The first poster for the Shinji Higuchi directed remake of The Hidden Fortress, set for release in Japan on May 10, 2008, has been posted online. As a fresh, and considering the subject matter also somewhat surprising, departure from the current norm, the poster is hand drawn by the well-known manga artist Takehiko Inoue. Inoue is perhaps best known for his series Slam Dunk and Vagabond, the latter of which is a retelling of the Miyamoto Musashi legend.
The poster gives us the first glimpse of Miyamoto Takezou, the new character that replaces the two peasants in the original movie. In the poster, he is shown staring trough what look like prison bars.
Takezou is played by the singer, actor and heartthrob Jun Matsumoto. The rest of the cast includes Masami Nagasawa, Hiroshi Abe and Daisuke Miyagawa.
The film now also has a flash-based website: kakushi-toride.jp. Shooting of the film started in November 2007, and the movie is set for release in Japan on May 10, 2008.
Poster is nice, but considering who draw it, I can already tell whom they want to appeal to, and how.
Like a ranted about in some other post, about how we will see more samurai style remakes being made, its not because of they are great movies and the Japanese are aware of them, its because they influence many mangas, and are apart of pop culture. In which most of the reader are completely unaware of what movies these mangas are inspired by. So more then likely it will be giving a main stream, slightly “over-the-top” style common with samurai mangas, making a completely pointless remake.
I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
I dont understand the reasoning behing replacing the two shallow peasents characters whoose only depth came from refecleting off each other, with just one new character.
It would seem to me, to pull off a single character based on two, you would have to deepen this Takezou character, but doing so would defeat the idea of the peasants simply being greedy, and mostly a means for comic relief. ‘
We like this peasants even though they are bad characters, simply because they are so simple, its hard to judge them for their flaws.
I could go on and on, about the dangers of casting popular singer/actor combos, but in short is a bad idea, especially if there fan base comprises of preteen girls.
I dont think this movie will follow the original as close as Sanjuro did.
Oh and the director is not promising, the guy has made horrible sci-fi and manga styled movies(1 I have seen), which only reinforces my belief the movie will be a like live action manga, and really suck.