If there’s one thing that Japanese director Takashi Miike is best known for, it’s stomach-churning, mind-twisting gore.
After all, this is the guy who directed Ichi the Killer, which features a hooker getting her nipples sliced off and another prostitute getting cut completely in half by a killer armed with razor shoes. There’s also his film The Audition, which shows an actress cutting off a man’s foot with a wire saw, and you can’t forget his Masters of Horror episode Imprint, which was so disturbing Showtime refused to air it. Which makes it a little surprising that his next film is apparently an adaptation of Capcom’s over-the-top courtroom video game series Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Miike revealed that his next project was outside his usual fare:
It is a very light comedy that I am filming now, a court drama, based on a video game, the Nintendo game DS.
Now, we’re hard pressed to think of another Nintendo DS series that’s a court drama, so it’s gotta be based the Ace Attorney games. Despite how disturbing many of films are, this wouldn’t be the Miike’s first foray into family friendly films, as he also directed the alien/superhero film Zebraman and the kid’s fantasy film The Great Yokai War.
If you haven’t played them, the Ace Attorney games feature ridiculously dramatic courtroom cases that feature you as a defense attorney (The first several games featured defense attorney Phoenix Wright, although later games used other attorneys.) with three days to prove your clients innocent. To get a feel for how overly dramatic the series is, the DS version uses a microphone to let players shout “Objection” as loud as they can, which we’ve got to admit is really fun.
Not sawing-a-guy’s-foot-off fun, but it’s still pretty good.
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