad
- Thread starter Rosé Fighter
- Start date
Same. You can like the movie while acknowledging it is what it is, it's fine, you won't melt.
That said, the only major issue I have with the movie is like, the last 10 minutes. It just gets too Hollywood. EVERYONE dies except Tom Cruise? Then Tom Cruise has to be the one to pass on the ways of the Samurai to the Emperor? THEN HE GOES BACK TO THE VILLAGE TO MOVE IN WITH THE WIFE OF THE DUDE HE KILLED?! Come onnnn.
Other than that I love the movie.
it's a movie about peasant conscripts taking down the warrior caste elite who halt progress and use the lives of the lower class as fodder for their squabbling.
Those "savages" were shown to be much more graceful and civilised then that drunken, dishonourable unrefined white man.
Between this, Glory and Blood Diamond, I think Edward Zwick is really underrated. Did anyone watch Trial by Fire?
I'll still watch Last of the Mohicans
Hmm. Good arguments. I'll have to contemplate this thread.
Hmm. Good arguments. I'll have to contemplate this thread.
One of my favorite movies.
I think it tries very much not to be a white savior film but still stumbles into some of the same tropes because it cant shake its hollywood storytelling style completely. Nevertheless, i never got the feeling that the typical story of the white man become the best of the "Savages" in their own disciplines holds true here and Cruises Character definitely doesn't save shit, he´s just an onlooker and messenger.
The whole Love-Story with the Wife of the Samurai is whack though and never should have made it into the film. Always smelled like a exec-decision because Romance.
I think it tries very much not to be a white savior film but still stumbles into some of the same tropes because it cant shake its hollywood storytelling style completely. Nevertheless, i never got the feeling that the typical story of the white man become the best of the "Savages" in their own disciplines holds true here and Cruises Character definitely doesn't save shit, he´s just an onlooker and messenger.
The whole Love-Story with the Wife of the Samurai is whack though and never should have made it into the film. Always smelled like a exec-decision because Romance.
It's one of my favourite films in last few decades. I adore the performances, fight choreography and the epic soundtrack.
Yeah - the Samurai have a romanicized version like the Amercian Cowboys and the European Knights - all three weren't really heroes or good pepole. Cowboys were mercenaries and criminals and Knight/Samurais were soliders who were told to kill and they did so
I just watched this over the past weekend...
Why did you have to throw water in my eyes like that?
Seems like the OP didn't understand that the title of the movie is not singular and does not refer to Tom Cruise.
He smells like the pigs. Tell my brother I cannot stand this.
Gotta love how every one of these threads turns into a bunch of people dismissing the experiences of Asians and the Asian diaspora being fed up with Hollywood films centering white protagonists in stories about Asia. Fragility, fragility, everywhere.
The Last Samurai is straight up one of my favorite movies, definitely in the top 10 if not top 5, for me.
It's incredibly sad, and paired with gorgeous visuals and a beautiful soundtrack. Ken Watanabe absolutely steals the show, and I cry every time I see his final scene coupled with "I will tell you how he lived."
Absolutely surprised me when it came out. I'm really glad Netflix brought it back.
It's incredibly sad, and paired with gorgeous visuals and a beautiful soundtrack. Ken Watanabe absolutely steals the show, and I cry every time I see his final scene coupled with "I will tell you how he lived."
Absolutely surprised me when it came out. I'm really glad Netflix brought it back.
While I agree that the ending is a little too good to be true, there's a wrinkle in it If you were paying attention, the ending is likely not what was literally shown in the final moments, the narrator basically prefaces that scene with "I hope this happened"
Edit:
I haven't seen every tom cruise movie in the last ten years, but it feels like he'll only do a movie if the ending wraps up like a generic hollywood movie would.
For some reason I never thought of it as plural and figured it referenced Ken Watanabe's character since Cruise consistently praised him.
I was half right!
This has always been my take on the ending as well. That it's open to interpretation in that regard, and a wishful thought of a friend.
So you're into conservatism?
Change is good and necessary.
To be fair, he is a great warrior already. Fighting is more will and instinct than mechanical skill. But indeed they way over did it, the one fight in town is particularly ridiculous and the weird mysticism/seeing the future thing was silly.
Lol
🥺😢😭
Yes! He is amazing!i just wanna say i love this actor right here, he needs to be in so many more things
Hiroyuki Sanada
You guys need to read more into ancient Japan to fully understand the movie. Initially, as with any other empire around the world, the Emperor of Japan is the most powerful person of the country. However, this changes around the 11th century when the Shogunate which is the military arm of the Empire and are the head of all Samurai in Japan was more powerful then the Emperor and this tradition carry on for more than 700 years where the Emperor during this period were just the puppet for the Shogun. The event in The Last Samurai is when Emperor of Japan is wrestling his power back from the Samurai who are more loyal to the Shogun.
Yes, this. For real, one my favorite movie soundtracks of all time. It's absolutely gorgeous.
So, as a movie, I'm a fan of it.
But the ending was always a big problem to me, because in reality Japan modernizing while still maintaining elements of the Samurai ethos and principles heloped lead to...genocidal war and death on an incredible scale. The ultra nationalism and abject brutality of Japan and Japanese soldiers from ~1890-1945 can be traced directly back to this line of thinking.
Like, no Tom Cruise, don't encourage the emperor to keep to the old ways. The oppressive system the nobles want to maintain (which is what the rebellion was about, keeping power in an entrenched militaristic noble class) needs to end.
But the ending was always a big problem to me, because in reality Japan modernizing while still maintaining elements of the Samurai ethos and principles heloped lead to...genocidal war and death on an incredible scale. The ultra nationalism and abject brutality of Japan and Japanese soldiers from ~1890-1945 can be traced directly back to this line of thinking.
Like, no Tom Cruise, don't encourage the emperor to keep to the old ways. The oppressive system the nobles want to maintain (which is what the rebellion was about, keeping power in an entrenched militaristic noble class) needs to end.
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He's playing Scorpion in the MK movie reboot and I'm very excited.i just wanna say i love this actor right here, he needs to be in so many more things
Hiroyuki Sanada
Yeah, but we don't need Tom Cruise to be making that decision for Japan in the first place.
I'm mainly seeing people disagreeing with the specific idea that it's a white savior movie, not with the larger issue of films centering white protagonists in stories about Asia (I don't see a bunch of people disagreeing that that's an issue).
Edit: On a related note, does it feel like we're now past that trope? Or do we still frequently see the "white protagonist in films about other cultures" thing? Last one I remember is when there was talk about a Brie Larson movie set in India(?)... but that was a while ago.
Well no, of course not, and I don't think that's what the film depicts (he just delivers Katsumoto's message to the Emperor at the end).
And you don't see how quibbling over how "it's not really a white savior movie" is disrespectful and dismissive of the concerns people bring up? It's like the kind of person who whips out the dictionary to argue that "Asians are good at math" doesn't fit the definition of racism.
Besides, it's straight up disingenuous to pretend it's not heavy shades of mighty whitey when the film is literally about Tom Cruise becoming an uber samurai and top confidante to Katsumoto, shacking up with the wife of the guy he killed, and representing the samurai legacy to the emperor, thereby changing the course of Japanese history.
The fact that he doesn't literally save all the samurai from death doesn't absolve the film of its tone-deafness, and the fact people are so reticent to admit that speaks volumes about them.
White dude who happens to be an already impressively trained warrior with extensive expertise in hand-to-hand combat, and war in general, arrives and gets his ass kicked repeatedly, brutally, for months until he finally learns to defend himself just a little bit.
The whole reason Algren was selected for his "mission" was that he was a warrior of great renown who was literally a living legend for his "heroic" (read: actually barbaric, insanely violent) exploits.
There are a lot of Hollywood movies that have serious problems with 'white savior' tropes and intentional/unintentional racism in how they depict their white characters interacting with other cultures. While The Last Samurai isn't perfect in this regard, I found it to be a lot more aware, and respectful, of those issues than most any other movie you could reasonably paint with this brush. Cruise's character isn't a white savior, he's painted from the opening scenes as a brutal savage who is responsible for countless atrocities against Native Americans, and someone we should rightfully despise.
I think the bigger problem with this movie is its whitewashing of Japanese history in general, painting the samurai as noble rebels fighting to preserve important Japanese tradition against an oppressive, tyrannical government, when the reality is that they just didn't want to give up their positions of power and privilege. By having the Meiji Restoration beseech someone like Algren to join their cause in the first place, the movie immediately paints them inaccurately and unfairly as villains trying to oppress people, and the samurai as saviors. My limited understanding of the history tells me the reality was quite different.
The tone-deafness of the movie is that it's a decidedly American interpretation of Japanese history and events with no real respect for the accuracy of that history or the people involved. Hollywood romanticizes samurai, so we got a movie romanticizing them without any respect given to reality.
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I'm not sure if you're saying the experience of Asian people towards the film were dismissed or not. The reception of the film in Japan at the time was actually quite positive.
My honest answer is no, because it feels like it's basically a disagreement about a specific definition, not about whether it's a problem in general that Tom Cruise had to be the lead for the movie to be made (it's totally a problem). At the same time, the fact that you're telling me that it feels dismissive should at least prompt me to change up how I respond to this kind of thing (I need to think about this more).
Yeah, you're totally right about that. Hell, the final scene of the movie bothered my teenage self in the theater before I was even explicitly aware of the dynamics. Purely in terms of tropes, though (and maybe I'm a nerd about this), it's a case of mighty whitey, just like you said (as opposed to white savior).
I'm sure there are some (many?) that fit that description -- I do think for others (at least for me) it's not about absolving the movie of its issues, but rather about accurately describing its issues.
I'd be interested in what you think re: the question I added in my edit: "On a related note, does it feel like we're now past that trope? Or do we still frequently see the "white protagonist in films about other cultures" thing? Last one I remember is when there was talk about a Brie Larson movie set in India(?)... but that was a while ago."
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He is talking about the Asian people that agree with him, not the ones who don't.
Sure the film romanticizes the Samurai and their regressive tendencies. The perspective on this I always thought the makers were going for was that the modernizers the Samurai went to battle with paid for progress with submission to colonial powers who treated the Japanese with disrespect. The Samurai aren't the heroes in the film because they're fighting against modernity per se but because they're fighting for the independent spirit and self assertion of Japan.
The meek and seemingly powerless emperor embodies the weak, subordinate Japan the colonisers want and the film culminates in the Emperor, inspired by the sacrifice of the Samurai, growing a backbone and defying the Western powers seeking to exploit that weakness.
It's not a treatise or a documentary and arguing about the potentially problematic portrayal of the Samurai in the frame of this film is kind of pointless... they told the story they wanted to and portrayed the characters accordingly.
The meek and seemingly powerless emperor embodies the weak, subordinate Japan the colonisers want and the film culminates in the Emperor, inspired by the sacrifice of the Samurai, growing a backbone and defying the Western powers seeking to exploit that weakness.
It's not a treatise or a documentary and arguing about the potentially problematic portrayal of the Samurai in the frame of this film is kind of pointless... they told the story they wanted to and portrayed the characters accordingly.
Ah, thanks for clarifying. I'm from Japan myself so I'm often just used to the "Japan hates what America did" talk, even when that's not the case at all.
(Yeah, we DID like the Ghost in the Shell movie Hollywood made, even with ScarJo as the lead).
I was being sarcastic, sorry if it wasn't clear. He obviously doesn't care unless they agree with him.
I believe they are more referring to the Asian-American experience, who are often made to feel like they can never be the stars of American-made films about Asians.
exactly.
katsumoto is the last samurai. Cruises character is just there to witness it all happen from an outside perspective.
perfect film for me
User Banned (Permanent): Inflammatory Accusations and Dismissing the Perspective of Minority Members Over Multiple Posts; Numerous Prior Bans for Hostility
No, he's not. He is using "Asians" as a cudgel to fight strawmen.
While I disagreed originally with what wandering shared, I don't understand your reactions here... you seem quick to judge and you're stepping in to reply to others who weren't talking with you to denigrate wandering.
