Crapple Royale 2
Posted on May 5, 2005
Having just finished watching Battle Royale 2 I can confirm what you have already heard. It is a horrible movie. The first thing that should be known is the fact that the director died during filming. I’m not sure what percent of the movie was actually finished, but Kinji Fukasaku kicked off and his apparently incompetent son Kenta took over. That’s not to say that had Kinji lived to the end that this would be a fantastic movie. Basically Battle Royale is a movie that can’t have a sequel. It was a fantastic idea for a standalone movie: Have every Japanese teen idol stranded on an island and kill each other. Fantastic! Throw in Beat Takeshi as the teacher and you’ve got a classic movie. I have no doubt that there is some deeper meaning to the film, about both the idol obsessed culture and the oppressive social environment teenagers grow up in, but I don’t honestly know what that message is. I’m not here to talk about that, I’m here to bust on the shitty sequel.
We pick up a few years after the first movie ends, with Shuya and Noriko escaping the game and forming a terrorist group called Wild Seven. Apparently Noriko gets lost at some point, but I didn’t even realize that until their tearful reunion in the last scene. In any case, apparently they escaped to some Islamic country that has “been at war for 20 years now.” I don’t know which one they mean though. In any case, they start the movie by declaring war on all adults and blowing up the World Trade Center. Or something that looks exactly like it anyway. This is the beginning of some weird anti-American sentiment that runs through the movie, but is never really developed into anything meaningful. A class of losers gets drafted into the BR II program exactly like the first class did, but in this case its by a volunteer.
Shiori represents a paper thin connection to the first movie as Beat Takeshi’s character’s daughter. She is apparently bothered by the fact that her father doesn’t love her because she is an immense bitch and doesn’t understand a drawing he did of Noriko reigning supreme in the first BR fight. So she signs her class up to hunt down Shuya and his band of merry men. She is completely emotionless until her weepy death scene which does not exactly make me find her a redeeming character. I couldn’t suddenly go “AWW YOU POOR GIRL YOU REALLY DID LOVE YOUR DADDY DIDN’T YOU” because she didn’t and no crappy death bed reversal is going to convince me. The point though is she basically initiates the game in this movie, making the next character even more troublesome.
Riki Takeuchi, the teacher is a ridiculous character. He has nothing to do with the class being signed up for the game, yet he is balls to the wind interested and even has the pleasure of being the first (but not only) character to list every country America has bombed in the last 60 years. He seems to be on some sort of children’s chewable speed and makes some of the most ridiculous faces I have ever seen. His character is basically a joke to me, so whenever he is supposed to do something menacing all I can do is laugh. Also his dramatic final rugby dive death was definitely the highlight of the movie.
Speaking of stupid looking people, Shuya has apparently gone beyond Thunderdome during his terrorist phase. I don’t know what it is about joining a resistance group, but it apparently makes everyone want to dress like an idiot. He spews nonsense about “declaring war on all adults,” but by the end of the movie he apparently have given that up because his girlfriend came back. Also let me just say that I can’t see Japanese girls fleeing to any Islamic country. I don’t honestly think they would be able to survive in that kind of society, as evident by the one scene they spend dressed as Islamic women. They shed their head coverings with alarming speed once our intrepid heroes show up. Speaking of heroes, we have one more to cover.
Taku’s acting directions apparently were “SHAKE WITH RAGE” because thats basically all he does. He is apparently some sort of rageaholic as shown in his obscure and extremely short background flashback, but as with all the kids, he has basically no character. Since this movie is based on a team dynamic, the basic element that made the first movie interesting is lost. Now instead of having a group of different personalities (based in real Japanese personality types and some hilarious stereotypes) interact, we have a fumbling Saving Private Ryan rip. The kids have basically no personalities once the game begins. Kurosawa is originally the punk bully character, but once the game starts he becomes a good natured leader who runs out to save other kids and has (of course) a tragic past. Actually, it’s not true that all characters are the same, over half of the kids have no character. We start the game proper with 40 kids, but only 30 even make it to the Saving Private Ryan storming the beach scene. The surviving members have to be distinguished by things like “the diabetic girl” or “the one who peed her pants”.Notice how many times I had to mention Saving Private Ryan there? That’s because once the game starts all we get is ripoff scenes. Shakey-cam is followed by slow-mo-shakey-cam, to the point that it’s actually difficult to see what is going on. The acting is pushed far beyond levels considered “camp” especially by Shuya and Taku, who throw themselves around literally at times, pouting and shaking at the camera. In the end, much like The Last Samurai Taku and Shuya survive scenes that should have killed them a thousand times over (especially considering this is a Japanese movie) to lead to them fleeing to an Islamic country involved in 20 years of war AGAIN. Finally we get a “drive off into the sunset” type scene (see Terminator 2) with some absolute gibberish about war and adults that I’m sure is supposed to make me despise the Great White Satan even more than I already do.
In the end this is just a spectacular failure of a movie. Shameless capitalizing on film success with meaningless sequels is nothing new, but I’m a bit surprised at how well they managed to remove everything that made the first movie unique and surprising and replace it with stereotypical crap. I will admit though, I am looking forward to the next movie when Kenta Fukasaku dies and the movie is finished by his dog Pochi.