Battle Royale

Discuss releases from Arrow and the films on them.

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Bürgermeister
Joined: Thu Jul 03, 2008 7:05 am

Re: Battle Royale

#26 Post by Bürgermeister » Mon Nov 25, 2013 6:13 am

Arrow don't send booklets out anyway, even if you order directly from them.
That's the one thing they're useless at. You just get told to return the item because they don't keep spare booklets.

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jindianajonz
Jindiana Jonz Abrams
Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:11 pm

Re: Battle Royale

#27 Post by jindianajonz » Mon Nov 25, 2013 12:33 pm

exidor wrote:You didn't pay 25 bucks to Arrow but you're asking them to send you something for free that costs them money to produce. That may be why they make things more complicated than you'd like.
Yes, but somebody paid Arrow for the item, and when they bought it Arrow still forgot the booklet. Arrow owes it to them, and they owe it to Chatterjees. He's just cutting out the middle man.

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manicsounds
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:58 pm
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Re: Battle Royale

#28 Post by manicsounds » Mon Nov 25, 2013 10:12 pm

Arrow's got to make sure that the item is not a bootleg, I think it's reasonable to send it to them.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Battle Royale

#29 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri Jan 29, 2021 12:16 pm


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Boosmahn
Joined: Mon Sep 04, 2017 10:08 pm

Re: Battle Royale

#30 Post by Boosmahn » Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:31 pm

This is a staggering box set (not sure if the cards were necessary, though).

Which versions are best for a first-time viewer? I read somewhere that the theatrical cut of Battle Royale was Kinji Fukasaku's preferred version, not the "director's cut."

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dwk
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2010 6:10 pm

Re: Battle Royale

#31 Post by dwk » Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:32 pm

The theatrical cut of the first film and no version of the second are preferable.

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tenia
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Re: Battle Royale

#32 Post by tenia » Fri Jan 29, 2021 6:06 pm

I second that. Especially about the 2nd movie.

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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Battle Royale

#33 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Jan 29, 2021 6:38 pm

I would definitely agree on the theatrical cut of Battle Royale being preferable. I quite like all of the added material in the special edition but the constant flashing back in the first section of the film from the bus to show almost every single major character at that school basketball match they have just played at almost completely ruins the structure and momentum of the opening act of the film. Whereas in the theatrical version everything is so pacy in that first section that you go from the relatively brief sketch in of the characters in the bus scene to them all being knocked out and waking up in their bizarre situation. Then we as an audience start to learn about the characters and their inter-relationships with each other over the course of the battle. That lack of context is the aspect that probably puts the audience more in the shoes of the kids than of Kitano's teacher as well, whilst finding out about some of them being miscreants and violent vandals beforehand through explicit imagery rather than secondhand verbal reports (particularly actually seeing Nobu stabbing Kitano) feels like it is trying to mitigate Kitano signing away the lives of his charges too pre-emptively.

The special edition cut is unnecessary over elaboration really, and if it plays well at all it would seem that it would mostly work to someone who had already seen the film and just wants to have a little more time with the characters they have already gotten to know but want to find out more about. So in that sense its not really geared towards the first time viewer coming to the film fresh.

But I do slightly disagree with dwk and tenia about Battle Royale II. Its not particularly necessary to see, and is mostly disappointing if you are wanting it to reach the painfully detailed heights of the first film where we end up feeling for all of the characters as they get poignantly sketched in death scenes. The co-opted class of kids in this film are both more numerous and much more disposable than those in the first. Mostly because they are doubled up and the film runs through the equivalent of the Battle Royale premise in the first third of the film before becoming... um... something a little different later on (similar to the way that the Ring and One Missed Call sequels go off into surprisingly different directions rather than just providing more of the same to fans of the first film). The wider socio-political context of Battle Royale was never particularly where the interest of the first film really lay, especially when the main theme is as much if not more powerful if seen as the older generation just taking any opportunity it can get to give the younger one a good kicking under ever flimsier pretexts of 'meting out rough justice'. Which makes some of the attempts to fill in the wider society in BRII a bit unnecessary at best, and gobsmackingly crass at worse. Its doing the equivalent of the turn that the final couple of Hunger Games films did basically (and since The Hunger Games pretty blatantly ripped off Battle Royale I can only imagine that BRII made its influence felt also), only if The Hunger Games had the audacity to have had Jennifer Lawrence go all in with the equivalent of Taliban 'resistance fighters' at the end, and that was still presented as the noble option.

But there are some astonishing moments within the sequel that I felt made it worthwhile. Particularly that early, chaotic sequence trying to outdo the opening D-Day section of Saving Private Ryan, as the new cohort of kids get forcibly turned into soldiers to fight against the 'terrorists' by getting split into teams, fitted with explosive paired collars and thrown in an expendable manner at the beachfront they have to secure, or die trying. (Preferably secure and die trying!), which sort of underlines the theme of the older generation forcing the younger one to fight their battles for them by hook or by crook.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Tue Jun 08, 2021 4:25 am, edited 7 times in total.

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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Re: Battle Royale

#34 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Fri Jan 29, 2021 7:04 pm

IIRC the special edition (which was released theatrically in Japan a few months after the standard version) happened because Fukasaku made the film with a PG12 rating in mind but got stuck with the more restrictive R15+. There was apparently a public misapprehension that the film had been cut in hopes of getting a PG12 and after the movie blew up there was a clamor to release the "real" R15+ version. Fukasaku wasn't interested in just doing a more violent version, so he reinserted some footage he had removed from the earlier cut (for reasons completely unrelated to the rating) and actually shot some new footage as well. I think the only extra violence is some slightly extended views of corpses and added CGI blood that's a lot less convincing than the original effects.

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