Hacker Cinema
Battle Royale
バトル・ロワイアル
2000 · Film · 114 min
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku
In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary "Battle Royale" act.
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49 comments on Hacker News
Yes. The Hunger Games film and book inspired by the Japanese film "Battle Royale" in turn, inspired the Minecraft minigame. But later battle royale games were inspired by the minigame, not the films directly. A shrinking world border, for instance, is pretty important to make the concept work (in a film, it doesn't actually have to work!).
Last man standing formats were perfectly possible in traditional FPS formats too, but they weren't really a thing because to actually be fun, the format needs
1. Big maps and lots of players (more than the typical FPS)
2. A "searching for loot" mechanic, where you can increase your chances of survival by looking for good items, making interesting risk/reward tradeoffs and discouraging just turtling up in the most defensible location.
3. Shrinking borders, to prevent an anticlimactic endgame of powerful players searching for hiding stragglers.
Minecraft basically had all three since 2014, and there were quite popular last man standing formats like UHC even before they had world border (and before the Hunger Games film came out).
Gibson was obviously very inspired by Japan. The Matrix was also in part directly inspired by Ghost in the Shell, even creating The Animatrix at the same time. But Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner was told from the inside. It is about the authorities chasing down rouge elements. Neuromancer and The Matrix is from the perspective of the outsiders.
Like someone else said in the comments here, cyberpunk is counterculture. It is in the name. Gibson moved to Canada to avoid getting drafted into the Vietnam war. Japan never really did counter-culture as mainstream as the US does. Considering the overlap between cyberpunk and anime, I would actually say that Japan is sometime given too much credit by being treated as the superior original with deeper meaning. When it is Western media that have explored more advanced and diverse interpretations.
A similar thing happened with Battle Royale. A niche movie. The same concept became a cultural phenomenon with The Hunger Games, and later Maze Runner and Divergent series. And then video games. Now made from the outspoken perspective of the teenagers.
So you should absolutely credit the US counterculture and environment for a large part of cyberpunk and dystopian, but also more utopian science fiction. I don't even like Hollywood much, but it still has a far wider catalog than anyone else. Who else could make Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare or even Star Trek: Voyager? Disney made Andor by the way.
>but it’s still a B-movie
It was "the third highest-grossing Japanese film of 2001". "At the 2001 Japanese Academy Awards, Battle Royale was nominated for nine awards, including Picture of the Year, and won three of them".
Hardly a b-movie, except in the sense "not a Hollywood blockbuster crapfest"
Battle Royale was a novel before it was a movie, and it's a much better novel than movie.
I vividly remember watching Battle Royale with my college roommate, and when it was over, we looked at each other and said "this would be an incredible premise for a video game". This would have been like 2004. We even tried to mod it into the original FarCry engine (the island setting was perfect), but it was too difficult for us. Too bad we didn't actually have the chops to do it, could have gotten the jump on Fortnite/PUBG by over a decade lol. Really wish we had stayed motivated, looking back on it.
edit: But yes, Battle Royale is a great movie, and Hunger Games totally rode its coattails.
battle royale is a masterpiece of filmmaking, acting, cinematography, entertainment and the last movie of a master of its craft. squid game is a fun tv show.
BR is a masterpiece. First pulled a rip of Battle Royale 1 + 2 off of Limewire back in high school. It became the underground "crazy" movie we'd burn to cds and pass around to friends.
"The Running man" by Stephen King was published in 1982, the movie starring Schwarzenegger was released in 1987 (another adaptation will be released this year in 2025)
The story is similar to a Robert Sheckley's short story from 1952,"The Prize of Peril" adapted into a movie in Germany in 1970 "Das Millionenspiel" and in France in 1982 "Le prix du danger" (same year as King's Running Man novel)
I would say "The Prize of Peril" is the grandfather of these books, movies and series, as far as I know. Battle Royale is the start of another branch, though : it's not one vs many anymore, it's many vs many.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prize_of_Peril
Great movie. I noticed the character Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill was actually stolen from Battle Royale.
> battle royale was a B movie
Yeah, if it's not an American movie, it's some cheap shit! /s
My brother, it was nominated for nine Japanese Academy Awards, it was helmed by one of Japan's top directors, is an adaptation of a best-selling novel, is regarded by critics as one of the best films of the era, has high production values, stars arguably the most famous actor in Japan, was scored by a famous and prolific composer (you might have heard his music in another movie called Django Unchained), etc.
That's not even getting into the economics of film in Japan. A successful film in Japan nowadays earns around $10M on a budget of half a million. BR, produced nearly twenty years ago, had a budget nearly ten times that much and grossed triple.
Suffice it to say, Battle Royale is a high production cost movie, which forecloses the possibility of it being a B movie.
and because I'm just some guy,
https://variety.com/2018/film/asia/japan-ethics-of-making-cheap-films-1202825001/
You know what they call Battle Royale in France?
Hunger Games with Cheese.
I saw Battle Royale as a subbed bootleg around 20 years ago. Fantastic B-movie, and I understand some of the young actors got some notable roles as they got older (Takeshi Kitano was there because he was Takeshi Kitano), but it’s still a B-movie. Good time though, even today.
As an aside on Takeshi, for those who want to go down a rabbit hole, dig into “Takeshi’s Challenge” on the Nintendo Famicom. That game is a trip.
PUBG and Fortnite are both directly inspired by Battle Royale. The whole video game genre exists and is named such because of that movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royale_game
PUBG was inspired by the movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUBG:_Battlegrounds
Fortnite added Battle Royale game mode because they saw how popular PUBG was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnite_Battle_Royale
While the comment section seems hell bent on pointing out other deadly game themed shows and movies, let's just take a moment to appreaciate how great a movie this is.
The setup is absolutely bonkers: Something, something, things are going bad in the future so we have children battle each other - even a seemingly well functioning class.
But to hell with that. It is quickly forgotten, once the game starts. Why the kids starts killing each other is much better shown in Battle Royale than why contestants in squid game accept the game.
I always thought of Hunger Games as Battle Royale for children. The violence and darkness in general is so very stripped down. IMO that's what made Battle Royale and, as you point out, Squid Game interesting. I do think that's more common in Asian cinema and tv though.
Generally a mass player "there can only be one" fight to the death last player standing wins game.
As opposed to, say, team orientated Capture the Flag scenario's.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film)
I am talking about the western society. In the 80s and 90s, you don't really see movies about an entire generation of teenagers being oppressed. The main characters are likely to be teenagers but most adventure stories have teenage main characters.
In the 2000s, you started seeing popular sci-fi books (then movies in 2010s) like The Hunger Games and Maze Runner that depict teenagers as the opposed class.
Personally I think the 2000 Japanese classic Battle Royale started it all.
Its recent usage is largely an allusion to the film from 2000. The title refers to a contest where members of a graduating high school class are pitted against each other to the death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film)
people try to nail down definitions of words that are only loosely defined. You know the fight scenes in movies where a fight breaks out in a bar, and before you know it, everybody is fighting everybody? That's a battle royale. Is it a fight to the death? not usually. Have some people used that phrase to refer fights to the death? yes.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/battle_royal#English
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royal
books.google.com search "battle royale" in the 19th century, you'll see talk of ladies squabbling and how to conduct a mass cock-fight
That's an interesting perspective. The only thing I can relate to here is Squid Game, but it went mostly unnoticed as a "trend shift" by me, because it seems to just fit the trend of Korea having pretty good movies (Chingoo, Old Boy) for the niche audience that liked things like Japan's original Battle Royale.
Also, the trends of Korea seem to very much run in parallel with the trends of Japan - overworked business people tired of working all the time with a lack of meaning.
Pretty informative post, thank you.
the island map is a direct homage to the -korean- japanese novel/movie "Battle Royal"
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/57/Battle_royale_novel_map.JPG
note that the original had no smaller island connected by two bridges, a detail which Garenas version inherited from PlayerUnknowns.
This brought memories back for me, years ago there was a small VHS store that stocked a lot of these. Looking at there catalog is like a trip down memory lane. List of there titles I saw many years ago. (Pretty much all great movies) A Tale of Two Sisters Audition Battle Royale 1 + 2 Chaos Dead Or Alive 1 + 2 Gozu Happiness of the Katakuris, The Hard Boiled Infernal Affairs: The Trilogy Lady Vengeance Oldboy R-Point Ring Trilogy Save the Green Planet Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance Tetsuo: The Iron Man Visitor Q
As mentioned in the article a lot of people in the UK were introduced to a certain brand of Asian cinema via 'Tartan Asia Extreme'.
I was no different. As a student I'd venture into the tiny world cinema section of HMV and flick through the titles looking for anything that had the 'TARTAN ASIA EXTREME' branding on it.
So many fantastic movies in the collection [1]. Oldboy, Battle Royale, Dark Water, Hard Boiled, Ring, Infernal Affairs, Audition, etc.
1: https://www.benoakley.co.uk/tartan-asia-extreme
You get the same every time this is done: Hunger Games and Battle Royale were also hailed for much more than the competitive brutality idea they were built on, and really they had little else to offer but that. For some reason people seem to feel the need to say they enjoyed it for reasons other than just enjoying inventive, competitive death games (maybe they really do, I don't know).
Anyway, I loved Squid Game but I wouldn't call it remotely deep. It's a formula. You just need to come up with a few decent characters and it practically writes itself.
IIRC, the maker of Squid Game was quoted as being unable to contemplate what a season 2 would involve. Are you kidding? Just put a new bunch of characters through a new bunch of games, sprinkle a bit of extra plot on it and keep up the production values. People will watch an infinite amount of this.
<DerekJacobi>He will bring them death, and they will love him for it.</DerekJacobi>
It's such an uninspired version of Running Man/Battle Royale/Hunger Games/Hostile/Movie of your Choice from the Dystopian "Rich people watch poor people do bad stuff for their entertainment" genre.
IDK, I hate capitalism as much as anyone on this site, but UGH what a boring take.
Honestly, "You" is a much better satire on the platform right now.
Back in 2000 I went to the Edinburgh film festival. There was buzz about a film called “Battle Royale”. None of us had any clue what to expect. But one of things I remember to this day about the experience was they served the audience Red Bull and Vodka — and the Red Bull was in these commemorative cans. Brilliant marketing, all the way back then.
Everyone was ordering Red Bull and Vodka all week. There were lots of tales about people having heart attacks from that combo (not that week, but from around that time). I wonder how true those stories were — or if they were mostly urban legends spread by the company themselves to seem more powerful, and appeal to young thrill seekers.
There's really no accounting for taste.
I like Battle Royale, and Seven Samurai is good, for an action movie. I hated Citizen Kane and Tokyo Story, and consider both to be highly overrated.
For a medium that is dependent on technology I’d say it’s impressive for any old movie to stand the test of time. I love old movies and I’m always impressed with their resourcefulness and heart. My favourite film is Seven Samurai but I sincerely hope that we can continue to make movies which challenge the preeminence of all time classics like Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story, The Rules of the Game, 8 1/2 .. like really take your pick of the top films on that list and you or anyone would do well to watch them many times over.
Anyone who doubts citizen Kane really needs to check out what kind of films were being made before it. CK was bold and experimental, an astounding picture. It’s still fresh in many ways and moving, dated too for sure but a definite classic. Orson Welles is legitimately one of my artistic heroes and he got screwed by the powers that be at the time. I kind of hate to see his work presented this way when he himself loved many of the film makers with movies on the sight and sound list.
Honestly I’m very take it or leave it with Hitchcock’s Vertigo which is the current #1 and it will probably maintain the stop spot on the critic list during the next polls. I also don’t get Sunset which always places super high. It’s good and the running in the field scene is a thrill but that’s the thing about these lists anyways, they are just a statistical average of what everyone thinks but we all have our personal dark horse favourites. One day, Battle Royale will get the credit it deserves.
I’ve been drinking if this seems disjointed.
While I agree with you, it is worth commenting on the idea that a 5 out of 5 Uber ride isn’t quite the same thing as a masterpiece of cinema which someone gives 5 stars to on a platform like Mubi. I always interpreted a perfect Uber ride as clean, safe, no BS. A four star Uber does mean that something was a bit off about the experience whereas a four star movie was still wonderful but not quite earth shattering like A 5 star stone cold classic such as L’Aventura or Battle Royale.
You're probably right that Hunger Games was the immediate inspiration for PUBG. I understand Hunger Games to basically be an American adaptation of Battle Royale though (and also derivative of The Running Man.) Battle Royale already had "cult classic" status in America by that time. The naming of the genre seems to support the notion that the public was generally aware of Battle Royale. Before Battle Royale the term was in use, but generally referred to free-for-all boxing matches. The modern use of the term to describe Hunger Games or PUBG seems to closely resemble the premise of the Japanese movie/book.
> It's one of those things that looks blindly obvious in hindsight and makes you wonder how it took so long for someone to think of it.
Particularly since the movie Battle Royale had a mechanic that filled the same role (sectors of the island were declared off limits to force students to encounter each other.) Not quite the same implementation, but I think basically the same idea.
"whats the movie where all the kids shoot ewch other on an island"
Pretty good for me. Gives me Battle Royale.
"whos the african warlord who has that laughing gif"
Top result is video of "Idi Amin laughing on a boat". Just the thing I was thinking of.
Pretty good.
"whats the name of the principle that two particles csnt have the same characteristics"
Pauli's Exclusion Principle as the top result. Great.
Google has always worked really well for me.
Well... I think that way of putting it is a little too simplistic.
> PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) [...] is based on previous mods that were created by Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene for other games, inspired by the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale, and expanded into a standalone game under Greene's creative direction.
> [...]
> Lead designer Brendan Greene, better known by his online handle PlayerUnknown, had previously created the ARMA 2 mod DayZ: Battle Royale, an offshoot of popular mod DayZ, and inspired by the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayerUnknown's_Battlegrounds
Other than the drop and the number of players, did PUBG really add that much _new_ to the film Battle Royale, which clearly inspired them (both in mechanics and skins)? It seems a little unfair to give them sole claim to the idea.
Battle Royale is not a game. They are talking about the game category. Battle Royale wasn't even a huge film, more a cult film.
>The battle royale subgenre started with the Minecraft hunger game mode, and grew more popular by H1Z1: King of the Hill, and then by PUBG.
Minecraft had nothing to do with it. PU was inspired by the Battle Royale novel/movie and The Running Man. He forked the Day Z ARMA2 mod and made DayZ: Battle Royale, and that predates H1Z1 KotH by 3 years.
It's been a point of contention recently, the question of who created battle royale. Perhaps Greene is responsible for the modern iteration of it, but the last-man-standing concept has been around in gaming since Bomberman in 1983. And the concept of battle royale in general was popularized with the Hunger Games and of course the film named Battle Royale. And, "battle royale" as a phrase was used by Ralph Ellison in 1952 in his classic novel Invisible Man, describing a free-for-all boxing match that the protagonist must participate in. So Brendan Greene didn't come up with this out of thin air, or at least he wasn't the first.
On the other hand, I see no problem with him trying to profit from it either.
Edit: I correct myself -- in Invisible Man, the phrase was "battle royal," not "battle royale." It's still clearly similar however.
That's a mighty large statement. He may have made one of the most popular games but he certainly did not come up with the idea in gaming (Minecraft mods based on movies) or in movies (Battle Royale is a Japanese movie from 2000).
It's almost certainly the other way around since Battle Royale was published in 1999 and the Battle Royale film came out in 2000. Both probably take some inspiration from Lord of the Flies
Is it even more odd that I can't figure why they did not reference the literal movie 'Battle Royale' that the concept was roughly based on?
It's all literally the name of a film and novel, Battle Royale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film)
1. Battle Royale (the Japanese film) is released in 2000.
2. DayZ kicks off the survival genre in ~2012.
3. A slew of DayZ mods happen. A dev on one mod, playerunknown, creates a Battle Royale inspired mod for DayZ in 2013.
4. In 2016 PU is hired as a consultant for the DayZ knockoff H1Z1 to make a Battle Royale mode.
5. PU is hired by Bluehole to make PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, a Battle Royale game. Bluehole uses the Unreal 4 engine from Epic games.
6. PUBG is a hit in early 2017.
7. Epic games sees PUBG's success with their engine so they create a mod of their Unreal 4 building game "Fornite" that implements Battle Royale. It's released for free.
8. It's free, cartoony, and performs better than PUBG; this attracts the young youtube/twitch/etc crowd. Viral success happens.
I don't know enough about Korean law to suggest whether or not this case has a credible chance. I honestly hope it doesn't.
I do know enough about the history of games to take issue with `PUBG is just an FFA FPS, nothing new at all here` comment.
Making the playable area shrink in size to make "last man standing" gameplay work with a reasonably large open world map is a brilliant feature. It's a real upgrade to other methods I've seen to add predictably to the length of match outcomes. Way better than just showing a hud icon to where everyone is after a certain length of time.
Counterstrike ruleset matches on battlefield sized levels are glacially awful without something like that. Every other game I've seen up til' these to attempt that formula does so with kind of a "meh." and it never ends up being the best mode.
The "Battle Royale" genre admits in its name that those mechanics were inspired from the movie "Battle Royale". Despite that, I can't think of any other game that applied this technique quite so well. Maybe there was a Tribes 2 game mode that experimented with something similar? So... do they deserve exclusivity? I don't think so..
For now though, I at least have to applaud PlayerUnknown for the innovation. Kinda sorry your good idea got turned into somebody else's money printer. :/
Yes I'm referring to the BR modes in those games, and they were all from the same creator / licensed from the PUBG creator.
They all were inspired by the movie Battle Royale, but that was a movie, not a game. If movie <-> games were indicators of mutual success that would be a first.
Grandparent was suggesting that PUBG copied off of H1N1/DayZ, justifying Fortnite copying PUBG. While sony cloned PUBG, they licensed it, whereas Fornite didn't. But they were not originally Battle Royale games and the Battle Royale modes came from the creator of PUBG.
> They are referring to the BR modes in those games, and they are effectively clones and inspired by the movie Battle Royal.
I don't get what you're saying here. I mentioned the movie Battle Royale, not them. And predecessor games' battle royale modes grandparent suggested PUBG cloned from were made by the PUBG creator. I'm not sure what I said really counts as "pedantic" so much as the grandparent completely misrepresenting facts.
Which predecessor is PUBG exactly like? PUBG is the originator of the Battle Royale type, unless you count the Japanese movie Battle Royale as a predecessor.
H1Z1 and DayZ were clearly not in any way inspired by the Japanese movie "Battle Royal", which PUBG was, and which Fornite literally named itself after.
That being said, both the games you reference, their Battle Royale mode was actually made by the creator of PUBG:
> Brendan Greene, also known as PLAYERUNKNOWN, is the creator of the Battle Royale mod that started in the DayZ mod for Arma 2. Recently, Battle Royale has been licensed by SOE and made an official game mode in H1Z1
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/battle-royale-modder-brendan-greene-on-his-official-h1z1-mode/
So your reference to those actually support my point.
little trivia re Western: Hunger games is a remake of the Japanese movie Battle Royale based on the book by Japanese author :)
(but of course not arguing with Hunger Games movie itself as a very western movie with very western visuals, I understand what you mean)
Battle Royale. The movie is, from western/hollywood point of view, really bad. But the book is the most shocking book I've ever read. Don't read if you are sensitive though (;
I really liked all of them, but episode 2 was probably my favourite of season 1. It is over the top compared to other parts of the series, but not compared to other experimental far future or alternate universe scifi. For example: Dark City, Idiocracy, Cube, Moon, Battle Royale, Maze Runner.
You already had the best (Primer) After that, in no particular order:
Sneakers. Brilliant film.
Hackers - I think it's old enough now to be allowed but it was really laughable at the time - in the kind of way swordfish will be almost respected 20 years from now.
Wargames is the Hackers of the early 80s.
Pirates of Silicon Valley is also worth a watch.
Three Days of the Condor is a fantastic film if you're even slightly old school.
The nines is one of those films you'll either get and love or won't - I loved it.
Battle Royale is an amazing film that happens to have some hacking in it.
2001 is the ultimate hacker film, even though there's not much that you could associate hacking with it. The way it's put together, the dedication to realism, the way the special effects were implemented a year before man went to the moon defines it as a hacker film for me, although YMMV.