I’m not certain that anyone is truly looking forward to seeing Keanu Reeves in 47 Ronin. What with all the delays and the script problems, there was a high likelihood that this one was never actually going to see the light of day. But apparently it will, and not that long ago we had the first American trailer for the film, which was less than stellar.
Today, we have a new tease for the film in the form of a Japanese ad. It has less CGI and more people jumping, but for all that it paints a less painful picture of the film. That might be because it’s only 50 seconds long, though. While we got to see some pretty bad CGI landscapes and creatures in the US trailer, the Japanese trailer mostly features various actors looking into the camera with stern expressions. There’s also a little bit of swordplay, and some portentous voiceover meant to convince us that it’s not as bad as it looks. Actually, if I saw this trailer first, I’d probably be more willing to give the film the benefit of the doubt.
47 Ronin tells the tale of Kai, a mixed race samurai (thus explaining his Keanu Reeves-ness) who joins up with his former clan members after their master is forced to commit suicide. This might involve dragons and angry Japanese people, or something. I’m not really clear on all that, but there are 47 Ronin involved. That’s a lot of ronin. Kurosawa only needed seven samurai to protect a whole village.
You can check out the latest Japanese trailer below, along with the … rather colourful international poster for the film. Does this look unforgivably bad, or can it possibly be salvaged? Might there be a good film lurking in there somewhere? Let us know in the comments, if you think it’s defensible.
47 Ronin comes to theatres Christmas Day.
