Our take
With plenty of classics being remade, many have cried about Hollywood playing it safe, not matching up to the source material, and at worst, being unoriginal. After 40 years, the groundbreaking 1980 Shogun miniseries now has a new adaptation, but unlike its fellow remakes, this new series goes beyond expectations to deliver a mesmerizing, epic political drama that we’ve been hoping for. The 2024 remake still maintains plenty of the jawdropping firsts that shocked America then, but it also decentralized its perspective, expanding past the English outsider Blackthorne, and prioritizing the perspective of its Japanese characters, particularly Lord Yoshii Toranaga and Lady Toda Mariko. Hulu’s Shogun may be another remake, but their takes provides something new, with its spectacular production and its epic storytelling.
Synopsis
In Japan in the year 1600, at the dawn of a century-defining civil war, Lord Yoshii Toranaga is fighting for his life as his enemies on the Council of Regents unite against him, when a mysterious European ship is found marooned in a nearby fishing village.
Storyline
Japan, 1600. While in conflict with the Council of Regents, Lord of the Kanto Region, Yoshii Toranaga, finds a European ship headed by the ambitious Pilot Major John Blackthorne, with secrets that might turn the tide of the war.
TLDR
We’ve been missing large-scale epic storytelling like this, and I’m so glad to see it come back.
What stands out
The writing. The newest Shogun has been compared to Game of Thrones, partly because of the lavish production design, but mostly because of the writing, with every word carrying the stakes of the whole country– but this show’s writing goes beyond Thrones’ because Shogun has to navigate multiple real-world languages, with a language barrier that affects the story, and isn’t side-stepped for a predominantly English language narrative.