‘Shogun’ has dominated the television awards season making lead actress Anna Sawai (“Monarch: Legacy of Monsters”) a breakout sensation by nabbing an Emmy for her captivating performance (also, winning many many other awards along the way) and giving veteran Japanese a career landmark Hollywood role for Hiroyuki Sanada (got himself an Emmy, too), after decades in supporting parts. The series explored both fictionalized events and Japanese history with painstaking detail to represent the culture accurately and has been a huge success for Hulu, FX, and Disney+ (in international regions the show aired on the Disney app).
However, not everyone is singing the praises of the revival of the NBC miniseries (Quentin Tarantino refuses to even watch it) that debuted in September 1980. The original show’s director Jerry London believes that all that focus on the Japanese side of things and didn’t focus enough on the romance between Lady Mariko (Sawai) and John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) by telling too much of Lord Yoshii Toranaga’s story (a historical figure) and pulling from real events.
Telling The Hollywood Reporter, that it was “not entertaining” for American audiences and outlining the reasoning for that stance.
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“It’s completely different from the one I did,” London said of the new version to THR. “Mine was based on the love story of ‘Shogun’ between Blackthorne and Mariko, and this new one is based on Japanese history, and it’s more about Toranaga, who was the Shogun. It’s very technical and very difficult for an American audience to get their grips into it. I’ve talked to many people that have watched it, and they said, ‘I had to turn it off because I don’t understand it.’ So the filmmakers of the new one really didn’t care about the American audience.”
London continues to explain his reasoning for being critical but was “happy” they weren’t just making a carbon copy, “They made it basically for Japan, and I was happy about it because I didn’t want my show to be copied. I think I did such a great job, and it won so many accolades, that I didn’t want them to copy it, which they didn’t do. But the new one is funny because everybody I talked to said, ‘I don’t understand it. What’s it all about?’ I watched the whole thing. It’s very difficult to stick with. It won all the [Emmy] awards because there were no big shows against it. There was not too much competition.”
Interestingly enough, London also reveals that he had to convince those involved with that original incarnation that a non-Japanese director could tackle the James Clavell adaptation. “I had to convince them that I knew what I was doing,” London said of his experience on the 1980 version. “So after about a month or so, they accepted me and everything went well. But it was a very difficult show to do, and it turned out great.”
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While many were likely sidelined by the overload of strong critical and audience reactions to “Shogun.” Its popularity pushed Disney to reconsider the show’s limited run of a single season which has been expanded to two more seasons.
How exactly the creative team plans on exploring the story remains to be seen, but we’re excited to see what they come up with next.