Directed by veteran filmmaker Shinji Higuchi and starring singer-actor Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Bullet Train Explosion is the most recent full of life, highly-charged tentpole title on Netflix‘s Japanese slate. Higuchi has made a few of Japan‘s largest blockbusters, together with Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman and Assault on Titan.
Bullet Practice Explosion follows a ‘shinkansen’ (bullet prepare) certain for Tokyo, which quickly comes underneath a bomb risk. The bombs on the prepare will explode if the prepare slows under 100 kph, leaving the passengers and crew in peril. The movie is a reboot of the unique 1975 film The Bullet Practice, which impressed the Hollywood blockbuster Velocity — with the latter starring Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, and Sandra Bullock.
Amid the high-octane, action-filled sequences, Higuchi’s movie additionally gives up a number of ethical questions on life’s dignity and value.
“Once we make a movie, we will do many issues,” Higuchi tells Deadline. “We’re like God — we will management the lifetime of the characters and their destiny. We will make them die, we will make them reside. Whereas these characters might not truly exist in actual life, having their destiny in our arms, we’ve got a accountability of constructing these selections.”
These strains of philosophical questioning come from a deeply private place for Higuchi, who went by way of a turbulent time throughout adolescence.
“I do assume quite a bit about how these folks within the movie undergo and study to outlive on the finish of the day. As a result of after I was a teen, I hated this world,” says Higuchi. “However I used to be fascinated about residing forward, like I used to be wanting on the future. Possibly regardless that the scenario could be my worst level, I considered how in a number of years, I’ll be grown up and life could be higher.”
After highschool, Higuchi ended up working in public service, with Japan’s submit companies, however knew deep down that his calling was within the artistic world.
“At my college, they didn’t actually mean you can go on a artistic path. Whenever you seemed on the graduates and alumni, there was this graph chart, and there was nobody going into the artistic enterprise. Everyone would transfer on and go to school. I simply gave up on these tutorial paths myself and determined that I’d go into public service,” says Higuchi. “I took the general public service check, however I felt that my future was not there. That was the primary time I requested myself, ‘what’s it that I need to do? The reply was, mainly, to enter movies.”
Rising up, Higuchi was closely impressed by Ultraman and Godzilla creator Eiji Tsuburaya, in addition to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
Studying how Spielberg made Jaws whereas in his twenties, Higuchi was impressed and wished to do the identical.
“I learn the information and it was very stunning to know that in America, you can also make a movie in your twenties,” provides Higuchi. “So after I was in my 20s, I used to be fairly cocky, in a method. The American movies from the Nineteen Seventies nonetheless have a huge impact on me.”
Higuchi says that he has wished to make Bullet Practice Explosion for practically 20 years. Apart from Kusanagi, the movie additionally stars Kanata Hosoda, Non, Jun Kaname and Machiko Ono.
Casting Kusanagi in Bullet Practice Explosion — a former member of SMAP, one in all Japan’s hottest boybands from the late Nineteen Eighties to the early 2000s — took practically 20 years, partially on account of points with Higuchi’s former administration company. It was solely when Netflix arrived within the Japanese content material scene, that making the movie grew to become an actual chance for Higuchi.
“Whenever you’re making movie in Japan, there are limitations and guidelines that it’s a must to observe,” says Higuchi. “After Tsuyoshi left his outdated company administration firm, we had been capable of get him, as a result of his outdated administration was very highly effective and had a whole lot of affect on the leisure business. Tsuyoshi had rebelled towards the boss of the leisure enterprise and left the corporate not on good phrases. What occurred was that a whole lot of the manufacturing firms in Japan had been afraid that they could offend the boss by casting him.
“Those that might rent and forged him had been solely the unbiased movies, who had a whole lot of freedom and a superb vibe,” provides Higuchi. “Then Netflix got here round and in comparison with the TV stations and the movie business which have been in Japan eternally, Netflix was capable of do one thing that they weren’t capable of do. Netflix was sort of capable of leap over that huge political recreation that we had right here within the leisure enterprise. So though we’re not an unbiased movie, we had been capable of forged him on this big-budget movie as a result of it was Netflix.”
Wanting forward, Higuchi needs to deal with making movies based mostly on unique screenplays, however acknowledges that it’s not simple to get such initiatives funded, in comparison with diversifications of IP that audiences are already aware of.
“What’s very difficult about making movies right here in Japan isn’t just funding and manufacturing firms, however the audiences too, who need one thing reassuring, one thing that they know goes to be good,” says Higuchi. “I actually need to create an unique story, however to be trustworthy, a whole lot of the issues I need to make are going to be high-budget. You should persuade the individuals who have the cash that that is well worth the cash and funding, and I haven’t been in a position to do this but.”
“I simply hope that there can be an surroundings and ecosystem — and even changing into that particular person myself — that will allow me to make that dream movie, as a result of there are solely a handful of creators, perhaps 5, who’re in a position to do this in Japan and keep true to their artistic visions.”
Higuchi factors out that he has noticed that writers transitioning from the theater scene in Japan, to the movie business, are sometimes capable of pull the cash from buyers for giant funds motion pictures.
“The writers who come from theater into movies, once they write the script, they actually make the actors shine,” provides Higuchi. “Whenever you ask them, ‘what’s the story?’, they all the time speak in regards to the character as a substitute of the story. Characters are normally the primary impression and takeaways of those movies — perhaps that could be the enchantment.”
