The Last Samurai/YMMV: Difference between revisions

** For starters, there's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eouUdcgXBE "Red Warrior"], which has samurai ''yelling war cries'' as part of the song.

** Reportedly, he had been studying Japanese music to make sure he had it right, and was subsequently asked by ''Japanese'' composers how he had captured it so well.

* [[Harsher in Hindsight]]: Katsumoto's death, plus Algren's determination, show the Emperor and the Japanese people the value of Bushido. We all know [[Imperial Japan|how that]] [[World War II|turned out]].

** One moment that can be funny with the right audience -- ninjas bursting through walls. "Damn those paper walls. They can't keep anything out."

** The ''[[Total War]]: Shogun 2'' expansion pack "Fall of the Samurai" is focused around the modernization of Japan (as well as the conflict of conventional Japanese weapons against guns and cannons), with you being ''very'' capable of reenacting the movie's final battle.

* [[Moral Event Horizon]]: A certain massacre of a Native American village by Bagley, the raid being in response to attacks on his forces from around the region. Note that while it's clear that this event (which, while horrific, [[But for Me It Was Tuesday|is implied to be nothing particularly notable from Bagley's point of view]] causes Bagley to cross the horizon for Algren and presumably the audience, it's some way into the film before we actually learn why the latter hates the former so much.

* [[Tear Jerker]]: The samurai's charge almost breaks through... {{spoiler|but then they are coldly gunned down by the army's new Gatling guns}}. Already emotional enough, but then Hans Zimmer's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcdQIwSS2Sw score] turns it into an incredibly gut-wrenching spectacle.

** The conversation between Algren and Taka's oldest son, where they both admit being scared, ending with the boy begging him to just ''go'' already as they both try not to cry. The hug makes it even worse.

* [[Values Dissonance]]: The audience is supposed to sympathize with the rebellious remnant of what, art and culture aside, amounts to a hereditary caste of armed thugs who retained carte blanche to abuse and kill commoners for offenses that we would in modern terms find ridiculous and petty. Rendered mostly superfluous during the relative peace of the Tokugawa shogunate, samurai either spent their time absorbing resources produced by the peasants and prosecuting internecine conflict or were pressed into the role of bureaucrats- the forerunners of the modern [[Salaryman]].

** Also in universe, as much of the [[Character Development]] and plot advancement come from comparisons between Eastern and Western approaches to honor in combat, and in general.