If you haven’t already heard about the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ghost of Tsushima movie adaptation, you have now. Chad Stahelski, director of all four John Wick movies, is set to helm a film adaptati꧟on of the wildly popular action-adventure samurai game. Ghost of Tsushima was fairly well-reviewed when it came out, garnering praise for its aesthetic beauty, b🅠ut garnering some criticism for its mish-mash of anachronistic Japanese stereotypes in service of creating recognisable samurai culture.
But I wasn’t a huge fan. It was a visually beautiful game, yes, but the narrative was weak, the characters were uninspiring, and the overall gameplay mechanics were a bit repetitive. I understand most people don’t feel this way; my partner loved the game and appreciated its inter🌄rogation of masculinity. But it didn’t resonate with me at all, which is why I’m so doubtful that the movie adaptation will be good.
It’s always easier to adapt a game when the source material is extremely compelling, and what makes a game compelling is narrative and themes – that’s why I’ve written almost compulsively about 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us, about the HBO series’🐠 adherence and departure from the game, and how it leaned into i🏅ts political undertones and made them explicit. Stahelski himself said that The Last of Us lifted the “curse of video game-to-movie”. My colleagues have also written comprehensively about 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:video game adaptations and whet๊her or not they can be easily adapted to a more story-focused medi🌟um.
I don’t think the Ghost of Tsushima’s story is nearly strong enough to make for an interesting movie. It clearly takes inspiration from samurai movies before it, but distills this down to a stereotypical plot, saying nothing much of substance. Its black-and-white filte🥀r is called Kurosawa Mode, despite Kurosawa being noted for his use of colour in movies like Ran, which shows the shallowness of the game’s tropes. Its strength is in its combat, and that’s where Stahelski comes in. The John Wick movies are known for their incredible action sequences, with seam🌊lessly choreographed fight scenes and diverse fighting styles – make no mistake, they are incredibly successful, but at their core, they are still action movies with the biggest focus on their visual spectacle.
It makes sense that Stahelski would want to direct this adaptation because of the wealth of opportunity to create a stylised, dynamic movie incorporating samurai combat. I have no doubt the action scenes will be an absolute delight. However, I do have seꦺrious doubts that the adaptation will be anything more than a generic samurai action movie that stereotypes its subjects.
For one, while I want to see Asian culture on screen, Ghost of Tsushima was criti🐈cised for cultural appropriation – it was made by white people, in consultation with Japanese historians, but it ignored many historical facts in favour of upholding the samurai stereotype. Stahelski, too, is white, and I wish it had been a Japanese person directing the film, honestly. We know there’s a Japanese-American writer on bಌoard the project, and it’s been the cast will be all Japanese and speaking Japanese, but also, shouldn’t that be an obvious decision? It’s a film about Japanese people.
In addition, the John Wick movies aren’t very complicated – the scr📖ipts are predictable and filled with cliches. Critics agree that narrative isn’t the series’ strong suit, but that it has a strong mythology. I picture a Ghost of Tsushima adaptation with lots of visual drama and strong fight scenes, but it won’t be able to examine anything more t♕han its source material, and that’s a shame.
With the right writers and director, a Ghost of Tsushima adaptation could transcend its source the way HBO’s The Last of Us did, paying homage to its inherent cinematic qualities while leaning into and emphasising its themes. With a plot like this to start with, it seems like the Ghost of Tsushima adaptation will be just as thematically bland as its source material, turning it into just another appropriative Hollywood samurai movie, generic as so many video game adaptations end up being. I doubt Ghost of Tsushima will meet the expectatღions its audience has for it if it isn’t conscious of its inherent flaws.