It’s hard to predict with any degree of certainty which movies are capable of leaving behind a long-lasting legacy, but when it comes to the action thriller genre, there are few more qualified candidates than director Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale.
As controversial as it was incendiary, the brutal descent into tribalism and violence finds 42 children sent to a deserted island, where they discover explosive collars secured around their necks. Handed a set of rules, going off-course leads to a plasma-happy explosion, with their mission as simple as it is harrowing; kill everyone else, and become the last one standing.
Named by no less of an authority on cinema than Quentin Tarantino as one of the greatest movies to have been released in the last 30 years, you don’t have to work too hard in order to uncover at least some form of media inspired by Battle Royale across film, television, video games, comic books, and plenty more besides.
Thankfully, Hollywood remakes on both the big and small screen have failed to escape from development hell, with a recent Reddit thread hammering home just how highly-regarded Battle Royale remains more than two decades on from its release, seeing as the comments and replies find nary a bad word to be said about any aspect of its existence.
Greatness always endures, and even though the concept proved to be highly contentious, it was blown out of the water by the style, insight, and biting satire on display, with very few titles of a similar ilk managing to make even half the impact on the entertainment industry as a whole than Battle Royale.
