Alternate "Inglourious Basterds"

What if Tarantino had made a film with the exact same plot as OTL's Inglourious Basterds, except that it involves Korean-American GIs being recruited for a mission to assassinate Hirohito or Tojo? Would it have been as successful a movie? How would it have played in the East Asian market? Who might Tarantino have chosen for the cast? And would he have collaborated in some way with the likes of Park Chan-Wook, Kim Jee-Woon, or Choi Dong-Hoon?
 
Germans tolerate revenge porn on their ancestors and showing GI's scalping teenage conscripts as a positive thing, not so much for Asia.
 
I imagine that it would be less successful. First of all movies with a non-white cast tend to do worse. Second, one of the main selling points of Inglorious Basterds is that they kill Hitler. Everyone knows who Hitler is, but there are plenty of people who have no clue who Hirohito or Tojo are. It's a lot less interesting to watch the assassination of someone you've never heard of.

In East Asia I think the movie would do quite well in Korea and maybe China (depending on the exact content it could end up banned). However it would be a huge flop in Japan, and there would probably be protests against it's release (unlike Germany there are still plenty of Imperial apologists in Japan).
 
Funny, thats exactly the reason why I did not like this movie.

Huh, so did I. It was almost like Tarantino was trying to humanize the Nazis and present them as good people just so that he could have them killed in extreme ways and use the justification that they're Nazis, so whatever.
 
Funny, thats exactly the reason why I did not like this movie.

I didn't say Germans like it, but my point is you put up a film like Inglorious Bastards in Japan you would have mass demonstrations and boycott threats and it's a major market for them. It's why Hollywood is afraid of doing the same with the IJA.
 
Huh, so did I. It was almost like Tarantino was trying to humanize the Nazis and present them as good people just so that he could have them killed in extreme ways and use the justification that they're Nazis, so whatever.
Dude, I dont know if you are being sarcastic at the moment so please make this clear. Its just I thought the movie was damn boring...boring plot and the usally "cool" Tarantino bla bla. Meh.

Changing the theater from Europe to Asia...well Napi made pretty good points. I agree with him.
 
Dude, I dont know if you are being sarcastic at the moment so please make this clear. Its just I thought the movie was damn boring...boring plot and the usally "cool" Tarantino bla bla. Meh.

Changing the theater from Europe to Asia...well Napi made pretty good points. I agree with him.

Not being sarcastic, sorry if I came off that way. Italics were for emphasis at how bizarre it was. Yeah no, for one it was incredibly boring with what felt like mounds and mounds of unnecessary filler with no relevance to the plot, and for two it felt like a juvenile revenge fantasy a teenager would think up ("And then Hitler gets shot like a BAJILLION times and that Nazi baby gets to be an orphan har har!").
 
In East Asia I think the movie would do quite well in Korea and maybe China (depending on the exact content it could end up banned). However it would be a huge flop in Japan, and there would probably be protests against it's release (unlike Germany there are still plenty of Imperial apologists in Japan).

The Japanese government is in a standing conflict with a U.S. texbook company in America over the actions of the IJA to put things in prospective.

Japan urges US publisher to remove comfort women from textbooks

Japan has taken its campaign to rewrite its wartime history into the classroom with demands that a US publisher remove “inaccurate” descriptions of tens of thousands of women who were forced to work as sex slaves before and during the war. The move by the country’s foreign ministry comes after a Japanese publisher said it would delete text and depictions of the women, most of whom were from the Korean peninsula, from textbooks used in high schools.

The move by the country’s foreign ministry comes after a Japanese publisher said it would delete text and depictions of the women, most of whom were from the Korean peninsula, from textbooks used in high schools.

Suken Shuppan, a Tokyo-based publisher said it had successfully applied to the education ministry to remove references to “comfort women” – a euphemism for sex slaves commonly used in Japan – from three social studies and politics textbooks. The publisher has refused to explain why it had sought for permission for the change.

Under Abe, a nationalist, Japan has attempted to play down controversial episodes in its modern history, including the Rape of Nanking, the treatment of Allied prisoners of war, and the coercion of as many as 20,000 women, most of whom were from the Korean peninsula, to work at military brothels.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-us-publisher-delete-references-comfort-women

U.S. Textbook Skews History, Prime Minister of Japan Says
 
What if Tarantino had made a film with the exact same plot as OTL's Inglourious Basterds, except that it involves Korean-American GIs being recruited for a mission to assassinate Hirohito or Tojo? Would it have been as successful a movie? How would it have played in the East Asian market? Who might Tarantino have chosen for the cast? And would he have collaborated in some way with the likes of Park Chan-Wook, Kim Jee-Woon, or Choi Dong-Hoon?

I'm actually a bit confused on this bit. Wouldn't Japanese people, especially soldiers, be able to recognize them as Korean?
 
Not being sarcastic, sorry if I came off that way. Italics were for emphasis at how bizarre it was. Yeah no, for one it was incredibly boring with what felt like mounds and mounds of unnecessary filler with no relevance to the plot, and for two it felt like a juvenile revenge fantasy a teenager would think up ("And then Hitler gets shot like a BAJILLION times and that Nazi baby gets to be an orphan har har!").
Well than! ;) We are good. The big part is important. I cant see how doing this Tojo would make the same emotional impact in Western cinemas, as it would make with Hitler.
 
I'm actually a bit confused on this bit. Wouldn't Japanese people, especially soldiers, be able to recognize them as Korean?
There were a large number of Koreans in the IJA, and also having the main characters be Japanese-American would inevitably raise the subject of Japanese internment. I'm guessing Tarantino wouldn't want to take time out of his murderfest to examine the interment camps, and if he doesn't raise the subject there will be controversy.
Well than! ;) We are good. The big part is important. I cant see how doing this Tojo would make the same emotional impact in Western cinemas, as it would make with Hitler.
Exactly. Speaking as an American I can say that a lot of us don't know who Tojo is or what he did (other than "being our enemy during WWII"). Japanese war crimes as a whole are less explored in American history education than the Holocaust, so to most American audiences wouldn't see Tojo as even close to the same level of evil as Hitler. Killing Tojo is really no different in the eyes of most Americans to killing some fictional Big Bad.

In Korea (and maybe China, if the movie were shown there) the reverse is true. We could see an interesting situation where Inglorious Basterds is a relatively forgotten and seen as one of Tarantino's lesser works in the West, but is a major hit in Korea.
 
I'm actually a bit confused on this bit. Wouldn't Japanese people, especially soldiers, be able to recognize them as Korean?

Paralleling the plot of the original, I was thinking the rank and file would be Korean-Americans who didn't really speak Japanese, but the officers in the group could be Koreans who had studied in Japan (a la Fassbender's character) and some sort of Japanese defectors (a la Stiglitz).
 
Exactly. Speaking as an American I can say that a lot of us don't know who Tojo is or what he did (other than "being our enemy during WWII"). Japanese war crimes as a whole are less explored in American history education than the Holocaust, so to most American audiences wouldn't see Tojo as even close to the same level of evil as Hitler. Killing Tojo is really no different in the eyes of most Americans to killing some fictional Big Bad.

In Korea (and maybe China, if the movie were shown there) the reverse is true. We could see an interesting situation where Inglorious Basterds is a relatively forgotten and seen as one of Tarantino's lesser works in the West, but is a major hit in Korea.

I do agree that Americans don't know as much about WWII Japan as they do about Nazi Germany, including Tojo's role, so the emotional impact would definitely be blunted as compared to Hitler. But at least when I was in high school ('97-'01), we covered Japanese war crimes pretty extensively; one girl even did a book report on Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking". My school's curriculum may not reflect the national situation, however.

Having seen "The Good, the Bad, the Weird", "2009: Lost Memories", and recently "Assassination", I have no doubt this ATL Inglourious Basterds would be a huge hit in Korea ;)
 
Inglorious Bastards just reminds me why I prefer the war films of the 50s thru 70s; Patton, Desert Rats, Longest Day, Desert Fox, ec. to the war films of today.

Yah, even though the violence was sanitized back then they made them far better.
 
So speaking of all this, how was the real Inglourious Basterds received in Germany? What about in the UK, France, Italy, and Russia?
 

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Most Americans don't seem to understand the atrocities of the Japanese regime, which were easily as bad as the Nazis and made their leadership as bad as Hitler...but because the victims weren't white and the US didn't really liberate concentration camps with victims to film in China there is FAR less focus on Japanese atrocities. Even in Japan there is no real understanding of what they did in WW2, especially compared to the awareness of the German public.

BTW there was an OSS unit that was sort of doing their own guerilla war against the Japanese IOTL:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSS_Detachment_101

Plus the OSS was running Chinese guerillas in China IOTL:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services#Activities
From 1943–1945, the OSS played a major role in training Kuomintang troops in China and Burma, and recruited Kachin, and other indigenous irregular forces for sabotage as well as guides for Allied forces in Burma fighting the Japanese Army. Among other activities, the OSS helped arm, train and supply resistance movements, including Mao Zedong's Red Army in China and the Viet Minh in French Indochina, in areas occupied by the Axis powers during World War II. OSS officer Archimedes Patti played a central role in OSS operations in French Indochina and met frequently with Ho Chi Minh in 1945.[8]

You don't need to do a movie about Korean or Chinese American guerillas, they had Chinese on the ground doing the job IOTL that you could make a movie about.
 

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Inglorious Bastards just reminds me why I prefer the war films of the 50s thru 70s; Patton, Desert Rats, Longest Day, Desert Fox, ec. to the war films of today.

Yah, even though the violence was sanitized back then they made them far better.
Seriously, do you have ANY post that can't be summed up as some variant of "Bah, kids these days! They don't know 'nothing about 'nothing. Back in my day we knew what's-what. And McCarthy knew how to keep those Commie Russians in line!"?
 
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