An Infamously Bloody Dystopian Thriller Is Getting A Huge Upgrade

In 2009, when full-time cinephile and part-time filmmaker Quentin Tarantino listed his 20 favorite films released during his career, he made sure to recognize that the best of them all was Battle Royale. Considering Tarantino’s penchant for championing Asian cinema and his taste for stylized hyper-violence, the pick certainly didn’t come out of nowhere. But for many of those watching him chat about his favorites, the movie was as much of a myth as an actual product. Battle Royale hadn’t been officially released on home video in the United States, so if you’d missed its few theatrical showings, you were left scrabbling for a bootleg version or learning to be content with the rumors.

But Battle Royale has since become so internationally renowned that Lionsgate has prepared a nice-looking steelbook set for its 25th anniversary. While no longer infamous, Battle Royale remains a thrilling experience, equal parts a high-concept bloodbath and a troubling look at the deranged trajectory of totalitarianism in motion.

How Was Battle Royale Received Upon Release?

Battle Royale’s director, Kinji Fukasaku, spent his entire career crafting films about the violent underbellies of society, three-dimensional gangsters, and action-fueled set pieces. A far cry from the generation of gory American cinema that Tarantino helped launch, which mostly consisted of young guns eager to leave their own personal bloodstain on Hollywood, Fukasaku was a veteran, and Battle Royale is arguably his magnum opus in an oeuvre filled with Japanese classics like the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series. Based on Koushon Takami’s novel, it tells the story of a group of high schoolers chosen to take part in a “battle royale” that concludes when a sole survivor emerges. Don’t want to join the killing spree? The explosive collar forced on each student takes care of any dissidents.

Though the film was meant to outline the dangers of totalitarianism (it finds kinship with something like Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom, which exposes the ideology as little more than a vehicle for depravity), it was immediately marked for controversy upon its release in Japan in 2000. Not only was copious violence on display, but many of the actors were of high-school age. Add in an incredible turn by Takeshi Kitano as a disillusioned teacher (the performer/director was best known as a comedian and game show host), and you had a film that seemed to pull the rug out from under cultural norms.

The National Diet of Japan certainly felt this way. Along with a battle over the film’s rating, some politicians declared that the movie set a bad example for Japan’s wayward youth. Fukasaku, who’d built a career out of depicting how crime or malfeasance often emerged as a response to a lack of hope or an inability to escape poverty, battled back. If ratings meant that kids couldn’t see his film, then go ahead and sneak into the theater. To Fukasaku, there were two factions: “Adults have lost hope for tomorrow. Children have no hope for the future.” And Fukasaku had picked his side of the battle line.

Why Is Battle Royale Important To See Now?

Battle Royale remains an exciting, tense experience, and it’s arguably the peak of a movement that spread through Japan, South Korea, and other Asian countries, as well as the United States. In Japan, it emerged after brethren like Takashi Miike’s wonderfully twisted Audition (another Tarantino favorite) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s nightmarish Cure. In South Korea, Park Chan-wook was preparing to stun the world with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy. (Surprise! Tarantino adored that one, too.) American horror filmmakers saw these flicks and upped the ante, producing the “torture porn” wave of the aughts.

That said, Battle Royale offers much more than sensational dismemberment, and its greatest legacy is the eternally timely stab it takes at the burgeoning will of authoritarianism. Royale makes it clear that little of the mindset’s intentions make sense when actually put into practice. An effort to “return to normalcy” or “embrace traditional values” only coincides with a mass purge of a population that’s been deemed a cultural bogeyman by those in power. And when violence does occur, it’s either swept under the rug or treated as a titillating spectacle. The “Battle Royale” is the show pony of fascist might, a thing to trot out every year under the pretense of cutting down on unlawful behavior. In reality, though, it’s just a thirst for more blood.

What New Features Does The Battle Royale Blu-ray Have?

Along with some great new art, the Battle Royale 4K Blu-ray features a variety of upgrades from the previous 2012 Blu-ray release, including 4K resolution and Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio. It includes both the theatrical cut and the “director’s cut,” which has eight extra minutes, some of which were filmed after the original release. It also includes new special features like Kenta Fukasaku (who wrote the original and took over filming Battle Royale 2 after his father’s death) discussing the film, and a minidocumentary, “The Ripples of Violence” that dives into the film’s style and its brutal impact.

There’s also a wealth of special features brought over from past releases, which makes this version of Battle Royale the definitive one to date. So if you’re a devotee of 2000s Japanese horror, wish to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a modern classic, or are intrigued by one of the finest cinematic glimpses at fascist hubris, there’s never been a better time to step into the game.

The Battle Royale 4K Blu-ray is available for pre-order now. It comes out on December 9.