Quote Originally Posted by Geoffrey S
Not old-fashioned, unwilling to move with the times, and a danger to the future sovereignty of Japan?
Exactly, and there in lies the rub, does it not?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
The movie needed to do a little emotional manipulation in order to keep everything going the way they wanted to. The movie tries very hard to get you to sympathize with the samurai. Playing up the noble warrior role of the samurai to the hilt, willing to die for the emperor, the heroic last stand, dying for the 'right' cause, etc.

Not all samurai were like that. Most ruled their people using the same rules they lived by, that their people lived or died by their hand. Much the same as the samurai lived or died by the emperors hand. This often led to the samurai killing the peasants they ruled over the slightest infraction. Not necessarily the best trait for a good leader, but common enough back in the day. The japanese samurai, and feudal knights weren't too different from each other really.

The samurai were also stubborn, disturbingly traditional, and probably a little xenophobic. Thus the reality of them being unwilling to modernize. Of course rooting for dated tyrants who rule with an iron fist is hard to do, so the movie idealized the samurai bringing the ideal traits of them to the forefront and minimizing the not so ideal parts of them.

On the other hand Harada's character could have been very easily looking out for the best interests of Japan, but if they portrayed him as such, he wouldnt have seemed like the bad guy. Thus let the vilification commence.

In the end, the movie was romanticizing the Feudal Age of Japan and its traditional ways. Much like other movies do the same for the European Middle Ages, and we all know that Age was no bed of roses. Progression and modernization were vilified much like it always is, most people are very resistant to change. The two characters in the movie were polarized to that end.


As I look back on this post i realized, I'm probably starting to derail this thread. In the end, I happened to like 'Last of the Samurai', and even though it is probably nothing more than a mildly entertaining movie to most, it does seem to have some nice cinematic elements to it. However the point of the thread was to talk about memorable deaths in film, thus the spoiler tags so you guys can more easily ignore my ramblings. I make my apologies and exit stage left.