MovieChat Forums > Ran (1985) Discussion > Did it spawn a cliche?

Did it spawn a cliche?

posted 15 years ago by YarkoTheWarbler
5 replies | jump to latest

When I watch the battle scenes in "Ran" I kept saying to myself:

"That idiot brought a knife to a gunfight"

I suppose there was a time in history when most of the combatants had spears, swords or arrows, but a lucky few had guns, and "Ran" was set in that time. Whoever got allocated the guns by the quartermaster must have said the Japanese equivalent of "Sweeeet! Oh baby, I'm going to kick some ass today!"

Especially since the snipers who took out the two sons seemed to have such uncanny accuracy; those guns were like magic weapons in this film. In that way "Ran" certainly differed from King Lear.

I couldn't help but chuckle when I thought about the scene that must have taken place when the weapons were being handed out.
"OK, Haru, you get a gun.
Hiroshi, you get a sword.
Ishiro, you get a bow and some arrows.
Yoshi, I have a nice long spear for you.

The rest of you guys each get a flag to carry around to show the other guys which side you're on -- good luck with that."

Takahashi, looking at the flag he has been "armed" with. "<Japanese equivalent of> Oh, FFS...."

[–] christomacin 14 years ago

no, Ran didn't start this cliche by any means. I think the whole gun versus sword thing has been in Japanese movies as far back as you can go. Many samurai films have the hero meet his end by gunshot rather than sword. This could represent the end of the samurai making way for the modern world. Notable examples are Kurosawa's own Kagemusha, and Kobayashi's Samurai Rebellion. So it's not a cliche started by Ran, anyway.

[–] PillowRock 14 years ago

Spoiler for Seven Samurai
Plus, of course, all 4 of the titular samurai who are killed in Seven Samurai are killed by gun shots.

[–] christomacin 14 years ago

oh, yeah, that's a huge one, how did I forget that?

[–] craigjohnson20 14 years ago

The most famous "knife to a gunfight" scene was in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" which came out four years before "Ran".

"I saw that movie on a plane and people still walked out." - Bill Hader (Sam Raimi birthday video)

[–] Kawada_Kira (7282) 4 years ago

Many samurai films have the hero meet his end by gunshot rather than sword. This could represent the end of the samurai making way for the modern world.

That's just silly. The samurai continued to exist for over 300 years after guns were introduced to Japan. More than half a century longer than the amount of time that the United States has existed as I type this. That's a long time.

This idea that "samurai = swords" and that guns spell the end of the samurai is ahistorical nonsense. Samurai took to guns eagerly the minute the Portuguese brought them to Japan.

The end of the samurai was brought about by the fact that feudalism had become outmoded as capitalism developed, and the samurai system was holding back Japan's economic development, causing Japan to fall behind and become geopolitically vulnerable in the face of Western imperialism. Guns had nothing to do with it.