[MrFoof]

You know what they call Battle Royale in France?

Hunger Games with Cheese.

I saw Battle Royale as a subbed bootleg around 20 years ago. Fantastic B-movie, and I understand some of the young actors got some notable roles as they got older (Takeshi Kitano was there because he was Takeshi Kitano), but it’s still a B-movie. Good time though, even today.

As an aside on Takeshi, for those who want to go down a rabbit hole, dig into “Takeshi’s Challenge” on the Nintendo Famicom. That game is a trip.

[MrFoof]

I got that wrong.

“You know what they call the Hunger Games in France? Battle Royale with Cheese.”

Too many things going on, typed it in backwards!

[lazystar]

for those confused, its a reference to a john travolta line in "pulp fiction" -

https://genius.com/John-travolta-and-samuel-l-jackson-royale...

[tracerbulletx]

First version was funnier.

[deanputney]

This is a better joke too.

[notnaut]

disagree. putting it on its head makes it funnier imo

[OnlineGladiator]

Why not just edit your original comment?

[MrFoof]

I was past edit window.

[OnlineGladiator]

You can edit up to 2 hours after you write your comment.

[notatoad]

that changes if people have voted on it or replied to it.

[gregschlom]

But then if they have cheese, why would they be hungry?

[solumunus]

Are people not getting the Pulp fiction reference?

[auggierose]

It is 30 years after pulp fiction came out.

Last year I was chatting with the 20 year old son of a friend, and he didn't know what Highlander was. I mean...

[dghf]

> Last year I was chatting with the 20 year old son of a friend, and he didn't know what Highlander was.

Well there was only the one movie.

[christkv]

I wonder if anyone will pick up Red Rising at some point. Might be too expensive to do properly

[bodantogat]

An animated show might work! Will Wight's Cradle series raised over $1M on Kickstarter for an adaptation

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/author-will-wight/anima...

[chrisweekly]

hope so

[JKCalhoun]

First introduced to Takeshi Kitano in the 2000 remake of "Zatoichi" (highly recommend).

[JoblessWonder]

In 2003 I was first unknowingly introduced to Takeshi Kitano on MXC on Spike. That fall in a Japanese film class I saw him in Sonatine which remains one of my favorite movies. Then in the spring of 2004 Zatoichi was released and I saw it in theaters. I had a year in my life where Takeshi Kitano was *everywhere*.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

Btw he's back ! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42663063

[VectorLock]

If you like Beat Takeshi I can't recommend his "Outrage" trilogy enough.

[juliusgeo]

The outrage trilogy is amazing, I would also recommend Sonatine and Hana-bi.

[ekianjo]

Zatoichi is so so. Watch Sonatine.

[coldtea]

>but it’s still a B-movie

It was "the third highest-grossing Japanese film of 2001". "At the 2001 Japanese Academy Awards, Battle Royale was nominated for nine awards, including Picture of the Year, and won three of them".

Hardly a b-movie, except in the sense "not a Hollywood blockbuster crapfest"

[ekianjo]

Fujiwara did not have to wait to become a famous actor after BR. The same for Shibasaki Ko (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko_Shibasaki)

People focus on Kitano too much he was just a secondary character in that movie.

[achileas]

Battle Royale was a novel before it was a movie, and it's a much better novel than movie.

[homarp]

lord of the flies is the name of the novel?

[coldtea]

Probably not, since aside from "kids in an island" there's no relation between the two, anymore than there is between and Gulligan's Island and the Castaway, or Alien and Passangers ("people on a spaceship").

[IG_Semmelweiss]

Takeshi Kitano , AKA Vic Romano of Takeshi's Castle ("MxC" in US cable networks).

For anyone that misses that jewel of japanese game show, they have rebooted the franchise and the new series are available in Amazon prime.

[peterarmstrong]

Also, Asakusa Kid (biopic of him) is a really good movie, and Hana-bi is a great movie as well.

[KPGv2]

> battle royale was a B movie

Yeah, if it's not an American movie, it's some cheap shit! /s

My brother, it was nominated for nine Japanese Academy Awards, it was helmed by one of Japan's top directors, is an adaptation of a best-selling novel, is regarded by critics as one of the best films of the era, has high production values, stars arguably the most famous actor in Japan, was scored by a famous and prolific composer (you might have heard his music in another movie called Django Unchained), etc.

That's not even getting into the economics of film in Japan. A successful film in Japan nowadays earns around $10M on a budget of half a million. BR, produced nearly twenty years ago, had a budget nearly ten times that much and grossed triple.

Suffice it to say, Battle Royale is a high production cost movie, which forecloses the possibility of it being a B movie.

and because I'm just some guy,

https://variety.com/2018/film/asia/japan-ethics-of-making-ch...

[DaiPlusPlus]

I’ll stick my neck out and assert that “cheap” films are better, anyway: movie budgets’ sizes are inversely proportional to the producers’ risk tolerance; therefore, big money films are devoid of originality and any message they carry is nought but masturbatory self-aggrandisement.

The best films I’ve ever watched, that which had the biggest effect on me, were TV-plays and self-funded documentary-films.

[sandworm101]

>> big money films are devoid of originality

That may be true for some but at the really high end, writers have the resources to so some fun things. Even many high-end marvel-style movies have hidden jokes and themes that 99% of viewer don't ever pick up on.

[emmelaich]

Example - Dune 2. Good looking junk.