The Roving Ronin Report

47 Ronin is not 47 Ronin and I don't mean this because of the fantasy elements in the film or even Keanu Reeves being in the film. I say this because the core of the original story has been so drastically changed to make it almost unrecognizable that even if you took out the fantasy and Keanu you would still have a film which barely resembles the original story of the 47 Ronin. The following are the changes compared with the original story so you can see how different it is: 1. Lord Asano - his age and the circumstances surrounding his death In the film Lord Asano is an old man in his 60s or 70s and he has a full grown daughter (Keanu's love interest BTW). The shogun comes to visit Asano's castle along with the villain, Kira. Asano is bewitched at one point and attacks Kira in the night. Because he attacked an unarmed guest, he is sentenced to seppuku (ritual suicide). The shogun then disbands Asano's samurai for some reason then tells Asano's daughter she wil...

SAVE THE NINJA!!! The Enigmatic Japanese Ninja Cheap fuel-efficient cars, VCRs, and stereos weren’t the only Japanese exports that flooded into America during the 70s and 80s. The plucky indigenous ninja cleverly smuggled themselves over the sea to dazzle American audiences with their seemingly magical martial arts abilities. They were soon to find fertile ground in American pop-culture and almost immediately a Ninja Boom was born. There was a time when ninja were as abundant as the stars in the skies. They were everywhere in America. They were in movies, on TV programs, in comic books, in newspaper personals, on street corners. Masterpiece Ninja Theater: “Who’s Afraid of Hattori Hanzo?” Just opening the pages of any comic book back then you could find throngs of ninja taking on small bands of heroes. On TV you could watch ninja fight each other, the A-team, greying old ex-pats, G.I. Joe, and so on. Less respectable movie theaters showed Ninja movies every other week. In bookstores, yo...