Once controversial and now greatly influential, 'Battle Royale' is now in theaters to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

Once controversial and now greatly influential, ‘Battle Royale’ is now in theaters to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

Before there was The Hunger Games and the popular video game genre, the term “battle royale” applied to the popular 2000 film. Director Kinji Fukusaku’s dystopian thriller casts a wide shadow over media these days, and in honor of its 25th birthday in December, it’s coming back to the big screen again.

Based on Koushun Takami’s 1999 novel of the same name, Battle Royale centers on a group of Japanese high school students living under a totalitarian government that’s enacted a yearly game where students fight each other to the death over three days, and anyone who refuses gets their head blown off. At the time, it was controversial enough to get banned or excluded from distribution in some countries, and couldn’t be sold to American distributors for over a decade out of concern for lawsuits. (It eventually did in 2010, albeit as direct-to-video.)

  • Tujio@lemmy.world
    20·
    22 hours ago

    You know what they call The Hunger Games in France? Battle Royale with cheese…

  • Hazmatastic@lemmy.world
    8·
    19 hours ago

    Got the book from my sister when I was young, blew my mind that not only did this exist, they’d made 2 movies by that point (a third came later). Young, edgelord me was in paradise.

    Still a good book and movie. Highlighted a lot of still very relevant problems. Did Hunger Games both first and better. Recommend if you like that kind of thing and/or are pissed off at your government like I am

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      2 hours ago

      The manga is fucking brutal. Way moreso than the movie or the book. The book is excellent, though!

      • Hazmatastic@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 hour ago

        Oh damn, I forgot there was a manga. Didn’t they change a lot in the manga? I have the feeling that was why I didn’t get into it, but it’s been like 15 years since then. It might have just been to expensive for me at the time, even at like $10 an issue

        • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          1·
          1 hour ago

          The movie, book, and manga are all very different, ya. Like

          Tap for spoiler

          In the manga, Mitsuko lures another kid into fucking her and she slaughters him while he’s fuckin’ her. I don’t believe this happens in the book, and they definitely can’t show that in the movie hahaha. The violence and gore in the maga is dialed up to near-Berserk levels. It’s wild.

          • Hazmatastic@lemmy.world
            2·
            28 minutes ago

            !Oh, that creepy dude was in the book as well. Iirc he was her stalker. Not sure if they did the deed, been a while, but that was definitely the premise she used to get him with I think the sickle. His little man did not survive either. I dont think it played out the same in the movie though. I think i remember a crossbow? Or maybe that was chisato, i might be conflating those two since they had their scenes pretty close and i think ended up meeting. That or it happens off screen, not sure.

            But yeah that Mitsuko scene was in the book and was brutal af!<

            • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              1·
              26 minutes ago
              Tap for spoiler

              Oh yah, they fully didn’t fuck in the movie. In the manga, they basically show full penetration in a hot tub if I recall correctly and she like, slices his throat open to a geyser of blood, it’s wild. :::