Need some F&D games? How about some Samurai flicks?

By Desslok, in Star Wars: Force and Destiny RPG

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From it’s very first draft, Star Wars has been strongly influenced by Samurai and Japanese Cinema (amongst other things). Akira Kurosawa alone should get 25% screenwriting credit for A New Hope. And so in the vein of Heist Movie games, War Movie games and Spaghetti Western games, I think it’s time for a “You want to steal movie plots for your Jedi game” thread.

Now featuring the best in Samauri and Kung Fu flicks. . . .

Edited by Desslok
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOxA8IAdc9w

The Movie:
Sleepy Eyes of Death - The Chinese Jade
The Elevator Pitch:
Nemuri Kyoshiro is a half-breed son of a Japanese noblewoman raped by a Christian missionary. Wandering the countryside as a badass nihilistic ronin, Kyoshiro gets involved with the rich and powerful Daimyo, Nariyasu Maeda. Maeda is searching for a Chinese jade statue, and will sacrifice anyone to get it. Meanwhile another corrupt Daimyo is also searching for the elusive Chinese Jade and hires Kyoshiro to finish the job. Much ass kicking ensues.
How is it:
Chinese Jade, the first of six in the series, is a well made and entertaining flick with some badass sword work.
Game suitability: 20%
Since a great deal of the movie is Kyoshiro playing one Daimyo off another in kind of Maltese Falcon sort of plot, it would be hard to orchestrate in a game. However the high level plot should do you just fine.
Edited by Desslok
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The Movie:

13 Assassins



The Elevator Pitch:

The evil half-brother of the Shogun sadistically tortures and murders people for his own amusement, seemingly without any fear of reprisal. Secretly, a band of ronin gather with one purpose in mind: to kill the monstrous lord as he travels back to his fiefdom.


How is it:

Based loosely on the story of the 47 Ronin (The Japanese equivalent of the Alamo in stature and legend), its got some great action, great set pieces and loads of violence.


Game suitability: 35%


The set-up might work, but the actual execution of the Assassin’s trap would be too hard to play out as a game. However the movie will serve as a wealth of ways to use advantage, triumphs and despairs in a sword fight.

Edited by Desslok
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The Movie:

Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance
The Elevator Pitch:
The first of the Baby Cart in Hell series, Sword of Vengeance takes place in the Tokugawa Period. Ogami Itto was the Shogun’s official executioner, performing beheadings during the seppuku ritual. Unfortunately his position was coveted by the treacherous Yagyu clan, who murder his wife and framed him for dishonoring the Shogun's crest. Ordered to commit seppuku for a crime he did not commit, Ogami escapes and swears revenge on the Yagyu clan, hiring his skills out as an assassin for hire, living the way of demons and walking the road of damnation.
How is it:
An all time classic of Samurai cinema. One of the best non-Kurosawa samurai flicks out there. It’s not quite as polished as Kurosawa's finer Samurai epics (but really - how many films are?), but it’s got plenty of action, intrigue, historical pageantry, violence, and buckets upon buckets of bloodshed.
Game suitability: 80%
The theme of a hunted, wandering badass sword for hire seems custom made for a EotE/F&D game. All six Lone Wolf and Cub movies could easily be a campaign.

(Editors note: As Kaosoe pointed out, the original trailer had like 1.5 seconds of poorly lit nipple, so I replaced it with the trailer for Shogun Assassin, a mashup of Sword of Vengeance and Baby Cart at the River Styx - an equally awesome samurai flick. Here's the original NSFW trailer, in a much harder to accidentally view form)

Edited by Desslok
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The Movie:

Lady Snowblood



The Elevator Pitch:

Born in a womens’ prison, Yuki is trained from childhood by an elderly swordsman in the art of the blade so she can so that she can fulfill her mother’s final request to take revenge against the three people responsible for raping her mother and brutally murdering the man she was married to.


How is it:

Lady Snowblood is a gorgeously shot story of bloody revenge - and man, do I mean bloody. Limbs are whacked off and fountains of blood spray high in to the air. Despite being a woman, Yuki is a serious bad ass hell-bent for vengeance.


Game suitability: 17%


The revenge plot (probably) won’t fit with your Star Wars game. But there might be enough non-revenge material to work with.
Edited by Desslok
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These all look pretty awesome. I'll need to check them out. Kill Bill must have been heavily inspired from that last one, it has the same feel to it, even without the parallels in the plot.

Also, you may want to find a new trailer for Lone Wolf and Cub, that one's NSFW, and I've seen the mods take down posts for less. Not that I care.

Edited by kaosoe
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I don't see Seven Samurai in this list.

;)

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These all look pretty awesome. I'll need to check them out. Kill Bill must have been heavily inspired from that last one, it has the same feel to it, even without the parallels in the plot.

Oh yeah, Tarantino's love for exploitation flicks and Asian cinema runs very deep. Kill Bill drew on at least a half dozen different samurai and kung-fu flicks that I can think of. You, of course are not the first person to notice this! :)

Also, you may want to find a new trailer for Lone Wolf and Cub, that one's NSFW, and I've seen the mods take down posts for less. Not that I care.

Oh, good point. I'll go fix that.

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The Movie:
The Hidden Fortress
The Elevator Pitch:
A tall skinny farmer and a short fat farmer - who both bicker - get caught up in a great adventure where a defeated Samurai General has to escort a princess and her treasure through enemy lines back to her kingdom.
How is it:

It's a little bit long, so you need to set aside from time - but despite it's 2+ hour run time, it ticks along nicely and doesn't ever really let up. Not one of Kurosawa's best films, but it's a darn good adventure film

Game suitability: 0%

Okay, you really cant use Hidden Fortress for a plot, since everyone has seen New Hope and they'll go "Wait a second!" when you pull it out. But as an exercise in adapting one completely different story and setting into another form, it's invaluable.

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Yup Hidden fortress was always cited as one of Lucas's big influences for ANH. It is one of those films, along with 7 samurai and the original Gojira that I would recommend ant cinephile watching.

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I don't see Seven Samurai in this list.

;)

Hey, it's coming! I'll be building this over time (Especially since I need to rewatch 7 Samurai again here soon)

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I don't see Seven Samurai in this list.

;)

Hey, it's coming! I'll be building this over time (Especially since I need to rewatch 7 Samurai again here soon)

I personally have found Seven Samurai to be an almost universally applicable movie for any sort of RPG adventure. A rag-tag band of seven people out to defend a village of farmers from a ruthless warlord and his minions? Star Wars did already steal it for an episode of The Clone Wars, but the basic premise is sound, IMHO, and the episode, a fraction the length of the movie, naturally lacked all the subtle nuance of the Kurosawa film. Although a lot of Western viewers are likely to miss those subtle nuances, anyway.

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Damit now I am trying to come up with a Godzilla based Force and Destiny idea!!!!

Ok so some of the later movies had mind control a tempts. .......plus the SW universe always has a bigger fish.......

Hmmmm leave this with me.

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Damit now I am trying to come up with a Godzilla based Force and Destiny idea!!!!

Ok so some of the later movies had mind control a tempts. .......plus the SW universe always has a bigger fish.......

Hmmmm leave this with me.

Oh you mean the Zillo beast?

Skip to about 1:10

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Or you can do a mash up: Seven Samurai and Godzilla!

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And not but two issues later. . . .

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Edited by Desslok
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The Movie:

Samurai 7

The Elevator Pitch:
Every year during the harvest, a group of bandits invade the village of Kanna and steal almost all of the rice that had been harvested that year. Not only that, the bandits are becoming more demanding, now taking women and children in addition to rice. The elder of Kanna Village, to protect the village, decide they must hire samurai to fight against the bandits and make a last stand against this greedy enemy. . . .
How is it:

Wait, you say - that's just the plot to Seven Samurai! Why don't you just recommend the original movie and call it a day. Well, because everyone should know about this classic of cinema by now, and I wanted to mention lesser known (but still worthy) works. The series is pretty strong, with great characters, interesting fights and some solid animation (aside from a couple of dodgy CGI bits). Plus Samurai vs Giant Robots is cool!

Game suitability: 75%

It's a 26 episode series instead of a 4 hour movie, so the writers have lots of time to add in subplots, more details and character development, and enough plot changes that players who saw the original movie (or any of the many remakes) won't know what's coming.

Edited by Desslok
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http://screenrant.com/star-wars-obi-wan-spinof-movie-ewan-mcgregor/

I have written papers on the cross-cultural influences of Samurai films and Westerns and how well they blend.
If there is any love for me in the universe, that is what a Ewan McGregor "Kenobi" film would be: "East-Meets-Western-In-Space"

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The Movie:

Lady Snowblood

Wow, Tarantino stole this right down to the music.

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I'll just throw in there that while The Hidden Fortress was an inspiration, I wouldn't say the plot is all that similar. It could actually work really well for a hybrid EotE/AoR campaign, where half of the PCs are secretly Alliance agents trying to smuggle something through tightly controlled Imperial territory, recruiting the aid of the other PCs while posing as smugglers or thieves.