this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Yup, Last Samourai is 22 years old. Back then a lot of social issues have not been widely discussed.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Save the natives?

Doesn’t the movie end with them all dying?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

It was the main reason why I never ended up watching that film.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I think it's wary, not weary. Could go either way, I guess.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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"

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I hate that I'm on the same side as the racists though.

Thanks a lot Ubisoft.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

It's Far Cry 5 all over again

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Headline makes it sound Ubisoft posted this, but it doesn‘t look like it.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Yes, it's a classic "white savior" trope.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

he die didn't save shit though :D

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

What did he save? Literally everyone but Meiji-backed forces dies at the end.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I hate that nazis glom onto any bad game and ruin the discussion around it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hardly ruin, you have to purposefully go find them gloating over Steam charts. But it's too funny that people really have choice enough now in the good graphics segment that Ubisoft is sinking. It's my fault, I cursed them when they left Steam for their 4-UAC-prompts-whenever-you-start PoS. They showed total contempt for their users with Breakpoint, tried an nft grift on the side, evolved all cosmetics to clown shoes level and totally failed to offer anything new. Where's Reflextions? Stuff like Grow Up / Home, metroidvanias on UbiArt Framework? They have great 3D engines and can't keep a team happy or unfired enough to have people that know how to use it and optimize a game and are able to take some risks with game design. It's all either heavily monetized multiplayer dreck or incremental QoL features in ever larger and shallower sandboxes in one of few large franchise flavors. There's not that much to discuss, woo bamboo cutting tech, a new coat of paint and some gimmicks. People claiming it's failing because it's either woke or culture appropriating are ascribing cultural import to a happy meal.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

when you dont have arguments that fit with what you want to do, you make up your own.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I like how OP also chose to do zero research of all the controversy of the Last Samurai, and the years of PR control.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Ubisoft didn’t post this

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Game seems cool, but it requires a download to play. They don't meet my basic requirements for a game I'd even consider buying.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"doesn't have to be downloaded" is a basic requirement of a game for you in 2025?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yep! And it's really surprising to me that so many people are OK with that sort of defective-by-design anti-feature. It's a single player game, why would it have any dependence on networks or servers of any sort?

Not to say that I'm against digital distribution altogether, I think that's a perfectly valid preference w/ pros and cons.

But if you are going to sell the video game on a disc? Shipping a whole playable game seems like a pretty low bar to meet. Most games (that get a physical release) in [current year], for every year that exists so far, don't have a problem managing to do this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

... Are there discs that can contain 123GB of data? Should they just start distributing tiny solid state drives you plug in to your pc and play from?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

The highest capacity blu ray disc can hold 128GB

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Fair point, some games are very big. FFVII Rebirth and Baldur's Gate 3 shipped on 2 discs though, it's not unheard of.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

My basic requirements is that it's a good game from a respectable company.

And even if it is a good game by reviewer standards, Ubisoft has been an awful studio to the game industry for the past decade. From sexual harassment lawsuits to investing in web3, shutting down servers that causes single player games to lose features, having their own storefront, being creatively bankrupt with their releases, nickel and diming their product...

Not the worse mind you, but easily the bottom.

Buy it when it's $5 on steam in a few years.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

That's some grade A vintage racism right there.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (8 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

I remember people complaining about that movie when it came out actually

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's an actor ACTING as someone else that's the whole point of ACTING. People need to stop with this bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (7 children)

How do you act like you have black skin, for instance?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How do you act as anyone else ever? Unless you are a genetic clone of the person you must not be allowed to act!

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Australian method actor and five-time Academy Award winner, Kirk Lazarus, can explain.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Ah yes, the dude playing a dude disguised as another dude approach

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

People raging about videogames being woke

VERSUS

People raging about people raging about videogames being woke.

...FIGHT!!!

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