The Last Samurai – 2003, Directed by Edward Zwick

Click to view trailer

This is another trailer that I distinctly remember seeing in theaters. What was so memorable? Well, right from the first two shots the audience seemed very interested. I think because feudal Japan hasn’t been shown in modern cinema all that much, especially in the U.S. But then all that comes crashing down when the fifth shot rears its head and it’s a Tom Cruise movie. This was in 2003 so I don’t even think this was when he was crazy-Scientology Tom Cruise.

I think seeing Tom Cruise in this movie trailer was about as jarring as it must be in the movie for the Japanese to be seeing his character in their country. Anyway, on with the review. This will be kind of short because it’s not a very long teaser.

Story – Not much you can get from this trailer but here goes. It’s feudal Japan, Tom Cruise is there for some reason. There’s a large battle going on of which Tom Cruise is observing or training one side (the one with guns). Tom Cruise probably has a relationship with a Japanese woman and ends up in the battle with samurai armor.

Music & Editing – If memory serves me correctly, this trailer is one of the unique few which has a custom score for it. The music according to Soundtrack.net was done by Parodifair. Since there’s no sound or dialogue this teaser is all music so it better be good. This trailer music is pretty much to a T what is often ideal in a trailer. That is, it has slow moments, fast moments and lots of beats to cut to. After a slow build up in the beginning it climaxes at the end after which it’s slow again for the last Tom Cruise card and the title card.

Intercut in the trailer are the title cards with the obligatory mention of the word “honor” (this is a movie with Asian people in it after all). These nicely break up the action giving the trailer the cool slow/fast/slow/fast sort of editing. I think what I like is the simplicity of this trailer, which the music allows for. When I’m editing trailers I usually consider it phoning it in when I’m doing a trailer with no dialogue or sound effects (though I almost never have music this good to edit with ) but in thise case I think it works very well.

Selling Points – Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise. Oh, and did I mention it tries to sell it based on the fact Tom Cruise is in it? Of course it’s also about the setting, epic battles and such. Seriously though, obviously Tom Cruise is the main character so he has to be the focus of the trailer, but it just feels so incongruous. Maybe that’s the point, Tom Cruise doesn’t belong in Japan like his character doesn’t. But Tom Cruise not only in Japan but kicking butt and all that?

Final Thoughts – Not much else to say, elegant simplicity. If only it wasn’t Tom Cruise. I enjoyed the movie, but these types of stories about a white guy in a foreign land falling for someone, fighting alongside the leader of the group. In this case not even the leader, but the EMPEROR of Japan. I think just about any Japanese person you talk to about this movie will say that the biggest contrivance in the movie is that Tom Cruise’s character is let anywhere NEAR the Emperor let alone have a private talk with him. Japanese magazines even have a specific type of Japanese used only in articles talking about the Emperor. But I still enjoyed it because this isn’t a time period/setting you see often in film and it was cool to see. I have a friend who walked out because they couldn’t take all the Tom Cruise