Forum Overview :: Peter Molyneux's The Movies
 
Usually it's the Japs stealing American ideas and making them better by FABIO 07/05/2005, 6:12pm PDT
Eyo wrote:

Americans made Ring, which was far better than the original.


Truth. I made a post on this, but it was knocked unconscious and thrown down Veronica's snatch where it survived for seven days.

Oh my god! It's back! Crawling out my monitor aAAAAGGGGG


Both versions are pretty much identical, scene for scene and plot point for plot point. Even the stuff I thought Hollywood threw in to add "drama" and make it more "marketable" like the precious Haley Joel Osment son and ex-husband thing was present in the Japanese version. What makes the Jap version inferior is its lower production values and how they have no idea how to make a sort of creepy/unsettling experimental haunted video. The killer videotape is only about 15 seconds of Japanese letters, a blinking eyeball, and a man with a napkin over his head. None of the freaky effects that made it look unnatural in the American version is present; it just looks like normal footage someone shot with a cheap 16mm camera.

And that's how the rest of the movie is shot: normal. The whole dim and green flourescent look of The Ring got on my nerves at times, but I guess it helped establish some sort of mood because Ringu is shot entirely in bright, warm light that kills any attempts at horror. It feels even more like an (Asian) episode of "Murder, She Wrote" with no supernatural feeling elements at all. Sure The Ring was a lame mystery interspaced with quick flashes of crawling maggots, but at least that was something. The closest Ringu gets to breaking away from an Angela Lansbury show is freezing the frame and fading to photo negative colors whenever someone gets killed. I'll take the maggots, thank you.

Speaking of the death, I guess the Japanese film industry doesn't believe in special effects makeup, because they can't be bothered with making dead people look dead. The bodies in The Ring were decomposed heaps, Ringu just has the actors curl up with a goofy frozen look of shock on their faces. A dead body shouldn't make me laugh (okay, theoretically). The drowned girl that comes out of the TV (which came as a surprise to no one with it being the ONE scene people remembered from the commercials and trailers) has colorful, healthy looking skin; they couldn't even bother to slap on some goth pancake makeup to make her actually look like a drowning victim.

So in the end, if you turn down the brightness on your TV (and all the actors wore sunglasses and spoke English), you'd be hard pressed to tell the two versions apart, except when it came time to show something scarey, in which case the goold 'ole U.S.A wins by a narrow margin through its superior makeup and experimental film technology.
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Don't bother with me, I give away everything in the previews NT by Dark Water 07/04/2005, 4:00am PDT NEW
    I saw the Japanese Dark Water by Fussbett 07/04/2005, 2:10pm PDT NEW
        Um by Quentin Beck 07/04/2005, 3:21pm PDT NEW
            I wonder who is the better writer/director though. NT by Creexul :( 07/04/2005, 4:01pm PDT NEW
                definitely the Ringu guy NT by Tycho and Gabe 07/04/2005, 5:06pm PDT NEW
            :( I forgot he made 50 other movies I haven't seen. by Fussbett 07/04/2005, 4:16pm PDT NEW
                North by motherfucking Northwest???? NT by Cary Grant 07/04/2005, 4:58pm PDT NEW
                    Fag NT by Bill Dungsroman 07/05/2005, 1:49pm PDT NEW
    dumbest pitch ever by FABIO 07/05/2005, 2:58pm PDT NEW
        Japs make awful horror movies. by Eyo 07/05/2005, 4:09pm PDT NEW
            Japan makes horrible ANY movies. NT by Creexul :( 07/05/2005, 4:10pm PDT NEW
                B-B-B-BUT LUCAS RIPPED OFF KUROSAWA ^-----^ NT by pseudointellectual Jap film fag 07/05/2005, 6:14pm PDT NEW
            Usually it's the Japs stealing American ideas and making them better by FABIO 07/05/2005, 6:12pm PDT NEW
                Re: Usually it's the Japs stealing American ideas and making them better by Fullofkittens 07/06/2005, 7:13am PDT NEW
 
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