sadisticmika

At the behest of miss_lady I've decided to continue my life and start anew, with a film commentary I like to call:

How to survive a poorly written sequel in a mainstream Japanese movie with a weak political message tacked on, or at least look like you might.

It's a mouthfull, but if you survive one poorly written mainstream Japanese movie sequel this year... let this be it.

The movie? Battle Royale. The clever sequel title? Battle Royale II. Who? Japan? Why? Sequels make money.

What counts? Style, good looks, yelling.
What Doesn't Count? Math ability, nerdiness, your Love Hina manga colection, rocking out.

A good way to figure out who to be in a movie like this is to figure out who not to be.



You might not want to be this guy because he was yelling at people at the begining of the film. His job is to write shit down, and yell shit faster than even Japanese people would care to hear it. See later style points for bonus counter-moves.

Older people who yell at younger folk and or give them rapid-fire instruction, especially in movies like this don't make it... Even Kiteshi Kitano, who delivered his lines with wit and a calm cruelty, didn't make it, and now we have this tool.



This girl is definitely out. Remember what we said about rocking out, that figures in now. This girl yells alot, which could place her on the winning side, but that's all she does, which is a major distraction... you can also judge a character by how big that character's hair is. Definitely out!



This guy yells, and seeths, and makes the same mad face yelling throughout the entire film... Almost everyone hopes that he trips on his own shoelace within the first 15 minutes, but guess what Davey...? No dice. We get this guy until the very end. Count on him to question reason, knock up the volume level a notch when it's too quiet, and provide ample juice to the staid brooding of the other guy who also makes it.



Same look, an hour in. This guy nails it.



I thought we'd come back to the badass, in case the point didn't hammer home. Don't do it. It's tempting to 'go out like dat'. But if you want to show up in the sequel, think about it: when was it that you last watched a movie where the badass guy does win.

Even when the badassguy loses, we accept it as bitter fait, a sort of apropos ending to a troubled life of a fish out of water, caught in a world it never made.

And these characters aren't so badass as much as they look like they might contemplate badass things, like hurting you and junk, while waiting on their friends buying Hysteric Glamour jackets at 50,000yen a pop...

Simple rules: don't be a dork, but don't forget your dork roots from the last film. don't be a hardass of the body, be a hardass of the heart and mind, always brood. don't forget to add product to your hair since the last film, as nobody wants to see the same character twice, and you didn't become a professional hardass just to have that same pre-TOYU crap prefecture hair cut for the next movie.

Play the line between where it is hard and soft, be a returning character, and or be so anoying that you figure you got placed to anoy people in the movie, and you may survive. Let's see how we did:



If you brooded this character, you've won! You may be back in Battle Royale III, the quest for cash.

If you picked any of the other chacters you weren't listening. Try a combination of brooding and yelling. Start yelling, and then colapse to your knees in a fit of intense brooding.

I waited for about a minute or more for the chacter to turn his face away from this deep moment that is not translatable into a language with an alpabet system, & he still didn't turn: that, my friends, is life saving gold.



bonus style tips for the style concious: try not to accentuate your voice with rapid machine-gun like speach that is favoured by characters who refer to themselves as 'ore'... try to elongate one short sentence, like HONTO DESU KA?!!?!????? into a long atonal & gutteral drawl...

there are not enough phrases which can be whispered. think of it as a barely audible balance between yourself, & the loud rocket launchers which just fired... you'll have audience members, and home viewers craning their knecks to hear your brooding voice. when you have them lured in, jump cut to a scene where your best friend gets a plasma beam right in the family jewels... return to brooding.



bonus pix!



This is the type of guy you don't want to be. There is also a girl character which looks almost precisely like him. Don't be fooled by demure girls, or guys who simply don't seem up to snuff... His caracter lasted quite a bit longer than his counterpart in the first, and did have the memorable death phrase of "ouch", (I kid you not)... before he shot a rocket launcher off... This character is best described as scared shitless, and confessing something which pains him deeply, like his unreciprocated affection towards you...



One Hour, 45 minutes... still going!