Before the Hunger Games was Battle Royale

From Terry at ganbarejapanese.com

Are you a Hunger Games fan?  Can’t wait until the next installment, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, comes out in 2013? Wait no longer, the Japanese movie that inspired The Hunger Games, Battle Royale, just came to the States.

The movie, directed by internationally renowned Japanese filmmaker Kinji Kukasaku was released in 2000.  Based on a Japanese novel published in 1999 of the same name, and written by Koushun Takami, “Battle Royale” is a bloody, gory film of youths killing each other.

The premise is that the Japanese youth are out of control. According to a San Francisco Chronicle article about the film, the teenagers “cut school, dye their hair weird colors, get lost in video games, are not respectful to their parents and are not thought to have the work ethic to carry Japan into the new millennium.” The Japanese government, concerned about their country’s future, decides to punish the students. Each year, the most unruly and disruptive class in Japan is selected to be sent to a remote island. The only rule to get off the island is to be the remaining survivor since only one student will be allowed to reenter society.

Sounds familiar, right? Sounds a bit like The Hunger Games. Battle Royale was originally not released in the States because of the Columbine Massacre just a year before, though, it was released in 22 countries worldwide. Just a year before the international release, the States had dealt with the shocking shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

After 12 years and with The Hunger Games becoming a box-office hit, the Japanese movie has finally made its way across the Pacific. It opened two weeks ago on August 10th.

Personally, I greatly enjoyed Suzanne Collins‘s The Hunger Games, but was disappointed by the lack of artistic goriness I was expecting in the movie adaptation. But with Battle Royale in theaters, I can watch a slightly different story unfold, and perhaps, see the characters die with both goriness and grace. In any case, it will keep me happy while I wait for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.