Quote:
Ewen Ebsworth wrote:
what Aikido needs is a good Samurai film. Look at Ridley Scot's love affair with antiquity and the middle ages - films about arcane forms of warfare are very popular. Historical dramas have become very popular as a way of making social observations. People like drawing lessons about the present from the past. Take the success of the Last Samurai with Tom Cruise, it's one of my favourite films despite the anachronisms. If someone like Ridley Scot or another big name director made a film about Feudal Japan with a healthy dose of battle scenes and Aikido/Jujutsu techniques in certain scenes, it would spark peoples interest in all things martial arts again. It's a more subtle way of promoting the art as it would be looking at it from an authentic historical viewpoint. But people would be drawn to that part of our history that has been lost and with the right sort of message or tone it will encourage people to rediscover that element of our humanity.
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The Last Samurai was well done (disregarding the plethora of historical/technical inaccuracies) and I'm guessing Iaido/Kenjutsu schools didn't see a big influx of new interest. Honesty, I highly doubt that any well done film that features Aikido or any other traditional Japanese art in a significant way is going to spur an influx of new interest.
All you are going to see in big budget Hollywood movies that aren't period pieces are fight scenes that use the ever so popular Krav Maga/Silat/Kali/MMA fusion. The Chinese film industry can put out some great movies (Ip Man, Shaolin) and Indonesia recently had the Raid Redemption, but I'm doubting Japan is going to put out anything at that sort of level that is heavily features Aikido or Jujutsu.
In terms of big budget Hollywood films that feature traditional Japanese arts I'm guessing 47 Ronin is going to be the closest you are going to get for a long time. Who knows how those fight scenes are going to turn out? If Sanada wasn't one of the leads I'd be very worried.