Directed by veteran filmmaker Shinji Higuchi and starring singer-actor Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Bullet Train Explosion is the most recent energetic, highly-charged tentpole title on Netflix‘s Japanese slate. Higuchi has made a few of Japan‘s greatest blockbusters, together with Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman and Attack on Titan.
Bullet Train Explosion follows a ‘shinkansen’ (bullet practice) certain for Tokyo, which quickly comes underneath a bomb risk. The bombs on the practice will explode if the practice slows beneath 100 kph, leaving the passengers and crew in peril. The movie is a reboot of the unique 1975 film The Bullet Train, which impressed the Hollywood blockbuster Speed — 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 price.
“When we make a film, we can do many things,” Higuchi tells Deadline. “We’re like God — we can control the life of the characters and their fate. We can make them die, we can make them live. While these characters may not actually exist in real life, having their fate in our hands, we have a responsibility of making those decisions.”
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 think a lot about how these people in the film go through and learn to survive at the end of the day. Because when I was a teenager, I hated this world,” says Higuchi. “But I was interested in living ahead, like I was looking at the future. Maybe even though the situation might be my worst point, I thought about how in a few years, I’ll be grown up and life might be better.”
After highschool, Higuchi ended up working in public service, with Japan’s put up providers, however knew deep down that his calling was within the artistic world.
“At my school, they didn’t really allow you to go on a creative path. When you looked at the graduates and alumni, there was this graph chart, and there was no one going into the creative business. Everybody would move on and go to university. I just gave up on those academic paths myself and decided that I would go into public service,” says Higuchi. “I took the public service test, but I felt that my future was not there. That was the first time I asked myself, ‘what is it that I want to do? The answer was, basically, to go into films.”
Growing up, Higuchi was closely impressed by Ultraman and Godzilla creator Eiji Tsuburaya, in addition to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
Reading how Spielberg made Jaws whereas in his twenties, Higuchi was impressed and wished to do the identical.
“I read the news and it was very shocking to know that in America, you can make a film in your twenties,” provides Higuchi. “So when I was in my 20s, I was quite cocky, in a way. The American films from the 1970s still have a big impact on me.”
Higuchi says that he has wished to make Bullet Train Explosion for practically 20 years. Besides Kusanagi, the movie additionally stars Kanata Hosoda, Non, Jun Kaname and Machiko Ono.
Casting Kusanagi in Bullet Train Explosion — a former member of SMAP, one among Japan’s hottest boybands from the late Nineteen Eighties to the early 2000s — took practically 20 years, partially because of points with Higuchi’s former administration company. It was solely when Netflix arrived within the Japanese content material scene, that making the movie turned an actual risk for Higuchi.
“When you’re making film in Japan, there are limitations and rules that you have to follow,” says Higuchi. “After Tsuyoshi left his previous company administration firm, we had been in a position to get him, as a result of his previous administration was very highly effective and had plenty 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 plenty of the manufacturing corporations in Japan had been afraid that they may offend the boss by casting him.
“Those who could hire and cast him were only the independent films, who had a lot of freedom and a good vibe,” provides Higuchi. “Then Netflix came around and compared to the TV stations and the film industry which have been in Japan forever, Netflix was able to do something that they weren’t able to do. Netflix was kind of able to leap over that big political game that we had here in the entertainment business. So although we’re not an independent film, we were able to cast him in this big-budget film because it was Netflix.”
Looking forward, Higuchi desires to deal with making movies primarily based on unique screenplays, however acknowledges that it isn’t straightforward to get such tasks funded, in comparison with diversifications of IP that audiences are already aware of.
“What’s very challenging about making films here in Japan is not just funding and production companies, but the audiences too, who want something reassuring, something that they know is going to be good,” says Higuchi. “I really want to create an original story, but to be honest, a lot of the things I want to make are going to be high-budget. You need to convince the people who have the money that this is worth the money and investment, and I haven’t been able to do that yet.”
“I just hope that there will be an environment and ecosystem — or even becoming that person myself — that would enable me to make that dream film, because there are only a handful of creators, maybe five, who are able to do that in Japan and stay true to their creative visions.”
Higuchi factors out that he has noticed that writers transitioning from the theater scene in Japan, to the movie business, are sometimes in a position to pull the cash from buyers for giant finances films.
“The writers who come from theater into films, when they write the script, they really make the actors shine,” provides Higuchi. “When you ask them, ‘what is the story?’, they always talk about the character instead of the story. Characters are usually the main impression and takeaways of these films — maybe that might be the appeal.”