Battle Royale or The Hunger Games

“ここで彼らが死んだために、友達の一覧です。”  Battle Royale. 

That last Japanese sentence I believe means “Here’s your list of friends in the order they died.”, and is from the spectacular Japanese film, BATTLE ROYALE.

The film is from director Kinji Fukasaku who is a very good director of whom is experienced in film making and was able to put together this amazing movie that overflows with dark humor and intense situations involving morals and ethics. The movie takes place in a not to distant future inside the country of Japan. The back story is that the Japanese economy is in a desperate state because of students not trying hard in school and are therefore not getting jobs, which leaves them resulting to crime. So eventually the Japanese government decided to pass a law saying that one 9th grade class each year shall be sent to an island and have a fight to the death. The children have three days to kill each other off on this island that they are trapped on and if there is not one winner within the three days time, they all die.

Now for those of you who think that this movie is just ripping off The Hunger Games, I would like to point out two things. Number one is that Battle Royale came out before The Hunger Games. The first Hunger Games book came out in 2008 and Battle Royale came out in 2000. And number two is that Battle Royale is based off another book that was finished in 1996 and published in 1999. So if any thing is ripping anything off, The Hunger Games ripped this movie off.

Battle Royal in comparison to The Hunger Games, makes The Hunger Games look honestly kind of bad. I will say that I liked The Hunger Games but Battle Royale is really just so much better, and on top of that the movie is also highly critically acclaimed. It is a cult classic and has been given a full 5 stars by several people. Even Quentin Tarantino said that it was one of his favorite movies of all time. The main reason why the film was so good is because it was the first time anyone had really seen children fighting to the death with a comic undertone throughout the whole thing. This film takes you through many emotions, you feel pity, scared, happy, sad, funny, and if you don’t speak Japanese, confused sometimes too. The Hunger Games is really focused on one emotion, intensity and the filmmakers made that very obvious by having the camera shaking for almost 100% of the film. If The Hunger Games wanted to go intense, they would have had to have moments with lots of suspense and maybe adding in some more back story so you know what Katniss (the main character) is going through. The book explained a lot more back story which they referenced and talked about a little in the movie but never as much as the book did and not as much as they needed too.

All I would like to say now is that if you have watched or read The Hunger Games and you liked the idea but it just wasn’t as good as you wanted it to be, or even if you really liked The Hunger Games and you want to watch something with the same kind of idea, you should definitely watch Battle Royale. If you have not watched or read either of them, I would watch either Battle Royal, or watch The Hunger Games and then watch Battle Royal. If you have only watched Battle Royale and not The Hunger Games, don’t expect much. To conclude this article the next 8 words shall be: Battle Royale is better than The Hunger Games