Except The Last Samurai isn’t remotely historical.
Tom Cruise’s is very roughly based in a French admiral. That admiral got sent specifically to Japan to create political relations with a certain faction of Samurai to further French interests there. The French admiral was made samurai as honorary title and put into service of the household.
During the final battle (which was a castle siege, and both sides were using guns), the French admiral was released from service and sent home.
If a movie or a series were to be made of this, and if it were to be somewhat accurate, it’d be closer to a political thriller with some battles in between.
It can be a bit of both. You can tell a good story that also stays true to the historical events. Not being being able to do that shows a lack of skill and imagination.
Are you telling me The Last Samurai wasn’t skillfully made or imaginative? Nah, it was no masterpiece, but I liked it just fine. Having some westerners in Japan training their military on modern weaponry as the samurai are fading from relevance passes my threshold for “remotely historical”, and it’s definitely not a requirement for me that Tom Cruise’s character needs to have an American historical analog to meet that criteria. Any historical fiction will inherently have to change things about what actually happened in that era, after all.
It was not skillfully made or imaginative. It was a very basic toybox of exotic nonsense about Samurai wrapped around a premise similar to Dances With Wolves.
I think you missed the sarcasm in the rhetorical question, but yes. It’s one of at least three or four movies I’ve seen utilizing the Dances With Wolves trope, though I’ve never seen Dances With Wolves itself, and that’s okay. It was entertaining.
Except The Last Samurai isn’t remotely historical.
Tom Cruise’s is very roughly based in a French admiral. That admiral got sent specifically to Japan to create political relations with a certain faction of Samurai to further French interests there. The French admiral was made samurai as honorary title and put into service of the household.
During the final battle (which was a castle siege, and both sides were using guns), the French admiral was released from service and sent home.
If a movie or a series were to be made of this, and if it were to be somewhat accurate, it’d be closer to a political thriller with some battles in between.
Good thing I was expecting historical fiction then and not a documentary or even a dramatization of true events.
It can be a bit of both. You can tell a good story that also stays true to the historical events. Not being being able to do that shows a lack of skill and imagination.
Are you telling me The Last Samurai wasn’t skillfully made or imaginative? Nah, it was no masterpiece, but I liked it just fine. Having some westerners in Japan training their military on modern weaponry as the samurai are fading from relevance passes my threshold for “remotely historical”, and it’s definitely not a requirement for me that Tom Cruise’s character needs to have an American historical analog to meet that criteria. Any historical fiction will inherently have to change things about what actually happened in that era, after all.
It was not skillfully made or imaginative. It was a very basic toybox of exotic nonsense about Samurai wrapped around a premise similar to Dances With Wolves.
I think you missed the sarcasm in the rhetorical question, but yes. It’s one of at least three or four movies I’ve seen utilizing the Dances With Wolves trope, though I’ve never seen Dances With Wolves itself, and that’s okay. It was entertaining.