So I just watched the Live-action Fist of the North Star movie. Wow, what a horrible movie! It has it's campy moments, but generally gets everything about Kenshiro, and Hokuto No Ken in general both completely wrong, and for the worse as far as entertainment quality is concerned.
Allow me to go in-depth. At the very start of the movie, Shin kills Ryuken, Kenshiro's adoptive father and master... except that not only does Shin have no reason to do this, but he didn't in the series. It was Roah that killed Ryuken, but even then he was only able to because he was having a stroke at the time.
And even worse, Shin kills Ryuken by shooting him with a pistol... WHY?! Shin is far, far, far, FAR too arrogant to actually use a weapon when he has spent his life since birth mastering the Lone Eagle Fist of the South Star, which is indeed stronger than any revolver he could have been packing.
Another odd dumb thing to get wrong, is that while Shin once murmurs under his breath that his style is Nanto (an odd thing this everything else is in English), but everyone else refers to his fighting style as "Southern Cross" and they say that the "North Star and Southern Cross shouldn't fight", which is just plain wrong. That's the name of the city he builds to impress Julia, what they meant in that sentence was South Star, not Southern Cross.
Another odd thing is that even though it's a Fist of the North Star movie, not very many people's head's explode. Exactly 2 people's heads explode, and every else dies generic kung fu deaths.
Actually, the movie in general does a poor job representing Kenshiro's prodigious, superhuman strength. Most of the fights has him using generic kung fu grapples, holds, trips, chokes, using weapons, and other things of that nature, when all that is really belittling to animated Kenshiro's ability, who very frequently kills his enemies in a single blow, usually with their entire body disintegrating.
Speaking of misrepresenting a fighting style, Shin's Nanto Shinken is so ODDLY presented. They make his hand glow yellow, and then he hits his intended target in the stomach, takes a few steps back, and then out of nowhere holes explodes in their abdomen, and the joints of their arms and legs split open. That's not how it works guys. It isn't some bastardized version of Hokuto Shinken. Shin bisects people with his fingertips.
And Shin doesn't even have his magnificent blond hair...
Also, Ryuken is some bizarre, ghostly spirit guide, channeling through Lynn's body to instruct Kenshiro. That's just not true, and kind of degrading to Kenshiro's independence and motivation. Also, Bart (in the movie, Bat) dies. You'd be hardpressed to find a more death-immune character in Hokuto No Ken, besides Ken himself.
Also, the actor playing Julia is Japanese, and while this isn't that big of a deal, it kind of is when she's standing out by being the only character speaking borderline Engrish to everyone else's perfectly fluent English. Although, while Ken IS speaking English, I have never seen anyone speak his lines so awkwardly, forcefully, or with such disorienting inflection on the words. Surprisingly, for Gary Daniels, the actor that played Kenshiro, Wikipedia marks this movie as what he is most well-known for.
And then at the end, Shin just dies in the most anticlimactic fashion, neither party showing off what they're truly capable of. Shin doesn't even get exploded, or commit suicide like he does in the animated series, he just dies.
And the largest crime the movie commits is that not even once does Kenshiro's jacket explode off his chest in anger. That's one thing I'd have liked to see in live-action, but nope, Ken takes his jacket off the old fashioned way at the final fight. SO DISAPPOINTED!
and those are my complaints.
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Topic: I like anime, do you like anime? (Read 3149626 times)