Inspirography: The Warrior’s Way
This inspirography installment features another nearly-perfect Far West film, The Warrior’s Way, which was released in theatres late last year.
The hardest part about inspiration for Far West is the combination of elements — we’ve drawn inspiration from spaghetti westerns (and it’s easy to find examples of that genre which are inspiring), and martial arts films (also easy to find individual stand-outs of this genre). It’s a rare film that combines the two — and even rarer still when it could also be argued to be nearly as much a fantasy world as the setting of Far West!
But what else would you call an assassin from a nebulously-defined Asian culture (the weapons are Japanese, the clothing is pure fantasy, the actors are Korean and Chinese — and the line from the trailer identifying the assassins as “ninjas” isn’t actually in the film), who runs from his Clan to a ramshackle town in the equally nebulously-defined “West”, which is apparently exclusively populated by circus folk looking to stop their wandering? Did I mention that the town is threatened by a bandit band of ex-soldiers left over from “The War”, led by a villain in a Phantom of the Opera half-mask? The plucky love interest with a tragic past looking to learn martial arts? The town drunk who turns out to be an ex-outlaw gunslinger? How about the baby, lifted almost straight from Lone Wolf and Cub A three-way final showdown between bandits, assassins and circus performers?
Sound crazy?
Hell, that’s Far West.
Here’s a look at the trailer:
It’s currently available on DVD, and is easily worth a rental.
This movie is so incredibly awesome, I instantly thought of this game when I saw it, and what a perfect fit it was.
Also as a film buff, love this inspirography section, hope you keep it up, with more awesome examples of what would form “the eastern” genre.
But also hope you get to mention sources of inspiration other than film, like comics (the Korean Priest for example) and books (The Dark Tower series)
Absolutely. The Inspirography articles will not only cover film, but books, comics, television, music, and more. It’s why we went with “Inspirography” instead of “Filmography” or “Bibliography”, etc.
WOW!!! Just watched this. It was amazing. Looking forward to playing this as some one-shot…