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Flop or not Waterloo is still a great flick. We likely wont get 20k soviets but you dont really need that many dudes nowadays anyway.
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Apr 26, 2024 23:00
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I've been meaning to check this show out sometimes. How does it rate on a scale from Last Samurai to Blue Eye Samurai?
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Apr 26, 2024 23:11
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cant cook creole bream posted:I've been meaning to check this show out sometimes. I haven't seen either of those but I can confidently say it is 400 billion times better than both of them combined. This is not intended as an indictment of either of those pieces of media, Shogun's just really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really loving great!
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Apr 26, 2024 23:20
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cant cook creole bream posted:I've been meaning to check this show out sometimes. I think it's on par with Blue Eye Samurai, but they are very different. Where they overlap though is in the artistic approach to the subject matter, and they are both magnificent in that respect. This show is 95% politics and people talking, as opposed to Blue Eye that was more balanced w/ action.
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Apr 26, 2024 23:39
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Jerusalem posted:I haven't seen either of those but I can confidently say it is 400 billion times better than both of them combined. This is not intended as an indictment of either of those pieces of media, Shogun's just really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really loving great! dunno, the japanese really liked the last samurai - much more than the original shogun. Hell it even has Toranaga's actor in it.
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Apr 26, 2024 23:42
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Saganlives posted:I think it's on par with Blue Eye Samurai, but they are very different. Where they overlap though is in the artistic approach to the subject matter, and they are both magnificent in that respect. This show is 95% politics and people talking, as opposed to Blue Eye that was more balanced w/ action. Blue Eye Samurai is definitely a follow up show to watch for all the people who were miffed at the lack of major action scenes in Shogun.
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Apr 26, 2024 23:48
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nine-gear crow posted:Blue Eye Samurai is definitely a follow up show to watch for all the people who were miffed at the lack of major action scenes in Shogun. Yes, absolutely. 
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Apr 26, 2024 23:51
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Blue Eye Samurai is a fun show with cool setpieces but it isn’t nearly as narratively or thematically coherent as Shogun, and it plays in a lot of weird racial tropes that Shogun eschews. Its fictionalized version of Japan is also much more divorced from reality and is essentially total fantasy.
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Apr 27, 2024 00:31
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cant cook creole bream posted:I've been meaning to check this show out sometimes. rating wise its up there with blue eye samurai, but it's a mostly slow burn character drama amidst big political thriller as a japanese period piece. very good bursts of action but its not an action show. more game of thrones than either thing you said
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Apr 27, 2024 00:33
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Sio posted:Blue Eye Samurai is a fun show with cool setpieces but it isn’t nearly as narratively or thematically coherent as Shogun, and it plays in a lot of weird racial tropes that Shogun eschews. Its fictionalized version of Japan is also much more divorced from reality and is essentially total fantasy. I'd argue the inverse. Blue Eye Samurai is laser-focused on the kind of show it wants to be and the story and themes it wants to convey. Shogun, by contrast is rather labyrinthine if you're not paying complete attention to it at all times. BES is a simple story told extremely well while Shogun is a complex story told extremely well. You're spot on about the other points though. BES uses the broad strokes of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Sakoku edict as the basis on which to build a world suited to the story it wants to tell rather than Shogun taking liberties with things that actually historically happened.
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Apr 27, 2024 00:50
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the only thing i know about blue eye samurai is that it has a japanese cover of for whom the bell tolls in it and i cant conceive of how that show and shogun could be called similar other than 'in japan'
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Apr 27, 2024 02:08
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you see, there are samurai and there are a couple white people
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Apr 27, 2024 02:59
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:you see, there are samurai and there are a couple white people They're also set within a lifetime's length of one another, historically. So it's two different compare and contrast takes on the same stretch of history, one relatively accurate, the other hilariously not. Also both shows are just really loving good too.
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Apr 27, 2024 03:05
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:rating wise its up there with blue eye samurai, but it's a mostly slow burn character drama amidst big political thriller as a japanese period piece. very good bursts of action but its not an action show. more game of thrones than either thing you said Game of Thrones is the obvious comparison for this show and not totally off-base, but Shogun is definitely less violent or horny than GoT was. The intense dialogue remains though, and is as good as anything GoT did IMO.
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Apr 27, 2024 03:20
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If you can understand Japanese or manage to find something with subs, NHK's Taiga dramas are always good. They did one on Tokugawa just last year I think.
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Apr 27, 2024 03:43
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Seems like the people in the Shogun Thread like the show Shogun. I guess I'll watch the first episode then.
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Apr 27, 2024 07:22
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The themes of those two shows are also quite different. Blue-eye samurai is very much concerned with the themes of revenge and identity while Shogun is a deep exploration of mortality and fate. Blue-eye samurai also has a pronounced streak of anti-colonial sentiment and is quite open about the influence of Europe upon Japan being almost exclusively negative. The main antagonist gives a speech near the end that is pretty bone chilling and amounts to "white people are coming and we will destroy your culture because we enjoy doing that to savages like you". That's only hinted at in Shogun.
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Apr 27, 2024 14:39
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BES’ anti-colonialist tone is severely undercut by its orientalist portrayal of the Japanese as being anachronistically primitive in comparison to Europeans, and of course the entirely fictional principal villain may be the most deliberately confused portrayal of European colonialism I’ve ever seen. It’s all been stylized to the point of near meaninglessness, which is not unsurprising given the politics of the show’s creator. Zionists cannot make coherent anti-colonial art.
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Apr 27, 2024 15:34
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yep. really good action though.
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Apr 27, 2024 15:38
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gonna watch a dozen taiga dramas set in the late shogunate/meiji era. I love people starting off with straw hats and ending with goofy german uniforms.
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Apr 27, 2024 16:21
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Sio posted:BES’ anti-colonialist tone is severely undercut by its orientalist portrayal of the Japanese as being anachronistically primitive in comparison to Europeans, and of course the entirely fictional principal villain may be the most deliberately confused portrayal of European colonialism I’ve ever seen. It’s all been stylized to the point of near meaninglessness, which is not unsurprising given the politics of the show’s creator. Zionists cannot make coherent anti-colonial art. Great post. Had no idea about the show runners politics, so yeah that makes a lot of sense.
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Apr 27, 2024 16:30
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Sio posted:BES’ anti-colonialist tone is severely undercut by its orientalist portrayal of the Japanese as being anachronistically primitive in comparison to Europeans, and of course the entirely fictional principal villain may be the most deliberately confused portrayal of European colonialism I’ve ever seen. It’s all been stylized to the point of near meaninglessness, which is not unsurprising given the politics of the show’s creator. Zionists cannot make coherent anti-colonial art. Fucks sake, I was about to start watching this and now I don't know if I want to anymore.
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Apr 27, 2024 16:37
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stev posted:Fucks sake, I was about to start watching this and now I don't know if I want to anymore.
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Apr 27, 2024 16:58
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Not sure this article has been posted yet, interview with the showrunners post finale about a season 2. Season 2 comments from Sanada are also mentioned. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/shogun-finale-season-two-1235878683/ Basically it seems it is possible, they seem to really pay tribute to the roadmap Clavell laid out and they say going beyond that would be a challenge. Which seems like the kind of comment that might be more aimed at his wife, who I think is an executive producer. Otherwise it seems like most of those involved are open to continuing, assuming FX wants/can keep going with it.
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Apr 27, 2024 17:35
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Just finished this, I haven't read the book. The show lost me for a while around episodes 5-7 where I felt like it was repeating itself and I wasn't connecting with the themes very much. The last 3 episodes got me invested again, and I liked the final episode although it is weirdly inconclusive. Not that the conclusion isn't there, they show you what will almost definitely occur to end the conflict, but it was like the show was going out of its way to distract from its own conclusion. Thinking back, that's really the MO of Toranaga in general so I suppose it fits. But it feels like, to deny the story a typical climax, I would expect there to be something deeper going on and I couldn't pick anything out at the end. It just reasserts the themes it has already developed fully. There were also quite a few scenes where I had the thought that it was relying heavily on the score going nuts. So, it's a consistent show which I liked and didn't love. Some parts moved me and I liked the cast a lot, but my mind sometimes drifted. I never really enjoyed Toranaga though, which is probably the biggest problem for me. I just didn't like him, at all, so I never really cared about the outcome of the bigger picture. roomtone fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Apr 27, 2024 |
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Apr 27, 2024 19:37
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crossposting from another threadKiller robot posted:This format has potential.
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Apr 27, 2024 21:49
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With how much screentime Omi got, he deserved to have a bigger role in the plot.
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Apr 27, 2024 22:09
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If you just want more samraui action in modern movies, you can't go wrong with Takeshi Miike's 13 Assassins. Its like 3/4 some of the most beautiful shots of medieval japan, and 1/4 an insane battle that ends up with literally the river running red with blood.
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Apr 27, 2024 22:48
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I’d really love to see the showrunners tackle Taipan. Hong Kong at the time was basically East Asian Port Royale, nominally run by a faraway government which needed the harbour for warships, but day to day just a hive of scum and villainy run by smugglers who were half a step up from outright pirates.
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Apr 27, 2024 22:56
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BoldFace posted:With how much screentime Omi got, he deserved to have a bigger role in the plot. It's tough because Omi's stuff in the period of the book ep5-7 takes part in is also kinda linked with Blackthorne, who got his stuff either cut or moved to the very end. In the book, he and Blackthorne become friends, here, they mostly hint at it by having Blackthorne not make a big deal out of giving the gun and sword to him in the final episode. In the book, the attempted suicide scene is in front of him and Yabu over something else, and John befriends Omi by giving him Kiku's contract when Toranaga awards it to him after the earthquake.
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Apr 28, 2024 00:16
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Also I keep forgetting to ask, but would Blackthorne normally have been allowed near Toranaga with that smaller sword (tanto?) he had? I actually wondered if him being so willing to hand over his sword and pistol to Omi was a mixture of being committed to his suicide if necessary, coming to an understanding about Japanese culture, and also more strategically to put Omi on the back foot so he didn't think to check him for any other weapons? Or am I just way, way, waaaaay overthinking things?
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Apr 28, 2024 00:25
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I don't fall asleep easily watching tv shows/movies but this show was better than xanax for me. Managed to finish it and man it had some sloooooow episodes. Cinematography was great as well as acting (most of it), score, etc. High production values overall. Great writing too though I can't compare it to the book cause I havent read it. The negatives to me were mostly the show doing a lovely job explaining the plot, Toranaga's bluff not hitting as hard as the showrunners thought it would and Cosmo Jarvis being some kind of discount Tom Hardy overacting monster. Also the show doesn't have an ounce of narrative rhythm. It's just weirdly paced. You shouldn't pace shows like this, regardless of the source material.
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Apr 28, 2024 00:32
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Agree on the pacing and I think that's probably the thing that holds it back from being a truly great show.
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Apr 28, 2024 00:34
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:Agree on the pacing and I think that's probably the thing that holds it back from being a truly great show. I think the first 2 episodes were maybe the strongest, then it starts going up and down all the time. Is it faithful to the book? There's also some fluff here and there - Toranaga's son arc is weird. What was the point of the character?
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Apr 28, 2024 00:38
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Kawabata posted:Cosmo Jarvis being some kind of discount Tom Hardy overacting monster. This was in fact the best thing about the show.
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Apr 28, 2024 00:49
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I think almost everyone had that reaction to him in the first or second episode, but he really grew on me. I look forward to seeing him in other things.
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Apr 28, 2024 01:00
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Kawabata posted:I think the first 2 episodes were maybe the strongest, then it starts going up and down all the time. Is it faithful to the book? There's also some fluff here and there - Toranaga's son arc is weird. What was the point of the character? The first two are very faithful to the book's flow, and yeah it diverges after a bit. Shogun is an absolute tome of a novel, but the throughline is Blackthorne, and when he gets de-emphasized things kinda meander. A lot of Blackthorne's moments get shunted off to the very last episode, to the middle's detriment. I think Kiku should've been excluded entirely if she's not going to be the reason why Blackthorne and Omi become friends later. The entire payoff to the prostitutes plotline is a conversation with Toranaga that tells us nothing we don't know and a troll moment after that. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Apr 28, 2024 |
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Apr 28, 2024 01:01
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If we’re picking at things we didn’t like about a great show, I had really mixed feelings about the finale. It’s a big uncharacteristic plotdump by Toranaga. I’m okay with them skipping the big battle but it’s just unlike the show to do much exposition. I could see the format still working — Yabushige teasing out all the revelations at his deathbed — but it fell a bit flat for me in the moment. I think someone said Ep 10 felt like an epilogue rather than a finale and that’s true. Ep 9 is an all-timer. In that sense they sort of borrow from the tradition of GoT in serving the best stuff in the penultimate episode.
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Apr 28, 2024 01:07
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Kawabata posted:I think the first 2 episodes were maybe the strongest, then it starts going up and down all the time. Is it faithful to the book? There's also some fluff here and there - Toranaga's son arc is weird. What was the point of the character? the point was that ACTION IS BAD. DO NOT BE THE ONE DOING ACTION. this is a helpful lens by which to view ishido - his ultimate failure was by taking drastic action. the contrast between how toranaga favoured omi (who watched, influenced but remained in the loop to take credit) while punishing his dipshit son. fools rushing in die. the role of a leader is to have others act for you. break the falcon, and for a falcon, show that you can be/are broken like omi or blackthorne or even toranaga - do not be a dictator and do not strike first. similarly, yabushige is a wheeler dealer active manipulator vassal, but he does everything actively and kinda obviously. omi served fairly quietly but kept his loyalty to his ultimate liege, only opportunistically switching sides within his own camp and only to the bigger fish, with all hostile actions being blameable on whoever held rank on him.
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Apr 28, 2024 01:21
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Yeah I was a huge fan of Toranaga basically saying to Yabu,"I honestly thought you of all people would understand... I've already won. The war is over, my battles were a success, the rest of the nation is just catching up to the realization that all the pieces I set into motion are about to come to fruition." Apart from the budget considerations, not showing the battle works for me because showing it would suggest that the battle itself was what wins things for Toranaga, but he is going into that battle knowing that he's already won, and Ishido is only going to find out when he gets there. Toranaga throughout the entire season is at pains to try and educate his dumbass son about not showing your hand, not making your intentions obvious or letting yourself be dictated by the actions of others. But importantly it wasn't one of those "he planned this all along, everything went according to his plan  " things, Toranaga constantly has to adapt and change to circumstances or the actions of others he wasn't expecting and he understood that death and failure was absolutely a possibility... but you adapt and you most of all keep your head. That's why the scene of him receiving Ochiba's letter is so important, you can see the weight he's been under just lift off of him in that moment, and it's a beautiful, beautiful piece of acting.
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Apr 28, 2024 01:29
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