Well, here’s a bit of an outdated movie review. However, while waiting for my family to arrive for dinner, I ended up watching 47 Ronin from 2013. I don’t recall hearing about this movie but I was more surprised to find out that it had such a low rotten tomatoes and metacritic rating. The movie wasn’t that bad.

And this is coming from me!

Seriously, I don’t know why this was received so poorly. Ok, it’s not the most brilliant piece of media to hit the screens. Also, I saw it for free with absolutely zero idea of what the hell it was. So, going in with no expectations and not spending a dime on it, I thought it was fine. It’s not perfect nor am I running out to buy the DVD but, I mean, Pixels has a 17% rating for crying out loud! Granted, I haven’t seen Pixels but then again I’d have to be an idiot to think Adam Sandler is ever going to make a movie worth seeing.

47 Ronin belongs to Carl Rinsch, H2F Entertainment, Universal Studios and whatever other unlucky fools want to make a claim on it.

And 47 Ronin is watchable. Not sure if it’s worth seeing, mind you. But if you see it, it’s not totally horrible.

Let’s begin with what it did right. Visually, this movie is really well done. The costumes and set design are fantastic. It’s a visual feast first and foremost. Even more than that, the visuals are incredibly good at creating a setting. This isn’t just Japan we’re looking at but a fantastical feudal Japan if the stories of myth and legend had actually occurred. In this vein, it’s more akin to Lord of the Rings or Beowulf. It’s squarely in the fantastical genre and plays with those supernatural elements and makes them interesting.

I think what I liked most about its visual execution was that it truly immersed you in a different world. Too much of western fantasy is rooted in medieval Europe with all its tropes that it’s stolen from Lord of the Rings acting as crutches and short hands to push a mirror copy of dwarves and elves upon the audience. 47 Ronin, by its nature, can’t follow this route since it doesn’t have any of the cultural underpinnings of Lord of the Rings. It explores its witches and demons in a different direction and this breathes some wonderful fresh air into standard character archetypes like the witch. Rinko Kikuchi is positively spellbinding, bringing a crazed sort of elegance to her character that makes the transition between her actions on camera into the wispy CGI of her spells near seamless.

And talk about those vistas. In Lord of the Rings inspired panoramic shots, 47 Ronin conjures a mystical image of Japan where great statues of Buddha are carved in the faces of mountains along paths old and forgotten. Fallen giant Buddha heads house strange Tengu demons who are such a different reimagining of the folklore avian/human hybrids. Of course, there’s a fair amount of pulling on eastern kung fu tropes in the film and none of these fantasy epics wouldn’t be complete without visiting vast bamboo forests or Japanese castles. Expect plenty of cherry blossoms popping up regardless of the season.

I think, more than anything else, the amount of appreciation shown in a Hollywood production for another culture is what took me by surprise. The vast majority of the cast are Japanese actors, which makes sense for a movie that can only take place in Japan. The small details like the Tengu’s bird-like shows that someone on the production was doing research to evoke a sense of a mythical Japan. But this wasn’t just for some element of exploitative exoticism. The central conflict surrounding the Bushido discipline and adherence to honour as well as the feudal’s restrictions on class interactions played with those historic ideas both pulling on its idealisms while also raising elements of it as problematic. I felt the treatment allowed the viewer to enjoy the sense of another time and place while creating enough friction and undesirable elements to not sweep away the issues that it was glamorizing either. It’s a more balanced perspective than one I’d come to expect from outsiders, which is an unfortunate expectation that’s required when dealing with Hollywood.

Course, this is Hollywood still. Keanu Reeves is the Tom Cruise in Last Samurai problem. Granted, they try to play him up as half-Japanese, half-European in an attempt to have their incongruous cake and eat it too. It never stops being weird or shoehorned especially since he’s pushed as the primary love interest for Daimyo Asano’s daughter. It’s irksome that studios feel it necessary to insert some sort of European character under the pretence that western audiences won’t be able to sympathize or be engaged with the struggles of others. It’s either racist or condescending and neither perspective is encouraging. It’s not like they use his trumped up heritage to any great effect either since his major character struggle surrounds his class rather than his “demon blood.”

Granted, those Tengu sword moments are damn entertaining to watch.

So why did this movie flop so hard? On one hand, I can see it being considered somewhat slow. When compared to something like The Man with the Iron Fists, there’s certainly a more plodding tone taken here. I don’t think you could do 47 Ronin quite as over the top and, honestly, I felt the slow pace rather reflected classic movies in this genre like Seven Samurai.

Course, this could be telling for why the movie didn’t do so well. This character is in one scene with one line and he has his own poster?!

On the other hand, I’m not certain if the base story really fit with the overall aesthetic. 47 Ronin is based on a historical event and the movie most certainly is not historical in any stretch of the imagination. I can see where people familiar with the story and events around it would be annoyed with the judicious amounts of artistic licencing on display. On the other hand, with how often this story has been retold and re-imagined, does it really matter how accurate of a portrayal it is? How can one criticize this production of 47 Ronin for being historically inaccurate but not criticize any other Chuushingura production. At some point, details are going to be altered, motivations and characters will be changed or dropped to better adapt history to the film or stage. No single piece of media will ever accurately address a historic event. Look at all the various movies covering World War II and how drastically they portray the events. There’s not really a lot of people up in arms when Inglorious Basterds or Captain America portray obviously fantastical characters or elements into these events.

I can’t help but feel that, had this story taken a more Lord of the Rings direction, it would have been better. Use mythology and historical events to inspire a story but divorce that story from people’s expectations so it can live on its own merits. If someone familiar with the 47 Ronin story sees this, all the deviations from the traditional mythos is more likely to be grating than interesting. But there’s nothing about the original story itself that couldn’t be lifted. It’s basically a story of conflict between a samurai’s duty to his lord and to the law. Political intrigue transcends stories and worlds. Tolkein’s Middle Earth was crafted from Nordic mythology and I feel that something comparable and trend setting could be made by using the same method but the rich cultural history of Japan.

Alternatively, we could just make an honest 47 Ronin movie as well. Cut Keanu, cut all the fantasy stuff and just do as best a movie as one can about the historical event (with the obvious expectation that some liberties will be necessary). I’d be happy with that too.