Here
we see a large amount of doomed ninja planning a recon mission. I say 'doomed'
because any large gathering of people whose names we never learn invariably
leads to a scene that's ankle-deep in blood. I don't care if you're watching
The Dirty Dozen or There's Something About Mary, this is a universal constant,
like gravity, the speed of light and James Cameron's career.
The problem is this -- I don't care if you're good or evil, malcontent or benfactor.
If you send a large group of people who all basically look the same to take
down ONE badass of any alignment, they are not going to succeed. If they were
smart, they'd have gone into town, searched disreptuable bars, looked for the
one guy with a funny costume, cool hairdo and big sword who had just singlehandedly
disembowled six bar patrons and said "He'll do."
But
I'll give them credit. They do have ONE character worthy of surviving this,
a female ninja (instantly seperating her from the rather ugly all-male revue)
who PROVES she has cool hair by cutting it right there and then. And just look
at that expression! Badass incarnate! She's coming on this mission and anybody
who says otherwise is gonna get a six inch long pair of fabric scissors jammed
up his nose. But as we'll see, unfortunately, she's not destined to be cast
in a true badass role. Chalk it up to stereotypes, cultural attitudes, destiny,
cliched writing or whatever, but it's not in the stars for her.
As
predicted, every single one of those guys gets bisected, trisected and dodecasected
by ONE badass. And suddenly, you see people in the back of the theatre who had
gone to sleep after the politics and planning showed waking the hell up -- "DUDE!
Did I just see that?!" Yes, you did. And it gets far, far worse. Or better,
depending on your personal tastes.
It's a shame I can'd do video clips. Here's the sequence of what happens. Ninja
standing in trees. Big whirling sword flies out of nowhere and chips them into
Crunchy Ninja Bits. Disassembled ninja fall from the sky, like this head here,
THEN a split second later all the blood falls on them. Timing is everything
when you're a badass; we haven't even SEEN the badass in question, and he's
already established his coolness over these minions by not only annihilating
them all in ten seconds, but doing it in a very stylish way.
But
of course, if you recall, there's still one character that we might actually
give a damn about -- Kagero, that spunky female ninja. Here we see the badass
and his badass weapon carrying her in a very badass way. She attempted to attack
him, but as we now discover, her role is not to be enough of a badass to really
be effective...
She's actually this film's 'Designated Victim'. Anybody who's seen anything in the horror genre knows what I'm talking about. The one person who just does NOT have what it takes to keep herself (why is it always a 'her', anyway?) out of incredible amounts of predatory danger, regardless of how many years of combat training and experience she's supposed to have. You know Akane in Ranma 1/2? Same deal. Started out as a competent fighter, able to hold her own against large, garishly costumed individuals, and by the time they get to the second movie, her response to being kidnapped is instantly 'Don't worry! Ranma will rescue me!'. Sad state of affairs, isn't it?