[Global Times Special Reporter Dong Ming Zhuang Yu] The latest Japanese epic drama series "Shogun" produced by Hollywood was launched on the streaming platform on the 27th, and not only the West applauded, but even Japan also affirmed it. In Godzilla-1After local Japanese films such as 0 and "What kind of life do you want to live" have become popular in the United States, Hollywood seems to have figured out the taste of the Japanese this time - is it no longer "adaptable" to European and American countries adapting or producing Japanese works?
"It doesn't deliberately cater to Western audiences".
According to the American media "Variety", the first season of "Shogun" has a total of 10 episodes, the drama is based on James Clavell's 1975 best-selling **, Sanada Hiroyuki, Anna Sawai, Asano Tadanobu , Nikaido Fumi and other Japanese movie stars participated, its historical background is set in Japan in 1600, when it was on the eve of a civil war, Sanada Hiroyuki played the daimyo Yoshii Toranaga had to face the joint confrontation of the other 5 people.
Meanwhile, a mysterious ship from Europe is stranded in a Japanese fishing village, and the ship's British crew John (Kirsmo Jarvis) brings secret ...... that could help the daimyo take over the worldThe original book is a work that presents the events of the Japanese shogunate era through the dual perspectives of Westerners and Japanese, and the characters are based on Tokugawa Ieyasu, an important figure in Japanese history, and his first foreign samurai, Miura Needle (Englishman William Adams).
In Hollywood history, "Shogun" was brought to the screen in 1980 with a 125-minute film version and a 9-hour mini-series version. In this version, the legendary Japanese movie star Toshiro Mifune played the big name, and won many honors including the Golden Globe Award that year, but also left a regret of "focusing too much on the Western perspective".
After more than 40 years, Hollywood is now remaking again, with Rotten Tomatoes** hitting 100% freshness and 97% popcorn index, and Metacritic, which collects mainstream evaluations in Europe and the United States, also gave a high score of 83.
The San Francisco Chronicle commented that the show was "both old-school epic and modern."
Variety even compared the show to "Game of Thrones", "putting the audience in a complex network", and at the same time believes that the show "does not deliberately cater to Western audiences, and the main creator tells the story of cultural exchange with a rigorous attitude".
Biasfront Magazine affirmed that the play is in line with the original book, using a dual-protagonist model to avoid the "white savior" position of the story. However, there are also "Hollywood Reporter" who believe that the show is "politically ambitious, but the love line is interrupted and the emotional failure to bring effect".
The New Yorker believes that the show "makes war and ** the protagonist more, but loses the romance of the protagonist".
In Japan, the home country of the "shogunate", "Shogun" was also recognized. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, the production team behind the show is strong, with many professionals in costumes and set settings who have been in the industry for many years, and many props come from Kyoto. "As a Japanese, what makes this drama great is that it has a lot of depictions of Japanese details. ”
Film reporter Yuki Sarudo wrote in Japan's "Oriental Economy" on the 27th that in the past, Hollywood has made Japanese themes into film and television works many times, but the Japanese can see at a glance that they were not filmed in Japan, "Even the close-up shots in "Shogun" make people feel that they were made by the Japanese in Japan, and there is no sense of disobedience."
Seiya and Dragon Ball have been "magically modified".
In recent years, there has been a surge in the number of Japanese dramas and movies that Hollywood has invested in filming. In addition to Disney's "Shogun", HBO Channel will also launch the modern crime drama series "Tokyo Crime" in 2022, which exposes the dark side of Tokyo in the 80s through the perspective of an American journalist.
The show is the same as "Shogun", although there are also Western "outsiders", but it is more realistic to present the Japanese society and customs, and the second season was updated on February 8 this year, and the joining of Japanese movie star Rinko Kikuchi makes the series more interesting.
Netflix launched "Home of Ninjas" on February 15 this year. This work, which tells the story of the reappearance of a reclusive ninja family, has been criticized for "too many stereotypes about Japanese culture", but it has gained a certain amount of attention thanks to the acting skills of Yosuke Eguchi and others and the iconic style of ninjas. In 2019, Netflix launched the "shocking" Japanese drama series "Naked Director", and then produced a series of live-action versions adapted from Japanese animation IPs such as "Cowboy Bebop", "One Piece" and "Yuyou Hakusho", which were both applauded and criticized. Of course, none of this is as tragic as the live-action "Saint Seiya" (2023), which was "magically transformed" into a live-action movie after the classic anime was "magically transformed" into a live-action movie, and the inferior design of the sacred clothes was badly criticized by almost all audiences in the East and West.
How the Japanese "two-dimensional" has always been a huge "pit". As early as 2009, the American remake of the live-action film "Dragon Ball" not only failed at the box office when it was released in the United States and Japan, but also suffered bad reviews at word of mouth. There is criticism on the Japanese Internet that "the characters in the whole film are portrayed out of shape, and Goku seems to have become an American superhero." Even though the 2017 Hollywood production of "Ghost in the Shell" live-action version has dazzling special effects, it still caused a lot of controversy when Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson starred instead of Asian. In 2019, the Hollywood movie "Alita: Battle Angel", adapted from the Japanese manga "Gun Dream", simply used "full CG character motion capture" to complete the shooting, which avoided the ethnic problem of the actors.
Oriental or stereotype?
Japan has always exported "soft power" through film and animation to the outside world, and the works of film master Akira Kurosawa are highly regarded, and Japanese-style sword halberd films, mecha monster films, and a large number of TV animations in the first decade of the last century have influenced several generations of European and American audiences.
However, due to specific differences in culture and distribution channels, major Hollywood studios are relatively more cautious about "pure Japanese themes", such as "Memoirs of a Geisha", "The Last Samurai" and "Silence" by famous director Martin Scorsese, all serious works involving Japanese history and religion; And "Kill Bill", "Wolverine 2", "Fast Pursuit 4", "Bullet Train", "Godzilla", "Pacific Rim", "Super Marines" and other highly entertaining action movies and science fiction films, the Japanese elements are not rigorous and accurate, and more to bring the so-called oriental mood and gimmicks to Western audiences, and also cause "stereotype" criticism, which is the contradiction between Hollywood's commercial globalization and the "cultural appropriation" controversy.
Some Japan** pointed out that European and American countries actively remake and produce Japanese film and television or animation works, because of the influence of the original work itself, but if the remake is not good, it will look nondescript - it is difficult to win the love of European and American audiences, and at the same time, it will be disliked by Japanese audiences.