In 2018, Warner Bros., who held DC Comics but failed to make huge profits in the adaptation of related films, decided to take a sword and take a different approach to adaptation. Since Wolverine on marvel's side can have a journey of self-reconstruction and growth and awakening in distant Japan, why not pull their own heroes to Japan to make a unique cultural fusion?
According to the style of his own work, Warner quickly found a Japanese partner for the film, the Japanese manga artist Okazaki Norishi who created the "Explosive Head Samurai" and Kamikaze Animation. After a further in-depth exchange of views between the two sides, it was finally decided that the main background framework of the film would be Japan through time and space and the Warring States period.
One is the darkest and most charismatic hero character in DC Comics, and the other is the most dramatic and historically deep chaotic period in Japan, which came together. The original fear of losing the charm of the original Batman in the mash-up and grafting has become the biggest charm of the film.
<h1 class="ql-align-center" > Why japan's Sengoku period? </h1>
The Japanese people's persistent pursuit of historical legends and heroic complexes has a long history. As early as the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Japan, which had just entered the Tokugawa shogunate era, benefited from some Chinese merchants who came from overseas and obtained the first batch of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" books in Japanese history. The large number of heroic and legendary depictions contained in these historical novels originally derived from exotic countries have resonated with the Japanese people.
Inspired by the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Japan, which had no excessive historical connotations, renamed the recent war in its country aimed at unifying the whole country to the "Warring States Period" and carried out a large number of related literary creations. Ming said that it was a Warring States, but compared with China's Warring States period, the so-called Warring States intensity and period span in Japan can only be compared with China's "Three Kingdoms Period" at best.
Entering the contemporary era, with the rapid rise of Japanese manga and the continuous export of strong culture, I believe that many otaku otaku who are passionate about Japanese manga and Japanese game works will not forget the characters of the Japanese Sengoku period who often appear in anime and games, such as Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Nonghime, Lady Aichi... Today, the Sengoku period has become a unique cultural brand in Japan, and it has become more plump and three-dimensional in countless anime works, historical novels, film and television adaptations, or folklore.
Therefore, when Batman came to Japan to construct the story framework, and then mentioned traveling through time and space, the first question that came to mind of the Japanese screenwriters in charge of the storywriting was how to make a clever and perfect connection between the Warring States and Batman? Rather than choosing the age of the story, in their view, only a historical period like the Warring States can carry a heroic character with a unique dark atmosphere like Batman.
The film cleverly did not choose to pull the characters of the Batman comics into ancient Japan, continuing the modern confrontation.
In the Sengoku period of Japan, there were many daimyo lords with different personalities and abilities, and the Batman manga also had a number of villains with different personalities and abilities, and the screenwriters of the movie first corresponded the daimyo and the villain characters one by one and reinterpreted them, such as the penguin man incarnated as Takeda Shingen of Kai, the poison ivy woman incarnated as Echigo's Uesugi Kenshin, the death knell became Okuwa's Date Masamune, and the two-faced man became Omitsu Omiyoshi of Omi...
Among them, the most amazing thing is the film's re-interpretation of Japan's Sengoku Nichiren: the clown becomes the "sixth day demon king" Oda Nobunaga, and the gorilla Grounder becomes toyotomi Hideyoshi, nicknamed "Monkey" (it seems that Tokugawa Ieyasu has no counterpart!). ）。 When all the villains have their own characters, Batman also has his own team: a team of ninjas with the desire to save Japan.
<h1 class="ql-align-center" > Batman and Japanese culture</h1>
Batman's backstory, I believe many comic book fans and fans know as well as I do. Bruce Wayne learned martial arts from ninja masters and eventually parted ways with the Ninja League due to differences in philosophy and goals. In this whole story, the introduction and use of Japanese elements can be said to occupy a very important part.
In terms of Batman's styling setting, even in Christopher Nolan's "Batman: The Dark Knight" trilogy, we can still find a strong Japanese samurai style, not to mention the internal connection between batman's re-emergence after being confused in three movies and the Japanese ninja spirit.
In terms of weapon use, the smoke bombs used by Batman and various dark weapons full of modern technology also have striking similarities in principle and performance to the weapons used by ninjas in Japanese anime.
The "ninja alliance" represented by Batman and the ninja master first inevitably parted ways for conceptual reasons, and if Japanese literature and movies are used to briefly describe this dramatic twist, it is exactly like the product of the close integration of "Seven Samurai" and "Rashomon".
<h1 class="ql-align-center" > stunning visual feast</h1>
When the characters have achieved one-to-one correspondence, if you still wear modern costumes and modern technology to fight, it is inevitable that you are a little detached from the well-intentioned and painstakingly constructed story background.
Therefore, in terms of character attire, we can see that everyone has changed the costume style of the modern Gotham at the beginning of the movie, and realized the styling innovation of the local customs in japan in the Warring States, with armor, fans, clogs and exquisite and chic clothing... Almost every character is perfectly reinvented in the film.
In terms of scenes, the innovation of the film is also unprecedented. Since the 18th and 19th centuries, the West has always admired the perfect fusion of realism and freehandism in the traditional Japanese painting style, and even set off a wave of learning Japanese ukiyo-e in that year.
It is even rumored that Monet, Van Gogh and others have copied Japanese ukiyo-e. This shows how great the impact is. Therefore, Japanese paintings, even later manga, have a large audience in the Western world, coupled with the mysterious sense of the East, which makes the West flock to it.
This time, "Batman ninja" really realizes the fusion of exquisite Japanese manga and hero manga, if the dusty Batman at the beginning of the movie falls into the streets of Japanese wind, it is not enough to attract the attention of the audience.
So when a clown in gorgeous costume performs a grotesque performance under the moon, the beautiful scene is amazing! Just like Lucia's first appearance in the background of the moon in "Death", it can be said that there is no gap between the two.
Remember the famous ukiyo-e painting "Surfing in Kanagawa", which is an important cultural business card of Japan? In the picture, in addition to the freehand clouds in the sky, the background is paved with a looming traditional cloud pattern. In the five-minute-long clip of the clown's memory loss, the film uses the coarse-grained freehand style of ukiyo-e painting style to distinguish it from the rest of the film.
The profound transformation of the clown's image from the outside in the simple picture is simply addictive. Although the last touch of clown red makeup on the mouth was once again expected, the display of a few minutes of calm life and confused image still showed the world a different image of a clown.
With sufficient production funds, the film chose a different production path. Traditional 2D animation screens require a lot of labor, time and effort, basically thankless, the most vivid illustration is "Studio Ghibli", adhering to the traditional hand-drawn, so that it takes several years to create an animation work.
Using 3D to 2D technology, coupled with subtle manual mobilization, the picture production of "Ninja Batman" frame by frame is efficient and vivid. The most direct embodiment is the wonderful picture of Batman and the Joker roof battle.
< h1 class="ql-align-center" > the plot setting of the second middle</h1>
The perfect combination of advanced production technology and cool Japanese manga style gives the audience in front of the screen a stormy visual touch, but this does not completely cover up the shortcomings of the film.
In the current setting of the original comic, Batman is under the huge blow of the death of his parents and the darkness of the city, after hardships, after a long training of ninja masters, and through self-awakening and human struggles, and continues to grow, before gradually becoming the Dark Knight in the eyes of the world today.
However, the reshaping and transformation of Batman in "Ninja Batman" has not inherited any of the foreshadowing plots in the comics, where is the connection between Batman and Ninja? How does Batman have an epiphany to become a ninja? How does Batman and the Ninja Clan relate? How did the villains become the daimyōs who ruled Japan?
Countless questions are buried one after another in the ninety-minute long plot, which makes people powerless to spit out and the visual effects are contrasted with the plot setting.
As for the final battle, it was even more shocking. The final duel between the villains and Batman and a large number of human figures is not a hard-hitting confrontation in the era of cold weapons, the villains' huge Japanese-style castles are actually giant robots with various mechanisms and guns, and in order to deal with the undead "Batman", they want to get their respective robots to merge and become giant robots...
Seeing this, I believe that everyone will have the same feeling as me, how big is this screenwriter's brain pit. And this is not nothing, the most profoundly disappointing thing is the "god operation" of Batman's side when facing the giant robot enemy: using countless groups of monkeys to stack arhats to conjure up a giant synthetic monkey, and then covering countless bats outside to become a giant Batman...
It can be said that at the end of the story, in addition to the Batman and his party after returning to Gotham, the Batchaper with a strong retro gothic style can also arouse the curiosity of the audience, and the highlights and innovations shown at the beginning of the film have been exhausted. In addition to the visual shock, the storyline of the movie does not bring us the same spiritual shock.
But even if the film eventually fails in terms of storyline, we still can't deny its innovations and breakthroughs in style, technology and cultural integration.
Especially for the majority of otaku otaku, Catwoman and Joker Woman have changed the restrained style in the past American comics, and after combining with the Japanese comic Lolita painting style, the graceful and sweet cuteness shown is simply an accident in the accident, a surprise in the surprise, which is once accustomed to the dark and deep style of the "Batman" series.