Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Submissions have to be related to games
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No excessive self-promotion
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
No linking to piracy
More information about the community rules can be found here and here.
Meme of Giancarlo Esposito / Gus adjusting his tie with the caption "You won't buy Assassin's Creed Shadows because you're racist, I won't buy it because Ubisoft games are shit. We're not the same"
I hate that I'm on the same side as the racists though.
Thanks a lot Ubisoft.
It's Far Cry 5 all over again
The fun thing about The Last Samurai is that the title doesn't refer to Tom Cruise. He does not play a samurai in the film. He plays an American officer.
He hangs with a group of samurai, who are collectively the last of their kind.
That said, plenty of people complained about it in its day.
I might be terribly incorrect.
But i remember that Tom Cruise's character switches sides in the movie after spending time with the Samurai (He was captured by them). He trains under them and becomes a Samurai. In the end, they fight against the (British?) and lose due to a gattling gun. All the Samurai die except for Tom's character. So symbolically, Tom is the Last Samurai.
Yes, it's a classic "white savior" trope.
What did he save? Literally everyone but Meiji-backed forces dies at the end.
he die didn't save shit though :D
It is implied that Tom Cruise dies at the end. I think the confusion comes from a voice over, but you never see the character on screen again.
He also does not "become a samurai". He fights alongside them, but at no point do they call him a samurai.
Edit: looks like that link is wrong. He doesn't die at the end. I guess memory is a fickle beast.
He also does not "become a samurai"
Correct. That's why I said symbolically.
but you never see the character on screen again
I maybe incorrect but towards the end of the movie, the Emperor asks how Katsumoto died, to which Tom Cruise replies "I'll tell you how he lived". So he was alive?
There is a lot of highly critical discourse around the Last Samurai. Not current, because it's not a current movie, but saying that it's "okay" suggests ~~you~~ they haven't looked for criticism.
Also, weary.
Edit: clarity.
Edit2: I have since been made aware by @[email protected] of a different perspective that makes a lot more sense, see comments below.
Yup, Last Samourai is 22 years old. Back then a lot of social issues have not been widely discussed.
And even then, there were people who were uncomfortable with a narrative of some heroic white dude coming in to save the exotic natives. Just wasn't a very popular opinion.
Save the natives?
Doesn’t the movie end with them all dying?
That's presumably the beginnings of an awareness of why that narrative is problematic. And also of the importance of historic accuracy. His role in the narrative was that of a saviour though. (Also, he survives.)
It was the main reason why I never ended up watching that film.
Yeah but it was the other side of the spectrum. It weren’t right wing racist who were mad but SJWs who didn’t see the movie and don’t understand that the word Samurai in the title is plural not singular.
Oh you're saying that this is about right wingers who think the Last Samurai is okay (while Ass Creed isn't).
... That... makes sense. Huh. I hadn't seen it that way.
I recall quite a bit of people taking issue with it. Goes back further with carradine in kung fu. Plenty didn't but same with assasins creed.
I think it's wary, not weary. Could go either way, I guess.
Headline makes it sound Ubisoft posted this, but it doesn‘t look like it.
I was misinformed by an Azerbaijani home electronics swap meet board
I hate that nazis glom onto any bad game and ruin the discussion around it.
Why do people manufacture arguments like this? Who is arguing that one is okay while the other isn’t? A couple random people on the Internet?
The only thing I can think of is The Last Samurai is a 20 year old movie and that somehow means not bringing up this historic fictional movie = you’re okay about a white dude becoming a samurai but not okay about a black dude becoming a samurai.
Whataboutism at its finest.
Did it not occur to this person that perhaps some people just don’t care about the movie, haven’t seen the movie, or plain just didn’t bring it up because it’s a movie? Is it “double standards” for one to pick their battles and not be enraged at everything all the time? My god this shit is exhausting.
Disclaimer: I have no opinion on the game itself because I frankly don’t care about it because I’m not the biggest Ubisoft fan outside of Rayman. Nor does the above necessarily reflect my opinion on the game’s historical accuracy. I’ve always loved The Last Samurai and Memoirs of a Geisha though and find both beautiful and touching films, so make of that as you will.
when you dont have arguments that fit with what you want to do, you make up your own.
I like how OP also chose to do zero research of all the controversy of the Last Samurai, and the years of PR control.
Oh man I just remembered how great that could have been.
Red Dead 2 dealt with racist cults so elegantly.
And Far Cry 5's "Oh we're going there!" And making the most surface-level milquetoast bullshit I have ever seen.
Ubisoft didn’t post this
I remember people complaining about that movie when it came out actually
I learnt the trope of the "white Savior" thanks to last samurai, and that was eons ago.
This is not a case of double standards, it's plain racism and influencer grifting.
That's some grade A vintage racism right there.
Nah I think both of these are examples of pandering. The Last Samurai is even worse because there was no reason at all for Tom Cruise to be there historically. Yasuke at least was a real samurai and I think if you were to ignore the fact that ubisoft is obviously pandering for publicity and cash his story isn't much different than Will Adams' portrayal in Shogan.
Say what you will about the white savior trope, but wasn't there a historical reason for Tom Cruise's character to be there? Japan was accepting foreign influence and modernization at that time, from what I know of history.
Yeah I was wrong. He's based off of Jules Brunet who was a french officer that trained the Tokugawa samurai in the use of modern weaponry of the time. He sided with the resistance against the emperor of Japan until he was evacuated by a french warship later on when the resistance was defeated. He wasnt a samurai by any means but he was a real guy