Royale Treatment

At some point before the film adaptation of The Hunger Games was released, there was a fair amount of talk about how the book and movie seemed derivative of a 2000 Japanese film (itself based on a novel) called Battle Royale. That film was not widely known outside Japan, as its controversial violence got it banned from several countries and scared potential distributors in several others. Suzanne Collins, writer of The Hunger Games, is thus making a quite reasonable claim when she maintains she had no awareness of Battle Royale when she wrote her book. Still, I was curious to see if the well-regarded Japanese incarnation of the concept was as good as people said.

The stories are similar in a number of ways. A 9th grade class of students is chosen by lottery to participate in an annual competition. They're to be marooned on an island with three days to battle each other to the death. Only one can survive, or all will be killed when time expires. The players are given a variety of equipment and weapons of varying effectiveness, and must contend with obstacles ("danger zones") on the island. They must also contend with two "exchange students" brought in, both familiar with the games and apparently eager to compete.

Some elements of Battle Royale work very well. The fascist near-future depicted in the movie comes off far more militant and menacing than the decadent world of The Hunger Games (at least, the first book of that trilogy). There are great moments of darkly twisted humor, such as an orientation video hosted by a hilariously chipper woman channeling anime sensibilities. It's also effective and appropriate that it is incredibly violent. The Hunger Games -- both book and film -- pulled back on this for the sake of being commercial to a younger audience. Battle Royale doesn't seem to have been aimed at such an audience, despite the age of the characters. This frees the movie up to truly depict how horrific a situation this would be, and often works to the movie's advantage.

However, the film has a lot of shortcomings too. The entire premise is shaky, for starters. The Battle Royale game is presented to us as a government program designed to keep unruly children in check. And yet none of the children that participate here have ever even heard of it; how can it be a deterrent if they don't know it exists? There are simply too many characters here. The Hunger Games strains at 24 competitors to make more than a few of them memorable, well-rounded individuals. Battle Royale throws a staggering 44 players into the mix, and we see virtually every one of the losers killed on screen. Some die in effective little vignettes, committing suicide or turning on alliances, but it's virtually impossible to track continuity for more than five or six of them overall; you have to take the deaths as just vignettes and not really try to hook them into the story as a whole.

Because the characters are numerous and shallow, and the deaths so plentiful, there's a certain repetition and numbness that develops after a time. It never quite reaches "boring" because of the inventiveness of some of the sequences. But a lot of it is incomprehensible. Character motivations are unclear, and the reasons they turn on a dime even less so. The resolution is confusing.

In all, I'd say the good roughly balanced out the bad here, resulting in a middle of the road finished product. Maybe you do think The Hunger Games owes this movie a debt of thanks, but even if Suzanne Collins was inspired by it, she improved on it. I give Battle Royale a C.