Ryan Shoots First: Battle Royale
That’s right, today I will be looking at the movie that started it all. Since Battle Royale games like Fortnite and PUBG are taking over not just the gaming world but the greater social consciousness I thought I would take a look at the movie that influenced many of these games. From multi platinum rappers, twitch streamers playing 14 hours a day, middle schoolers and professional athletes everyone seems to be into the Battle Royale genre. For the uninitiated many of these games begin with 100 or so players dropping into a map with nothing. They are then forced to find any weapons or gear they can scattered around the map and be the last one alive either by laying low and surviving or going on a killing spree. Good old family fun.
The movie Battle Royale was released in Japan in the year 2000. It is funny to watch it now and see how many ideas and format guidelines the game genre has taken from the film. The premise of the movie is that a entire class of kids are taken to a remote island and forced to battle it out over 3 days until one is left standing. You may be wondering “Hey Ryan how the heck is all of this legal?” Well it appears that the youth have grown tired of the increasing educational demands put on them by adults and simply revolted. Overnight 800,000 youth decide to leave school. As a response the government enacted the BR Act that every year would take one class that had misbehaved and drop them on this island for the game. May seem a little overkill to make a point but I suppose it is getting the job done.
We do have a few main characters the movie follows but the most part the main character is the game and the premise as the class has around 50 students so there is not a lot of time to focus on particular characters. The movie is best in taking all the stereotype kids in school and exploring how they would react to these extreme circumstances. The class loser, the one that sleeps around, the motivated brainy kid, the athlete, the wild card renegades. Each one of them react and behave a little differently to the circumstances they are in some reacting out of fear, simply giving up or embracing the license they have been given.
The group of students we follow most is the trio of Shuya, Noriko and Kawada, they are looking for a way off the island without violence but the task is proven challenging as their classmates get more and more into the game. They are the characters we (hopefully) most relate to as they try best to hold on to their humanity in this deadly environment. For a foreign movie that came out in the year 2000 it holds up extremely well, in fact the version available on streaming is the remastered version. The movie has a unique style and takes a goofy premise that could easily be a B movie action film (ahem The Condemned) and attempt to add some character study into human characteristics and types.
If you’ve heard about the film or maybe seen the memes and gifs it is worth checking out if for nothing else than to give some nice context to all those Battle Royale video games everyone is playing now.
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner…
