47 Ronin (2013)

New thing today, watched 47 Ronin (2013). First movie of 2014 and it was terrible, simply terrible! We watched it at the cheap theater today, and heard it got 12% Rotten Tomatoes rating, so we were intrigued. Plus I love movies with dragons and the trailers had all that supernatural demon stuff I love. Sometimes we don't agree with ratings so I was willing to give this movie a shot, even just for the demon supernatural effects.

About 20 minutes in I was bored. Didn't like the love story, wasn't interested in the characters, costumes I thought were gaudy, I thought the acting and shots/sequences were bad and overall it was really cheesy in a bad way. The acting was really over-dramatic ridiculous. Also the costumes were weird to me. It's like the colors were off and they had these metallic fabrics that were so not fitting to the time period or the tone of the movie. It seemed like it was going authentic past feel but it was also going overly stylized and the two didn't fit together. Also Japanese are fairly stoic and some of the emotional outbursts by the characters felt uncharacteristic. The pep talk pre-battle speeches were bad too. Eh. Awful awful, but you know, whatever. I wasn't angry, just bored and found it funny how bad some if it was.

Good News - I did like the fighting scenes at the end where they storm the castle and battle the dragon. Plus the scenes where the wicked dragon lady is doing her wicked stuff was pretty cool. Other than that, snore and cliche! Plus at the end, we find out that it's based on real Japanese history and a story about forty seven ronin and they pretty much just $*** all over Japanese culture with that terrible movie.

Oddly enough, I think it might have been better without the ridiculous love story or the supernatural elements, which is what the story centered around. If they focused it as a drama, not so much action and focused on Japanese history, past culture and honor of the Ronin it might have been better. If they made it more authentic past Japanese tone, and if the actors didn't speak English with Japanese accents, it might have made it better. It all just felt pretty ridiculous and I can't put my finger on it, but it just felt wrong. Eh.

I was hopeful, but it was disappointing. It was pretty bad and one of the worst movies I've seen. I think we can only go up from here for movies in 2014. Bright side.