Lance Around Orlando

  “Number One Son” here. So we saw 13 Assassins, a gory homage to Seven Samurai, courtesy of Takashi Miike. Also it probably homages some other Samurai films. I dunno. I haven’t seen that many to be honest. Anyway at the beginning of the screening the announcer warned us that some people think it’s slow in the beginning. But then he said something like don’t worry,  it gets awesome once the epic 45 minute battle scene starts. No, turns out that part is boring too!

Maybe I’m weird. The audience seemed really into it. (Except for LanceAround who started snoring in the middle of the movie.) Nevertheless, I think the music and cinematography are both way too dreary for such an over-the-top movie. Also since, alas, we are living in 2011 the battle scenes are much harder to follow than they should be. But I think the main problem with the film is: I didn’t connect with any of the characters. They’ve got no personality.

I have this theory that it’s just really hard to write good characters when you know everyone is going to die a horrible death. How can you pour your heart into a character when he’s cannon fodder? (Of course there are good movies/characters where everyone dies. Seven Samurai for example! Also it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I remember Hamlet being pretty good.)

Anyway I wonder if you’d get better results if you told a writer to write a samurai movie where nobody dies, and then when he’s done, you say “oh, sorry did I say nobody dies? Ha ha ha did I really say that? Oh man! I meant everybody dies! Go ahead and rewrite the last third of the film, would you?”