Twenty Years Later, Battle Royale Has Been Oft-Copied, Never Equaled
Kinji Fukasaku’s adaptation of Koushun Takami’s novel
Battle Royale was perfectly timed. It coincided with the wave of international success for Japanese genre cinema following the breakout of
Ringu. The film’s story of a bunch of teenagers trapped on an island and forced to murder one another became a cult classic, as well as a point of reference for a wave of young adult books and films over the next decade or so:
The Hunger Games,
Battle Royale was not necessarily original.
Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins claims that the premise of her books was an update of the classic story of how Athens would sacrifice groups of children to the Minotaur on the island of Crete, positioning her heroine Katniss Everdeen as “a futuristic Theseus.” It’s also possible to draw a line connecting