Throne of Blood (1957)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.
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What critics compared Throne of Blood to
There are some exhilarating workouts for the hero (on a superfast train, in a battle with ninjas that recalls Kurosawa's Throne of Blood), one or two unexpected turns of events, and formidable femmes fatales in acrobatic samurai Rila Yukushima and slinky Svetlana Khodchenkova, who plays a venomous chemist with her own set of deadly claws.
In one scene, a couple dozen ninjas pinion Logan with arrows of steel strings, until he is as perforated as Toshiro Mifune at the end of Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood.
That said, there are kicks to be had from a dizzying fight atop a bullet train, and, for Kurosawa fans, the sight of the Wolverine, on a snowy night, impaled by a forest of arrows pays stylish—and wholly appropriate—homage to “Throne of Blood.”
Determined to have his revenge, Rambo dives into its complex preparations with an almost demented thoroughness, coming up with endless awful ways for the bad guys to die, mixing in everything from a reference to Akira Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood” to a truly grisly Grand Guignol horror conclusion.
The director, Mel Gibson crony Adrian Grunberg, stages the action with reasonable efficiency, although the gore and dismemberment quotient goes way over the top to the point of camp; one heavy gets the Toshiro Mifune treatment from the end of Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood .
(Kurosawa had previously turned to Shakespeare for inspiration in Throne of Blood, his 1957 adaptation of Macbeth).
With 1957's Throne Of Blood, his seminal Macbeth adaptation, Kurosawa proved himself capable of transposing Shakespeare to feudal Japan while seamlessly incorporating Noh and Kabuki traditions.
Kurosawa resists the description of ''Ran'' as his ''version'' of ''King Lear,'' in the manner of his free, 1957 adaptation of ''Macbeth,'' titled ''Throne of Blood.''
As I remember it, the weird fashion for Shakespeare adaptations in the '90s (everything from various Hamlets to fascist-styled Richard III) only gave weathered cinephiles reason to fondly remember both Ran and Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (1957), which trumped all other Bard films by jettisoning the Elizabethan texts without ado and focusing instead on the fablelike stories.
Unlike Kurosawa’s Throne Of Blood (1957), which sticks fairly close to Macbeth, Ran only vaguely resembles its Shakespearean source; the director claimed he was well into the planning stage before realizing the similarity, at which point he deliberately incorporated it.
Inspired by Shakespeare's "King Lear" in the same way Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood" was influenced by "Macbeth," "Ran" was the rare foreign language film to not only get multiple Oscar nominations, including best director, but to actually take home a statuette (for costume design).
Fuqua gives the knights some suitably epic tasks to perform, providing for several white-knuckle set pieces (including an odd homage to Kurosawa's Throne of Blood) before settling into a big showdown with the Saxons.
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As a long time fan of Jidaigeki {Edo period} samurai lore from Kurosawa {Throne of Blood (1957), Yojimbo (1961), Ran (1985)}, to Okamoto {Sword of Doom (1966), Kiru! (1968)}, and Misumi and Kitano�s tales of the blind masseur with samurai honour {The Tale of Zatoichi/Zatoichi (1962/2003)}, I was excited to see Miike try his hand at a serious samurai film.
It’s partly the terrain of Scorsese’s beloved Akira Kurosawa—epics like Ran and Throne of Blood—and partly a natural paradise.
Similarly, the Japanese wastelands in Akira Kurosawa’s samurai epic Throne of Blood (1957) visualise a dust laden, smoky aesthetic, which is fitting for a film made after the nuclear warfare of the Second World War.
Not that I want to commit the sin of suggesting that all Japanese filmmakers are equals, but it calls to mind more than anything the jidaigeki (period films) of Kurosawa Akira, especially the ones where the paranormal is given free reign, like Throne of Blood ; or maybe I'm just being unduly influenced by how much Princess Mononoke quotes visually from Kurosawa's depictions of historical warfare.
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The scenes that show the weird sisters, might not have quite the impact of those in Kurosawa�s Throne of Blood (still the best version of the play, by a hair), but they come awfully close.
In this way, the film most resembles Throne of Blood in its thematic concerns.