No Surrender Cinema: Ninja Apocalypse
A hero named Cage. Lizard-like ninjas that lurk in the shadows. Warriors that are able to manipulate electricity and manifest weapons out of thin air. Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa! You’re probably thinking to yourself “OK Toyman, get on with it, what do you have to say about Mortal Kombat?”, but prepare to be swerved faster than a late 90’s episode of WCW Monday Nitro. Forget everything you know about Mortal Kombat, because we’re about to head into a Ninja Apocalypse!
When the time came to pick a ninja movie for No Surrender Cinema’s contribution to Ninja Week, I felt like the pickings were slim. That might sound crazy to some of you, because there seems to be an endless supply of ninja content out there, but I wanted to find something that stood out to me (for better or for worse). During my travels down the Tubi rabbit hole I came across this film from ten years back and jumped in blind, knowing nothing about it other than a few names from the cast that caught my eye…and it turned out to be a film that left me with a strong sense of deja vu.
The apocalypse portion of Ninja Apocalypse happens right away as a prologue to the main story, described in as much detail as stock footage of riots and digitall mushroom clouds can provide. We learn that there was a Great War, and in the aftermath of said apocalypse, the remaining population of Earth (or at least this particular area) broke off into ninja clans. When master ninja Fumitaka (Hiroyuki-Tagawa) learns of an impending invasion of outside forces, he calls a summit at his lair, an underground bunker. After being led down into the bunker by a ninja that looks like an exhausted waiter pulling a double shift, the Lost Clan gathers with the other ninja clans to learn that Fumitaka wants a truce among them in order to be better prepared for the impending threat. No sooner is his truce announced than Fumitaka is struck dead by a shuriken to the head, and next thing you know it’s Cage (Christian Oliver) and his allies in the Lost Clan (Cage’s brother Surge, female warrior Mar, deaf mute powerhouse Sky, and Trillion) who are being blamed, with Cage in particular getting the fingers pointed at him as the one who did the deed.
With the peace treaty out the window, Cage and the Lost Clan find themselves on the run. The bad part about that is that there’s only so far you can run in an underground bunker, and Fumitaka’s second in command Hiroshi (Ernie Reyes Jr.) has ordered Cage to be captured alive and brought to him. The first batch of ninjas (some honest to God, clad in black, proper ninjas) fail in their attempt to stop the Lost Clan, enabling the good guys to grab some weapons and arm themselves for whatever comes next. What does come next is a scene where an enemy continuously pops out of the shadows and attacks, until Sky uses some type of sensory power to determine by vibration when the mystery enemy is about to strike. It turns out it’s a ninja that seems to be copied from heavily inspired by Reptile from Mortal Kombat, whose neck is snapped by Sky.
As Cage and his crew navigate the bunker looking for a way out, they find a wall that appears to be a gigantic screensaver that they initially think is an exit, which happens to be located in a tavern. Yes, the underground bunker has its very own bar! This is where tensions boil over between Cage and Surge, probably because they want to fight to decide who has the most 90’s EXTREME name. The ninja bros squash their beef and keep on moving, and before you know it they’re in the stairwell, a location that I’m sure Chris The Brain will soon be covering in a World’s Most Dangerous column right here at Bulletproof Action! More generic ninja fodder shows up for our heroes to run through, and all I have to say about that is that Revenge of the Ninja is still the best movie featuring ninja action in a stairwell.
The Lost Clan lives up to their name by winding up at the tavern again (or maybe they’re just looking for some Drunken Master style inspiration? Nope.), end up losing one of their own, and get trapped in the deep, dark depths of the bunker. This leads to more tension among the heroes, so much so that Cage and Surge attempt to use their powers on each other, exhausting their supply of electric magic which will surely come in handy when they encounter a horde of zombies (!), a seductress ninja who clones herself and grows Wolverine-esque claws, and their arch-enemies, a clan led by a man named Becker who has a chip on his shoulder and has had it out for Cage from the beginning…which could potentially implicate his involvement in Fumitaka’s assassination!
Ninja Apocalypse tries to be a lot of things all at once, but it’s never as successful as any of the things it copied was inspired by. We’ve got a plot that’s mostly The Warriors with a little bit of Day of the Dead. We’ve got a whole lot of ninjas, but only a few of them actually look like ninjas; Karate Pirates might be a more accurate title and description. People have superpowers and power-ups just like in Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and Dragon Ball Z, yet none are ever fully explained. Remember back in the day when you’d get a new video game and pop it in before ever reading the instruction manual, learning all the cool moves by trial and error? That’s how I felt watching this movie. I wasn’t quite sure how something was happening, but when it happened I just shrugged my shoulders and kept on watching, thinking that it might play into something later on…though that wasn’t the case for about 95% of the stuff I saw.
What had drawn me to Ninja Apocalypse in the first place was the seeming absurdity of it all. Not only was it a ninja movie (apparently), but when I saw that the main star was Christian Oliver I knew I was going to have to check it out. For those unfamiliar with the name, Oliver was one of the stars of Saved By The Bell: The New Class in its second season, and he sadly passed away earlier this year in a plane crash that also took the life of his daughters. My love for Saved By The Bell is well documented, even The New Class, and seeing this movie listed on Tubi with Oliver, Tagawa, and Reyes Jr. as its main stars immediately piqued by curiosity. It’s ironic, because I decided to watch this film because it had people from across the pop culture spectrum that I enjoy, yet the film’s attempts to be everything under the sun that could be perceived as “cool” in an action film felt a little too forced at times.
Word is that the producer of Ninja Apocalypse made the movie because he went to distributors first, and they told him that ninja films were in high demand (I find it a bit odd that that was the case in 2014, but far be it for me to hate on someone who wanted the world to enjoy more ninja content), and after a quick 12 day film shoot, this is what we got. The funny thing is that the original script was turned down for not being ninja-y enough, and given that this film had everything from zombies to Star Wars-esque sword fights, I wonder what alterations were made that this version was the one that made them say “Yeah, DEFINITELY ninja enough!”
I mentioned having a sense of deja vu earlier, and as you’ve read on you can tell that it comes from Ninja Apocalypse refusing to be its own thing, relying too much on its cut and paste mentality of taking popular aspects from media and pop culture and trying to mold a story around it all. You know the phrase “too much of a good thing”? That’s exactly what happened here. The only thing we didn’t get too much of was Hiroyuki-Tagawa and Reyes Jr., because their roles, both integral to the plot, were essentially glorified cameos. We do get some action sequences from the two of them that bookend the film, but the in-between time where Oliver is carrying the load ranged from okay to wtf. I mean, in every zombie movie I’ve ever seen, if you get bit, you’re screwed. You mean to tell me that in a world that’s in the aftermath of nuclear fallout if you get bit by a zombie it’s basically a flesh wound? I guess the producers spent too much time on the digital gore (there are little practical effects here, but a LOT of digital blood spatter) to work up a way for one of our heroes to get torn apart.
So, was Ninja Apocalypse worth watching for Ninja Week? It’s hard to say. I didn’t hate the movie at all, despite my gripes about it. Most of the action is pretty pedestrian, but some of it is fun to watch too. I’ll also give it credit for the twist towards the end of the film, because I expected something different, so I’ll give props on having me fooled for a minute. I guess that means it all evens out, making it a perfectly fine time-waster if you want to turn your brain off. It’s the type of film we’ve come to expect to find on Tubi ever since the early days of the app, before all the A-list content got added. It’s the exact type of movie that I’d buy if I ever come across it in Dollar Tree. If you want an award-winner, you already know to look elsewhere, but if you want a movie about martial artists in a dystopian future attempting to kill each other with magic (and don’t we all, at some point?), then this is the movie for you!
Ninja Apocalypse is currently streaming on Tubi, and is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
