Why can't Japan make good movies anymore?

karambia said:
these casual viewers or "normies" =/= movie fan or movie goer or cinephiles
U're the one that assuming like that

karambia said:
ewh.. offensive

karambia said:
Who said that? Cmiiw lol

You're playin' by narrow perspective by relating all those stuff into koreaboo stuff. Like I said long above there will be endless assumption and possibilities we can build around these kind of thing. But move the scope into "movie fan" so you can see it in more wider, deeper, bigger picture and variety kind of ppl rather than relating it into solely on one [insert country] [insert medium] fetish

mdo7 said:
Well you were the one that brought up casual [/s]movie goer[/s] in the first place. Hence why I decided to play with your logic.

Did you forget I sometime Google translate stuff from English to Indonesian to make it easier for you to understand.

No I'm not being narrow, I met a lot of K-pop fans that are diverse and don't look all the same.

mdo7 said:
You were the one that shift topic from K-pop fans to casual movie fan, so that's your fault from shifting topic.

karambia said:
bup bup, don't try to change the line there.

Did you forget I sometime Google translate stuff from English to Indonesian to make it easier for you to understand.

mdo7 said:


You were the one that brought this up in the first place

You openly admit in some posts that you were confused on what I said and you said it on record that your English wasn't perfect.

That's your fault for not being able to understand for what I said.

ShiroiMuffler said:
Even anime has been on the decline, what makes people think their cinema would be doing any better?

CatSoul said:
I feel like Shin Godzilla is probably good, yet I'm afraid to watch it.

dariken said:

Actually, Japan was famous for only two 90's horror movies, Ringu and Ju-On (both made famous by hollywood remakes), which spawned entire pale-black-haired-girl-in-white-dress horror genre to cringy extent, which Japan was mocked for and they didn't even realize it.

tsudecimo said:
Why are you judging it based on manga adaptations?

Try confessions and Cold fish.

dariken said:
I watched a big budget Indian historical drama/war movie released this year called "Padmaavat". Conclusion: India has now surpassed Japan in movie producing ability. I'm quite speechless. Never in this life did I imagine to witness such a day.

karambia said:
Pathetic to see this dumb thread revamped with ppl keep trying objectify movies and that sole by high budget or production value.
Men go watch *real" movie instead

hotsushikun said:


Wow, i'd never see this asian guy getting awared for his best films he was involved, but what kind of actor/director is he?

Shoryuuken said:

Hirokazu Koreeda is known to make laid back slice of life movies. I am a long time fan of his works, I even met him, shaked his hand. He's a very friendly person. Try "Like father like son"

dariken said:

Movies are objects.

dariken said:
I tried watching "Iron Girl the Ultimate Weapon". Tits and violence aside, again extremely cheaply made. Both movie adaptions - SnK and Parasyte - were absolute shit. They even changed setting of SnK Movie because apparently can't afford to actually recreate SnK world so lol post-apocalypse with potato-girl meme repeated ad nauseum.

Izanagi said:
Korean movies are made for crybabies.

Korea used to make some good movies once upon a time but not anymore. Nowadays, they are just copying Hong Kong's comedy routine ideas. Most of their movies are either cry-inducers or comedy routine mo-lei-tau stuff.

Izanagi said:

Chinese movies are mostly propaganda tools.

dariken said:
I'm 100% serious. Outside anime and manga, their film industry is utter shit. I just recently watched "Biri Girl", made in 2015. It was once again looking like strikingly low-budget and acting was cheap too. Then I look at modern Korean and Chinese movies, they are vastly superior to anything Japan seems to get out. Just two last year examples:
- Helios (China)
- Dog Eat Dog (Korea)

And then I tried watching "Iron Girl the Ultimate Weapon". Tits and violence aside, again extremely cheaply made. Both movie adaptions - SnK and Parasyte - were absolute shit. They even changed setting of SnK Movie because apparently can't afford to actually recreate SnK world so lol post-apocalypse with potato-girl meme repeated ad nauseum.

Anyone have explanation why their film industry is so crap?

dariken said:


Never apologize for incomplete understanding of foreign language.

dariken said:

I now disagree on Kurosawa's greatness as I have been chasing the mythical "Great Japanese Kino". Most of the attention Kurosawa got was due to being a director from exotic orient who produced watchable popcorn flick movies with typical heroic arc familiar for western audiences. Consider it as tonal inverse to appreciation for European art house kino such as Kieslowski's Three Colors, meaning it was exotic for not being exotic while in unfamiliar setting.

hotsushikun said:
I feel like the Chinese and Korean cinema are starting to new get a new fresh air, with better cinematography and better acting makes these two asian countries as the most promising asian films in history.

Japan is defeated and now they are on the verge of decline of its cinema, i hope the country will have its own renaissance if Japan make their movie budget better and releases their films internationally.

(sorry for my poor English)

Touka said:
@RafaelPereira97

Hula Girls is one of many, not to mention it has an extremely favourable audience score on Rotten Tomatoes from three and a half thousand votes. You cannot honestly say out of all contemporary Japanese cinema, Koreeda is the only director to have received acclaim from Western critics? I have see admiration for work by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sion Sono, Tetsuya Nakashima, Shunji Iwai, Naomi Kawase and a great many more in just the past few years, but Western critics still barely scratch the surface on what's to offer. Variety are really the only outlet that will touch anything remotely independent. Momoko Ando directed a wondrous film in 2014 called 0.5mm, but like many, it's gone by unnoticed due to is availability. If you are able to join a private tracker like Avistaz, the sheer number of credible work becomes so apparent. The problem isn't that quality Japanese movies aren't being made, it's that they aren't being seen.

I don't mean to knock all live-action adaptations. There is of course good and bad with everything, but the two OP listed (Attack on Titan and Parasyte) are known to be rather poor. It's obvious to see they were made solely because of the popularity of their respective (and recent) anime versions.

Just to add to this, since I remembered something I read a little while ago...

We have a distributor in the UK called Third Window Films. They specialise in releasing high-quality East Asian cinema, with a large focus on independent Japanese film. The whole outfit is run by a chap named Adam Torel and I had the pleasure of speaking to him rather extensively a few years ago. He actually shares some sentiments with OP and has noted a decline in Japanese cinema; he attributes the interference of production committees as the biggest drawback to mainstream Japanese filmmaking, but alongside this he notes Japan's reluctance (or perhaps naivety) in sharing their most credible work.

He argues that the only work Japanese producers actually put any effort promoting overseas are the surefire idol products and manga adaptations, like AKB48 stuff and Attack on Titan. They put all their eggs in this one basket and fail to promote independent or truly interesting work. He says...

"These things are all set up but they’re not properly run. There are loads of things that could help Japanese films overseas, like Cool Japan or (government subsidy program) J-LOP. They have loads of money, they have ludicrous amounts of money, but they’re all put into (Yasushi) Akimoto with (idol-pop group) AKB48 and all that stuff, Dentsu. It's all just controlled by the companies that are pushing only their own things, and only the majors and the anime, the manga. It’s already set up, it just needs to be controlled in a better way."

There's another interview where he kind of goes off on one saying how Japanese production companies at film festivals are almost reluctant to sell the international distribution rights to their work, but I can't seem to find it (this was a couple of years ago). Even when they do get the rights, it's a hard sell. He wrote recently on Instagram about A Story of Yonosuke being a poor seller, despite it being very positively received.

From what I've read, the Japanese just don't seem to be marketing their movies properly. Some of the best movies from Japan that I have seen in recent times have come from my own research and have been sourced from the internet. Only the mainstream stuff gets promotion; it's a shame Japan keep the indies mostly for themselves, because that's where some of their best products are.

NthDegree said:
I hear Shoplifters this year was pretty good. Has anyone here seen it?

NthDegree said:
I hear Shoplifters this year was pretty good. Has anyone here seen it?

leonanime123 said:


I want to say that saying the Japanese film industry has always been bad is straight out wrong, since you would be ignore the existence of the likes of Seven Samurai. Like a person here said, Japan's golden age of filmmaking was during the 50s to the 60s, those films were on the level of the great Hollywood films of that era.

However, if you say Japanese movies in these years or even post-2000 have been bad, then your opinion is not exactly wrong. Japan's film industry has been downgrading for years.
Even those who work in the said industry have criticized on it:
http://aramajapan.com/news/furukawa-yuki-criticizes-japanese-film-and-television-industries-in-interview-with-the-hollywood-reporter/51495/
https://www.tokyoweekender.com/2016/12/hirokazu-koreeda-on-the-problem-with-japanese-cinema/

The most prominent issue in Japanese filmmaking is the lack of originality and creativity, and the problem is as bad, or even worse, as the problem Hollywood has suffered. How many films in Japan were adaptations of existing source materials such as manga, novels, and TV series in the past few years? and how many more will come?

Confessions, an adaptation of a book that's better than the film
Battle Royale, the book is way better, and the film's sequel is bad.
Our Little Sister, an adaptation of a manga
Miracles of the Namiya General Store, originally a book
These, however, are good adaptations.

There have been for more failed adaptations made by the Rising Sun, most being anime/manga adaptations. Even the once-acclaimed director Takashi Miike has been criticized by the general Japanese audiences as a bad director who focuses too much on manga adaptations and creates 12 manga-adapted movies, 5 novel-adapted movies, 2 game adaptations, 2 remakes of classic films.

"the problem is that producers and distribution companies have even less desire than before to export content globally. After all, why gamble on a young filmmaker with an original idea when you can invest in a live-action adaptation of a well-known manga story or novel?" (Hirokazu Koreeda On The Problem With Japanese Cinema)

While adapting existing media isn't a bad thing, but it does reflect a huge trait in a country's own film industry.

The next problem is the scale of Japanese live-action movies. Recent Japanese movies that are critically acclaimed mostly share one trait: its small-scale setting and cast. Family drama has been one of, if not the primary, overused theme in Japanese live-action film, and the above claim is the main reason for this phenomena. This itself, also, isn't necessarily bad, but it does limit how far Japanese movies can go. You have rarely seen Japanese live-action movies that are comparable to the likes of the MCU, Mission Impossible, Lord of the Ring, Star Wars, Game of Throne (Its being a TV show shows how tiny Japanese film industry is.) in terms of scale. Even many US TV shows that are good have a wider scale and larger casts. Japanese film industry is, essentially, locked by its own trait.

There are other issues to be addressed, but I'll leave it here at first.
What're your thoughts?

leonanime123 said:
I thought Hula Girls's score isn't too high.

Besides, Japan has a huge problem of the lack of varitey of genres (mostly personal, family, and other "relatable" drama films. Which on their own aren't bad, but the filmmakers don't produce much outside of those types of films.) and creativity (The latter problem is even bigger than what Hollywood has been facing recently.).

hotsushikun said:
I just feel like Japan's cinema producing such a bad quality means that Japan is still stuck in their 90s or 80s to me, which is why Japan's cinema quality has been diminishing in the last years.

hotsushikun said:
In addition to that, Japan's cinema tends to ignore the diversity in the film, Tadanobu Asano is an half-Japanese but is regarded as Japanese person on himself.

Touka said:

Hula Girls has an audience score of 83%. To put that into perspective, that's in the same region as films like The Matrix, Kill Bill, Nightcrawler, and Toy Story 2.

I respectfully disagree. The drama is certainly Japan's most loved genre, but I don't think they lack variety in comparison to other countries. Action, adventure, period film, thriller, and comedy are all well represented in live-action, and science fiction and fantasy are covered extensively in animation (and Godzilla films). To say Japanese films lack in creativity, well... That's just a sweeping generalisation.

hotsushikun said:


What about historicals?

hotsushikun said:
@Touka

Japan has been always been producing films shot entirely in Japan, and only small handful of Japanese films has been produced outside of Japan, hence why Japan's cinema is always stuck in Japan for a long time.

I feel Japanese people aren't interested to the outsiders which makes me the reasons why Japan casts Japanese people only.

On the other hand, i did see few handful of American films shot in Japan, and Japan and USA have a international co-production of films featuring the casts of USA and Japan, which is the reasons why Japan lacks diversity.

Touka said:

"Period film."


Sorry, but you are massively generalising and simply stating your opinion without any fact. Takashi Miike, Takeshi Kitano, Shunji Iwai, Ryuhei Kitamura, and Hideo Nakata have all made films outside of Japan. Gerow covers all of this in his paper. I feel like you haven't seen many Japanese films.

Touka said:

"Period film."


Sorry, but you are massively generalising and simply stating your opinion without any fact. Takashi Miike, Takeshi Kitano, Shunji Iwai, Ryuhei Kitamura, and Hideo Nakata have all made films outside of Japan. Gerow covers all of this in his paper. I feel like you haven't seen many Japanese films.