I am very much looking forward to watching the new version of Shogun, currently spooling out on HULU.
I'm waiting until all 10 episodes have dropped so I can watch it as a binge on a weekend.
In the meantime, I'm revisiting the original mini-series from 1980. I've read all of James Clavell's Asian Saga (except the less than great final novel, Whirlwhid, which I just couldn't get into) and very much enjoyed them. Gai-Jin and Tai-Pan are particular favourites, but Shogun is a great novel.
The 80s mini-series was quite an event in its day and it holds up pretty well four decades later. The acting is solid, the writing is crisp and the settings are impeccable.
Then there's the music. No one would have noted it back in 1980, but this adaptation suffers badly from a case of "dun-dun-dun"-itis. The whole score is just so...70s. Maurice Jarre had worked on films like Dr. Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia, but I think he'd been watching a little too much American TV when he composed the music for Shogun.
Every time there's a dramatic event, it's punctuated with a painfully cliche "dun-dun-dun" stinger.
Every. Single. Time.
Dun-dun-dun.
I swear you could lift the whole musical score and lay it over an episode of Barnaby Jones or Quincy and it would fit just fine. How do you score a movie set in Japan, telling the story of Japan with a huge portion of the cast being Japanese and use a score that would have worked for an episode of Dallas? There are a few little Japanese flavour strokes in the music, but for the most part it's as American as apple pie.
Anyhow, if you can ignore how crappy the music is, the rest of the production is totally worth your time.
I'm almost positive that the 2024 version is going to be great, but there may be aspects of this 1980 version that are still the better of the two. My money is on the music being better this time around. It could hardly be worse!
5 comments:
I rewatched the 1980's version a few years ago and thought it holds up well. Love the book. I'm 2 episodes in to the new series and am very impressed.
I'm halfway through and really enjoying it. Toshiro Mifune as Toranaga and John-Rhys-Davies as Rodrigues make it particularly fun to watch.
But the music! Ugh!
Really looking forward to the new version!
Speaking of Rodrigues, the new version even has a Lost connection (you’ll see).
And also the stunning Anna Hawai (from Giri/Haji) as Mariko. She alone is worth the price of admission.
Don't know if you've yet begun watching the new Shogun, GB, and if not you may want to wait to read this (though no spoilers follow) but after a very promising beginning I've really, really soured on this. Starting around the 4th episode the plot starts to seriously deviate from the book in ways I'm finding increasingly annoying. I don't know if it's out of a desire to potentially string out the plot to allow for future seasons, or out of a misguided political attempt to remove the European white character from the center of the story, or whatever, but if I weren't already almost through with this I would likely just give up on it entirely. Very big disappointment. Stick with the Richard Chamberlin/Toshira Mifune version, or better yet the book.
Post a Comment