Least historically accurate "historical" movie

[nelsonmuntz]

The Last Samurai was absurd too, starting with the fact that the Samurai were pretty awful and perpetuated a brutal feudal system that the vast majority of Japanese hated. Furthermore, the fat bad guy in the movie was an amalgamation of two real life Japanese nobles who were the primary reasons Japan modernized so quickly and was able to hold off Western domination. Both of them, Omura and Okubo, are considered heroes in Japan.

The Last Samurai popped up in my list in Netflix recently and I will often put a movie on in the background if I am working late so I rewatched it. It is worse than I remembered.

This movie has so many issues with historical accuracy, in addition to Noble Savage/White Savior plot problems that I am surprised that A) Ken Watanabe and really any of the Japanese cast went along with it, and B) that it is still promoted on Netflix. A lot of the more problematic content from the 2000's (i.e. Entourage) is still carried on the streaming services, but you have to know where to look.

One example of the Noble Savage/White Savior problem is that the plan for the final battle is developed by Tom Cruise's character Algren. Katsumoto (Watanabe) was just going to charge into the enemy, to the extent he had any plan at all. While some of the samurai tactics, such as bonzai charges, only worked against other samurai, they were not idiots. Another way the movie makes the samurai stupider than they were in real life is that in the Satsuma Rebellion, the samurai actually did use modern weapons. The samurai had been using modern weapons since the 16th century.

In real life, the samurai were clearly the villains in the Satsuma Rebellion, and while the movie goes through logic gymnastics to come up with a justification for a selfish rebellion by Katsumoto and Algren, none of the dialogue between Katsumoto and the Emperor makes any sense if you listen to it. At best, Katsumoto is manipulating the Emperor into doing something stupid. From a historical perspective, the written record indicates that Emperor Meiji felt exactly the opposite of what he said in the movie. This ahistorical problems with the movie create plot problems. Not only does the rationale for the rebellion not make any sense, but none of the characters' motivations make any sense either. The actual Satsuma Rebellion involved the last traditional samurai launching a pointless, bloody war against their own countrymen at a time when Japan was facing a real risk of being colonized. The samurai were mad because they were losing their preferred place in Japanese society. There was nothing noble about it. And no matter how visually appealing the movie is or how compelling the love story is or how good the acting is, the character motivations are always unclear because there is no way to make Katsumoto the good guy beyond the movie just telling us he is the good guy. He is actually the villain.

The Tom Cruise character is loosely based on a Frenchman that fought on the side of the last Shogun early in the Meiji Restoration. One part of the movie that apparently was accurate was the final charge where all of Katsumoto's soldiers get slaughtered.

One of the few positives of this movie is Tony Goldwyn, who is as good at playing a as any actor in the last 30 years.