Chad Stahelski, the director of John Wick tasked by Sony to transform the samurai game Ghost of Tsushima in a film, said he wants to make the film in Japanese, with a cast of Japanese actors. And he noted that Sony is “on board” for the change.
Stahelski made the comments in an interview with international website Collider to promote the release of the Netflix vampire film Day Shift, which he produced.
Stahelski said in the interview:
“So I think if we did it right, it would be visually stunning. It has an opportunity for a good deed and a great appearance. And honestly, we would try to do that, all within the proposal. That is, it is something within Japanese culture about the Mongols invading the island of Tsushima. A full Japanese cast, in Japanese would be ideal. Sony is very involved in supporting us on this. I’ve been going to Japan since I was 16. I have love for the country, love for the people, love for the language.”
Looking at it this way, this is a bold move. While Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite and Netflix’s Round 6 both showed that the public’s willingness to watch subtitled movies and TV is growing in the United States and elsewhere, it would still be new, and financially risky, territory for a action blockbuster made in Hollywood to be filmed in anything other than the English language.
Stahelski acknowledged this and seemed to suggest that the decision would limit the budget available for the film, but that this was something he was happy to get around. He said:
“Nobody is going to give me $200 million to make a tech movie without speaking English. I get it. So I have to be smart and I have to figure out what is fiduciaryly responsible for the property, for the studio and still get what I want and still make something epic. […] And I think America in general, or at least the Western audience in general, is getting more and more used to it because of the influence of Netflix and streamers and stuff, where we get a lot more content worldwide.”
Until then, that’s something of a gamble for Stahelski, for Sony Pictures, and for PlayStation Productions. The company’s arm dedicated to turning PlayStation games into movies (which, building on the success of the Uncharted movie, has also announced a Gran Turismo movie slated for 2023).
It is worth mentioning, however, that times have changed since 2003, when films like The last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, were released in theaters. make the movie Ghost of Tsushima in English, or with Western actors, would likely bring charges of inauthenticity, cultural appropriation, and whitening.
In fact, some of that criticism was directed at the game, which was made to reference Akira Kurosawa’s classic samurai films, but by a mostly white team at developer Sucker Punch Productions. Ghost of Tsushima has both English and Japanese audio tracks available, as well as a black and white “Kurosawa Style”. But it’s fair to say that the game shows only a cursory understanding of the samurai’s cultural and political significance.
How deeply to explore these themes in a film with “big action, great looks” is a question that Massachusetts-born Stahelski – who says Kurosawa is “on the top five influences of my life as far as film is concerned” – will need to deal with. But by committing to making the film in Japanese, he overcame the first hurdle.
This article is a translation of the writing by Was Welsh to the website Polygon.
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