Genre: Period/Supernatural/Action
Premise: A group of disgraced Samurais (known as “Ronin”) attempt to take down one of the biggest samurai forces in the world to get revenge for their fallen leader.
About: This script dates all the way back to the 2008 Black List. It stars Keanu Reeves. Writer Chris Morgan has written several of the Fast and Furious movies and is currently working on The Legend of Conan, which is bringing back Ah-nold as Conan.
Writer: Chris Morgan
Details: It’s not clear if this is the 2008 Black List draft or if it’s the 2010 draft. – 123 pages
I’ve been curious about this one. Visually, it looks different from everything else out there. There’s a supernatural slant to it. Martial Arts is involved. It’s got a hot new director. Any of this sound familiar? It’s the recipe that made The Matrix such a huge success. And let’s be honest. We’ve been waiting for Keanu to make another Matrix for awhile now (not that I’m not a huge fan of Generation Um…).
On the flip side, it looked like one of those movies that COULD be all show and no flow. In other words, I’m scared it may be Sucker Punch or Night Watch. I was 50/50 on the answer to that until I saw the December 25 release date. If a studio’s releasing something on Christmas, that usually means they have confidence in it. So I’m going to give the film the benefit of the doubt.
47 Ronin is set in the beginning of the 18th century and is about a dude named Lord Asano who’s expecting the most important person in the land, the Shogun, to visit his kingdom. Asano’s right hand man is a samurai named Oishi. The two have been through everything together and this is probably going to be their biggest moment yet.
Oishi is in charge of a group of samurais, one of them a “half-breed” named Minoru, who neither Oishi or Asano know is sneaking off with Asano’s daughter, the beautiful Mika. The whole half-breed thing means they can never be together, which puts a real damper on their future prospects. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try.
In advance of the Shogun’s arrival, his evil second-in-command shows up, the serpentine-like Lord Kira. Lord Kira instantly falls in love with Mika, and tricks Asano into lifting his blade by pretending to attack Mika. Lifting a blade in a kingdom where the Shogun is present is punishable by death. Everyone must watch as Asano takes his own life, the honorable way for a samurai to die.
Adding salt to the wound, Lord Kira designates everyone who served under Lord Asano “ronin.” This is the worst disgrace a samurai can face. Ronin are samurai who have no honor. They’re then kicked out of the kingdom except for Oishi, who’s jailed and beaten to within an inch of his life.
Lord Kira, of course, wants to marry Mika now, but she wisely calls for a clause in the code that gives a daughter a year of mourning for her father’s death. The Shogun grants her request, to Kira’s dismay.
Eight months later, Oishi, now a broken man, is released. And he hasn’t forgotten about his best friend’s death. Naturally, he wants to get the band back together and kick Lord Kira’s ass. The problem is, most of the Ronin have disappeared. He only manages to scrounge up 47 of them. These 47 will have to take on an army of a thousand of the best samurais in the world. The odds don’t look to be in their favor. But don’t tell Oishi that.
I want you to imagine The Hobbit mixed with 300 mixed with The Princess Bride in feudal Japan. Ya with me? I hope so. Because this script was damned good. Surprisingly good. Unexpectedly good! Starting with it being lights out UNIQUE.
I always say that while you wanna follow the rules for the most part, it’s the breaking of the rules that sets your script apart. The choices you make which go against traditional practice are what give your script its own unique flavor.
In this respect, Morgan’s choice to not have a clear cut main character was pretty brave. Not having a clear cut main character (unless you’re doing a deliberate ensemble film like Love Actually) is usually the kiss of death for a screenplay. It makes the script unfocused and it doesn’t allow us to identify with, get behind, and root for someone (see Contagion).
When you watch the trailer for this film, you think Keanu Reeves is the main character. But that’s not necessarily true. Oishi is the one driving the story. He’s the one who has the most at stake. It’s his best friend who’s killed unjustly and who he must avenge. With that said, Keanu’s character, Minoru, has something at stake too (his love for Mika). He has to get to her before she’s married off and violated in a thousand different ways by the insane Lord Kira.
So it’s a weird read in that sense. Cause you keep waiting for Minoru to take that step forward and start dominating the action. But he’ll only get so close before stepping back. At the same time, it’s this weird “who are we following” issue that gives the script a sense of unpredictability.
That’s not to say you guys should try this at home. Oh no no no no no. I’ve seen writers who aren’t as good as Chris Morgan (and this guy is good – this script he wrote put him on my A-list) try the same thing and the result was a wandering unfocused mess where you keep angrily yelling at the script, “Who the hell is the main character here???” Some way, some how, 47 Ronin never suffered this fate. And I’m still trying to figure out why.
Now what’s interesting here is that there’s been some rewrites to the script since this draft. Hossein Amini (who wrote that amazing original draft of Drive) came in to rewrite Morgan’s script, and watching the trailer, some changes have definitely been made. My assumption is that somewhere along the way, a producer said, “Yo, why is Keanu Reeves not playing the clear-cut main character?” and they then rewrote the script to make him the main character (the fact that even his name has been changed – to Kai – would support this theory). Then again, Keanu’s one of those unselfish actors, so you just don’t know. But I’m curious what they did. Because if you make Keanu the guy driving all the action, a ton of the script has to change. You’d then be moving away from a script that’s already awesome.
As far as the story, this script uses one of the best devices for making a reader root for your hero out there: Punishing your hero for doing the right thing. And the way you tweak this device to REALLY make it work? You make the punishment as terrible as it can be and the “right thing” our hero does the most heroic thing it can be.
So in this case, the evil Lord Kira knows the rules of the house. If a blade is drawn when the Shogun is in a castle, it’s punishable by death. Well, Lord Asano walks in as Lord Kira’s about to rape his daughter. Lord Asano runs to protect her. Lord Kira fakes a move to his knife, as if he’s going to hurt her, and Asano’s forced to draw his blade to save her. But when Asano looks closely, Kira has merely lifted a fan. It was a trick. There are others in the hall who witness this, and all of a sudden, Asano has broken the law. He must take his own life.
So here someone is punished (Asano) for doing the right thing (protection). The punishment is the most extreme punishment it can be (death) and he was doing something that couldn’t have been more right (protecting his daughter). After this moment, Morgan has us wrapped around his finger. We will not stop reading until we see Asano’s men get justice over what the terrible Lord Kira has done.
I also got a kick out of Morgan using a very standard ticking time bomb device, one we’ve seen popularized in what was basically the opposite of this movie (tone-wise at least), The Princess Bride. We are simply trying to get to Lord Kira before he and Mika’s wedding so that Minoru can be with her. It’s funny how we can overthink these bigger “epic” stories and overcomplicate them as a result. Here, we’re simply trying to beat a wedding and get revenge. It’s so simple!
I could go on about this script but all I gotta say is, wow, I’m impressed. You’ve never seen anything like it before. I mean when’s the last time you saw samurais battling Dutch hulks inside an opium den on an artificial island? Doubt there’s a scene of that in Catching Fire. The attention to detail is also excellent here. I wouldn’t be surprised if Chris Morgan WAS a samurai. It’s got the underdog thing going for it, with the tiny group of reject samurai going up against a thousand of the best samurai warriors in the world. The fights all read amazing. This is going to be pretty badass. The only thing I’m worried about is that it looks a little over-stylized. But I’ll still be there on Christmas day with the fam (if my parents can handle it). What a script!
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Give us a frame of reference. Sometimes when you’re describing something so unknown to the reader (a sci-fi or supernatural setting, for example), you want to give them a frame of a reference, an analogy. So in the beginning of the script, when describing Lord Asano’s kingdom, Morgan writes: “It’s clear that Ako castle is Camelot at its height — the people of the province living happy, contented lives — and Asano is its Arthur; noble, just and kind.”
