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Horror Movie Talk
RINGU VS. THE RING - Broken Down Like Never Before!
The original lodge in Ringu looks like it could be part of a camp, or holiday home which would make it seem more realistic to audiences. The sun is also shining upon it like a spotlight unlike in The Ring where it is in the shade from the trees. The American veron of the lodge has a traditional horror movie look which occurs regularly in American horror movies. Also, it is in a dull, forest which can leave the audience feeling isolated when watching it as there is no one else around.
http://i42.tinypic.com/pkdz.The video tape in the original has a grainy look to it which adds more realism to it, nce this videotape was supposed to be copied numerous times. Unlike the Japanese veron, the American veron is much cleaner and looks like a first copy instead of a cheap copy. This would allow the viewers of the Japanese veron to overall be more fearful as it looks more real, and real scares people more. There is also a spotlight shining onto the woman in the mirror, which adds more mystery to the setting of it as you cannot fully see the background.
http://i43.tinypic.com/slmwx0.Due to the time difference of both movies, Ringu probably wouldn’t be able to get a hold of a digital camera that would fit in with the storyline and look the part. By ung a Polaroid though, it allows no chance that the image has come out wrong by accident. The digital camera is still effective but it’s not a phycal piece of evidence and it could have ealy been manipulated.
http://i43.tinypic.com/51wk0i. http://i41.tinypic.com/xkonpt.
Ringu’s veron of this scene only shows the hand of Samara without her fingernails, it is also in black and white which makes it more dramatic as the colour change is quite sudden. The Ring shows the full arm of Samara which has much more detail on the arm with obvious use of CGI. To the audiences, they would probably find the Japanese veron much scarier as the footage looks more documentary styled and therefore adds more realism. In the Japanese veron, the mark left on Reiko’s arm is a bruise, whereas on Rachael’s arm, it is undoubtedly a burn. Verbinski posbly made the mark a burn to show that Samara has other powers and is extremely paranormal. To American audiences this would shock them more because it’s unrealistic and Samara is now more of a monster than the un-dead.
http://i41.tinypic.com/veus5j.
Both verons of this film show the room where Samara has been kept hidden, with only a TV to keep her company. The use of light in the Japanese veron puts all the focus on the televion, whereas in the American veron the focus is on the TV, chair and Rachael. Ringu’s camera follows Reiko into the room so that the audience sees what the character sees at the same time, so they do not know more information than her. The room is also very dark and shadowy which adds more uncertainty as to what else is in the room. The Ring’s camera is already at the top of the farmhouse and is awaiting Rachel’s arrival; this will make the audience feel like someone is already up there.
http://i43.tinypic.com/chm41.Both verons show Sadako/Samara as a child, with long black hair hiding their identities. Their pale skin juxtaposed with their hair almost makes them look demon like. In The Ring’s veron of this scene, it is set in a hospital ward which may lead the audience to think that she has some kind of mental problem.
http://i43.tinypic.com/ogkwut.
http://i43.tinypic.com/qozha0.
The two scenes where Sadako/Samara crawls out of the televion are very alike; they use their right arm first, drag themselves across the floor and then finally stand up. In Ringu, the scene is scarier as it just concentrates on two characters (Sadako and Ryuji) whereas in The Ring, it cuts to clips of Rachael trying to get a hold of Noah. Also, when Sadako climbs out of the televion, she does it slowly and the room which Ryuji is in is quite small so it gives the feeling of isolation which unquestionably makes it scarier as there is no escape for him. When Samara climbs out of the televion though, she comes out quite fast which could be scary to some as it gives Noah less time to escape. The room that he is in is quite large and there aren’t many close up shots of him, so you don’t get the sense of isolation with him. Verbinski uses jump shots to give the illuon that Samara can quickly teleport places, this is a technique that can ealy scare the audience as they could think that she would turn up bede them.
Once Sadako is fully out of the televion, the camera angles switch between Ryuji and Sadako’s points of view. By doing this, it allows the audience to see what each character is seeing. Both of the angles are equally daunting as from Sadako’s POV the audience can see the fearful expresons on Ryuji’s face. They can also see that he has nowhere to run, so he is well and truly trapped. From Ryuji’s POV, the audience can see Sadako slowly getting closer and closer to him, and then ring to her feet. Once she is fully raised, they can then see that she is almost the same height as him, which automatically makes her more powerful. There are no non-diegetic sounds in this scene, which allows the audience to fully concentrate on the panting of Ryuji and the chilling sounds of Sadako’s fingers scraping across the floor.
Alternatively, The Ring does not use as many close-up shots; they tend to just use mid-shots. The reason for this could be that they wanted to show the audiences the characters costumes to emphase their power. Noah is wearing a mple brown t-shirt and jeans, which show that he is just an ‘everyday’ man and there is nothing special about him. Samara is wearing a dirty, white dress which shows the audience that she has in fact just crawled out of a well and she does not care about her appearance. There is some very subtle mood muc in the background which is building the tenon as Samara’s looks are being revealed.
When the camera cuts to the eye of Sadako/Samara; both verons deal with this differently. The Japanese veron cuts straight to the eye without letting the viewers see the rest of her face whereas the American veron zooms in on her face and then uses jump cuts to get to her eye. Some audience members may find the American veron scarier as you get to see her full face and see that she is truly deformed, the Japanese veron only suggests that Sadako is misshapen. Although, some audience members may feel that the makeup/CGI used with Samara is over the top and rules out any realism that may have occurred.
Overall, the main technique used to scare the audience is realism; Ringu takes advantage of this, whereas The Ring doesn’t use it so often. When ung realism it allows the audience to really feel the emotions that the characters are going through. The audience can also refer what is happening in the film to things that may have happened or are happening in their lives.
Questionnaire
I wrote a questionnaire which I gave to ten of my peers (5 were 18 year old film students and 5 were adults over the age of 40), I asked them questions about which veron was scarier and why. Every ngle person said that Ringu was the scarier film. The main reasons that they picked this veron are that it looks more real, its darker, the muc and performances are creepier and the camera angles allow you to see every emotion that Ryuji is going through. 9/10 people said that Sadako was the scarier girl in the two verons, only one said that Samara was though (an adult). The person who voted Samara the scariest said that she looked like Regan;
http://i44.tinypic.com/2lx8lg1.Regan ........ Samara
There is a clear difference in opinion between the students and the adults in this questionnaire. The main one being that the majority of adults agreed that The Ring was the more entertaining veron; this could be because The Ring is seen as a new type of horror film and the adults may not have seen any others like this. Another reason could be that nce The Ring is more materialistic compared to Ringu which is more psychological, the adults are used to older horror films which use objects to scare. Or they mply do not identify with the use of psychological techniques in horror films. The majority of adults also had the same opinion about whether they found the girl believable as a sprit. Three of the five adults picked Samara instead of Sadako. The people who said that Sadako was more believable said that she was more realistic, she had slower body movement and the acting was more convincing. On the other hand, the adults who said Samara was scarier said that she was ghostly, almost like a hologram. In the film, the audience do see Samara ‘flicker’ as she climbs out of televion and goes to her prey – Noah. Also, Samara somehow manages to make her way across the room quite quickly, and when the audience watch this clip, it almost looks like she is teleporting there.
One of the most thoroughly answered questions was ‘What makes that veron scarier?’ Condering all ten candidates said that Ringu was the scarier veron, there were a lot of answers. One of the most interesting answers was that the film was not so up to date. This makes this Ringu scarier as nce it is not all new, with perfect focus and perfect camera shots, it gives the film a documentary like feel to it. When watching the film and the ‘cursed videotape’ scene comes on, it is all grainy and this could look like it was a real life, found video. Another answer to that question was that the camera angles were more focused on certain things to scare the audience. An example of this is when Ryuji is watching Sadako emerge from the well, there are a lot of close ups on his face so the audience can see how frantic he is. Also in that scene there is a very low camera angle of Sadako’s empty fingernail beds, so the audience can clearly see that she is misng them. When she drags herself across the floor with her fingers it would obviously hurt to a live human being, but this shows that Sadako is definitely something else.
Out of 100, Ringu rated 88 for scariness, whereas The Ring only got 56, Ringu got 88 for realism while The Ring got 54 and overall Ringu got 83 and The Ring got 61. These numbers prove that Ringu is definitely the most entertaining and scariest veron. It was mainly the students who gave The Ring such low scores and Ringu very high scores.
Box Office Success
To properly examine how well Ringu and The Ring did at the box office, other budgets had to be inspected as well. Looking at other American remakes of Japanese horror films seemed like the best idea.http://i39.tinypic.com/2cyiiw0.
Out of these x films, Ringu is the only Japanese horror film to be included, the rest are American remakes. From the remakes, The Ring has been the biggest success, posbly because it was the first major American remake of a Japanese horror film. As more and more Japanese hits became remade, the audiences became less interested as indicated by the domestic grosses. The reason for this could have been that the after watching the remakes, the audiences could have watched the original verons and found that they are better. Another reason for this could be that the American film companies were ung the same techniques when filming so the audiences got used to them and this ended up not scaring them as much.
From the other remakes, there is a clear trend forming with the domestic grosses. As time goes by the American audiences become more and more acquainted with the conventions of a J-Horror remake. Like every other sub-genre of horror films in American history, they have all became very repetitive with their techniques. This means that the films just aren’t scaring the audiences as much because they know what it going to happen by guesng and relating it back to other films. The domestic gross for each remake is becoming smaller and smaller every time they release one. nce there have not been any major J-Horror remakes that have came out after One Missed Call, the film industry will have to wait until The Ring 3 will come out to see if the domestic gross rises again.
Ringu came out on top of all x films with the highest domestic gross and the lowest production budget. This could be because at the time of its Japanese release, there weren’t many big horror films coming out.
Ringu/The Ring in Pop Culture
References to The Ring have popped up many times in different forms of media. In the popular animated show Family Guy, Peter finds a video tape and places it inde his VCR machine. The movie Mannequin comes onto his screen and peter falls to the floor with a twisted face. This scene is one of the most shocking scenes and occurs in both Ringu and The Ring. In the televion show The O.C, the character Seth refers to a letter from Oliver as ‘the video tape from The Ring’. This is quite ironic as Seth is played by the actor Adam Brody, who has a small acting role in The Ring. One of the biggest references to The Ring is in the film Scary Movie 3 (2003). The Scary Movie franchise specializes in spoofing popular horror films, they tend to focus on one film, and add in elements of up to 20 other horror films. The Ring was used as the main film in the third Scary Movie making it the second most successful out of the four.
For admirers of the film, they may or not like that there are references in other forms of media. They might like it because it is promoting the film to a whole new audience and therefore the film becomes a greater success. The fact that Hollywood finds East Aan source-genres attractive, with hits like Ringu, Ju-On (2002) or Dark Water (2002) as well as Infernal Affairs (2002), Il Mare (2000) and My Wife Is A Gangster (2001), lets consumers seek these out in their original forms. On the other hand, they may not like it because nce it’s getting directed at a new audience, the original fans think that they will not understand it as much as them. But that’s just a matter of opinion really. However, the films are still gaining new viewers which will result in a bigger profit for the production teams and a bigger fan base.
Cast Choices
When looking at the cast choices, they have all been involved in films with milar genres to The Ring. Naomi Watts tends to be cast in horror/thriller films such as; Down (2001), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996). Martin Henderson hasn’t been cast in that many films, Windtalkers (2002) is the only feature length one beforehand which was an action/war film. For David Dorfman, this was one of his first big roles; he then went onto being cast in the horror film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (2003). Daveigh Chase has been previously cast in the cult psychological/horror Donnie Darko (2001), also done the English voiceover for Spirited Away (2001) which was a masve animated hit in Japan. The casting director for The Ring (Denise Chamian) has cast various other horror films beforehand; A Pason to Kill (1994), Bodily Harm (1995). So looking at her past, she has clearly picked the right actors for this film.
http://i42.tinypic.com/x6c29v.
The original veron of The Ring has gone for a typical ‘older man, younger woman’ relationship, compared to the remake which is exactly the oppote. The American couple (Naomi Watts and Martin Henderson) has a much smaller age gap, whereas the Japanese couple (Nanako Matsushima and Hiroyuki Sanada) have a thirteen year age gap. This could posbly be because for American audiences they tend to have ‘traditional’ couples where the male is older. There is a gnificant age difference between the two actresses who play Sadako/Samara; this is most likely because in The Ring, Samara stays a child all the way through it. Compared to Ringu where Sadako grows up and by the end of the film she is in her late teens.
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http://i39.tinypic.com/r2ueyw. Ringu ... The Ring Both theatrical posters do not give much information about what the film is about. They both feature a glowing ring with the title inde of it; Ringu stands out with its bold, red writing whereas the writing on the American poster matches the circle going around it. The main difference between the two is the taglines that come with it. Ringu uses the fact that it was originally a book to promote it while The Ring gives a very discreet hint at what the film is about. Out of the two, the original poster looks much more menacing as the orange and red colours contrast so much more on the black background, compared to the other poster which just has white information on a black background. Although, the wavy lines across The Ring poster imply that it has something to do with a videotape, which is the main theme throughout the film.
Reviews
IMDB is a film database webte which gives information about almost every aspect of a film. Users can vote out of 10 for how much they like a certain film, Ringu has an average score of 7.4 whereas The Ring has the score of 7.2. The gap between both films popularity is very small, the reason for this is that the users of IMDB are primarily Americans, so The Ring would have been eaer to access than Ringu. Also, only The Ring had a theatrical release in the US, whereas Ringu went straight to DVD. Another reason could have been that Ringu was held back from release in America until the release of the US remake.
Rotten Tomatoes is a UK based film database webte in which the public can post their own reviews on. They can either give it a fresh or rotten review, and then the ‘tomatometer’ collates all of the given reviews together.
It then gives the film an average rating based on the percentage of good and bad reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives both The Ring and Ringu high scores, but, Ringu came out on top with an extremely high score of 97%. The Ring only managed to get 71% potive reviews.
Both film review webtes (IMDB - US based and Rotten Tomatoes – UK based) have confirmed which of the two films is better. The UK based webte gives Ringu a much higher score as The Ring was an American remake so it would have had a bigger release over there. Also, the UK is not dependant on remakes, they favour watching the originals in all of its glory.
Concluon
The Ring made its way into Hollywood as a new type of horror film dealing with a cursed videotape. Hollywood had never seen anything like this before as their horror genre was filled up with the use of material items and clichés. The Ring and its original counterpart - Ringu, have many milarities and differences; the biggest difference is most likely the use of the camera angles. Realism, props and muc are also very different from the original. The connections they share with one another are the settings, storyline and characters. Out of everything examined, Ringu came out as the better film almost every time. This proves that this film should perhaps not have been remade and the original was perfectly able to entertain its audiences. From the corporate de of the film buness though, the remake was a big success making over $249,000,000 worldwide.
It’s down to a matter of opinion though whether a film should be remade or not. __ p.s - i wrote this a couple years ago for college and i thought you guys might be interested
http://i42.tinypic.com/pkdz.The video tape in the original has a grainy look to it which adds more realism to it, nce this videotape was supposed to be copied numerous times. Unlike the Japanese veron, the American veron is much cleaner and looks like a first copy instead of a cheap copy. This would allow the viewers of the Japanese veron to overall be more fearful as it looks more real, and real scares people more. There is also a spotlight shining onto the woman in the mirror, which adds more mystery to the setting of it as you cannot fully see the background.
http://i43.tinypic.com/slmwx0.Due to the time difference of both movies, Ringu probably wouldn’t be able to get a hold of a digital camera that would fit in with the storyline and look the part. By ung a Polaroid though, it allows no chance that the image has come out wrong by accident. The digital camera is still effective but it’s not a phycal piece of evidence and it could have ealy been manipulated.
http://i43.tinypic.com/51wk0i. http://i41.tinypic.com/xkonpt.
Ringu’s veron of this scene only shows the hand of Samara without her fingernails, it is also in black and white which makes it more dramatic as the colour change is quite sudden. The Ring shows the full arm of Samara which has much more detail on the arm with obvious use of CGI. To the audiences, they would probably find the Japanese veron much scarier as the footage looks more documentary styled and therefore adds more realism. In the Japanese veron, the mark left on Reiko’s arm is a bruise, whereas on Rachael’s arm, it is undoubtedly a burn. Verbinski posbly made the mark a burn to show that Samara has other powers and is extremely paranormal. To American audiences this would shock them more because it’s unrealistic and Samara is now more of a monster than the un-dead.
http://i41.tinypic.com/veus5j.
Both verons of this film show the room where Samara has been kept hidden, with only a TV to keep her company. The use of light in the Japanese veron puts all the focus on the televion, whereas in the American veron the focus is on the TV, chair and Rachael. Ringu’s camera follows Reiko into the room so that the audience sees what the character sees at the same time, so they do not know more information than her. The room is also very dark and shadowy which adds more uncertainty as to what else is in the room. The Ring’s camera is already at the top of the farmhouse and is awaiting Rachel’s arrival; this will make the audience feel like someone is already up there.
http://i43.tinypic.com/chm41.Both verons show Sadako/Samara as a child, with long black hair hiding their identities. Their pale skin juxtaposed with their hair almost makes them look demon like. In The Ring’s veron of this scene, it is set in a hospital ward which may lead the audience to think that she has some kind of mental problem.
http://i43.tinypic.com/ogkwut.
http://i43.tinypic.com/qozha0.
The two scenes where Sadako/Samara crawls out of the televion are very alike; they use their right arm first, drag themselves across the floor and then finally stand up. In Ringu, the scene is scarier as it just concentrates on two characters (Sadako and Ryuji) whereas in The Ring, it cuts to clips of Rachael trying to get a hold of Noah. Also, when Sadako climbs out of the televion, she does it slowly and the room which Ryuji is in is quite small so it gives the feeling of isolation which unquestionably makes it scarier as there is no escape for him. When Samara climbs out of the televion though, she comes out quite fast which could be scary to some as it gives Noah less time to escape. The room that he is in is quite large and there aren’t many close up shots of him, so you don’t get the sense of isolation with him. Verbinski uses jump shots to give the illuon that Samara can quickly teleport places, this is a technique that can ealy scare the audience as they could think that she would turn up bede them.
Once Sadako is fully out of the televion, the camera angles switch between Ryuji and Sadako’s points of view. By doing this, it allows the audience to see what each character is seeing. Both of the angles are equally daunting as from Sadako’s POV the audience can see the fearful expresons on Ryuji’s face. They can also see that he has nowhere to run, so he is well and truly trapped. From Ryuji’s POV, the audience can see Sadako slowly getting closer and closer to him, and then ring to her feet. Once she is fully raised, they can then see that she is almost the same height as him, which automatically makes her more powerful. There are no non-diegetic sounds in this scene, which allows the audience to fully concentrate on the panting of Ryuji and the chilling sounds of Sadako’s fingers scraping across the floor.
Alternatively, The Ring does not use as many close-up shots; they tend to just use mid-shots. The reason for this could be that they wanted to show the audiences the characters costumes to emphase their power. Noah is wearing a mple brown t-shirt and jeans, which show that he is just an ‘everyday’ man and there is nothing special about him. Samara is wearing a dirty, white dress which shows the audience that she has in fact just crawled out of a well and she does not care about her appearance. There is some very subtle mood muc in the background which is building the tenon as Samara’s looks are being revealed.
When the camera cuts to the eye of Sadako/Samara; both verons deal with this differently. The Japanese veron cuts straight to the eye without letting the viewers see the rest of her face whereas the American veron zooms in on her face and then uses jump cuts to get to her eye. Some audience members may find the American veron scarier as you get to see her full face and see that she is truly deformed, the Japanese veron only suggests that Sadako is misshapen. Although, some audience members may feel that the makeup/CGI used with Samara is over the top and rules out any realism that may have occurred.
Overall, the main technique used to scare the audience is realism; Ringu takes advantage of this, whereas The Ring doesn’t use it so often. When ung realism it allows the audience to really feel the emotions that the characters are going through. The audience can also refer what is happening in the film to things that may have happened or are happening in their lives.
Questionnaire
I wrote a questionnaire which I gave to ten of my peers (5 were 18 year old film students and 5 were adults over the age of 40), I asked them questions about which veron was scarier and why. Every ngle person said that Ringu was the scarier film. The main reasons that they picked this veron are that it looks more real, its darker, the muc and performances are creepier and the camera angles allow you to see every emotion that Ryuji is going through. 9/10 people said that Sadako was the scarier girl in the two verons, only one said that Samara was though (an adult). The person who voted Samara the scariest said that she looked like Regan;
http://i44.tinypic.com/2lx8lg1.Regan ........ Samara
There is a clear difference in opinion between the students and the adults in this questionnaire. The main one being that the majority of adults agreed that The Ring was the more entertaining veron; this could be because The Ring is seen as a new type of horror film and the adults may not have seen any others like this. Another reason could be that nce The Ring is more materialistic compared to Ringu which is more psychological, the adults are used to older horror films which use objects to scare. Or they mply do not identify with the use of psychological techniques in horror films. The majority of adults also had the same opinion about whether they found the girl believable as a sprit. Three of the five adults picked Samara instead of Sadako. The people who said that Sadako was more believable said that she was more realistic, she had slower body movement and the acting was more convincing. On the other hand, the adults who said Samara was scarier said that she was ghostly, almost like a hologram. In the film, the audience do see Samara ‘flicker’ as she climbs out of televion and goes to her prey – Noah. Also, Samara somehow manages to make her way across the room quite quickly, and when the audience watch this clip, it almost looks like she is teleporting there.
One of the most thoroughly answered questions was ‘What makes that veron scarier?’ Condering all ten candidates said that Ringu was the scarier veron, there were a lot of answers. One of the most interesting answers was that the film was not so up to date. This makes this Ringu scarier as nce it is not all new, with perfect focus and perfect camera shots, it gives the film a documentary like feel to it. When watching the film and the ‘cursed videotape’ scene comes on, it is all grainy and this could look like it was a real life, found video. Another answer to that question was that the camera angles were more focused on certain things to scare the audience. An example of this is when Ryuji is watching Sadako emerge from the well, there are a lot of close ups on his face so the audience can see how frantic he is. Also in that scene there is a very low camera angle of Sadako’s empty fingernail beds, so the audience can clearly see that she is misng them. When she drags herself across the floor with her fingers it would obviously hurt to a live human being, but this shows that Sadako is definitely something else.
Out of 100, Ringu rated 88 for scariness, whereas The Ring only got 56, Ringu got 88 for realism while The Ring got 54 and overall Ringu got 83 and The Ring got 61. These numbers prove that Ringu is definitely the most entertaining and scariest veron. It was mainly the students who gave The Ring such low scores and Ringu very high scores.
Box Office Success
To properly examine how well Ringu and The Ring did at the box office, other budgets had to be inspected as well. Looking at other American remakes of Japanese horror films seemed like the best idea.http://i39.tinypic.com/2cyiiw0.
Out of these x films, Ringu is the only Japanese horror film to be included, the rest are American remakes. From the remakes, The Ring has been the biggest success, posbly because it was the first major American remake of a Japanese horror film. As more and more Japanese hits became remade, the audiences became less interested as indicated by the domestic grosses. The reason for this could have been that the after watching the remakes, the audiences could have watched the original verons and found that they are better. Another reason for this could be that the American film companies were ung the same techniques when filming so the audiences got used to them and this ended up not scaring them as much.
From the other remakes, there is a clear trend forming with the domestic grosses. As time goes by the American audiences become more and more acquainted with the conventions of a J-Horror remake. Like every other sub-genre of horror films in American history, they have all became very repetitive with their techniques. This means that the films just aren’t scaring the audiences as much because they know what it going to happen by guesng and relating it back to other films. The domestic gross for each remake is becoming smaller and smaller every time they release one. nce there have not been any major J-Horror remakes that have came out after One Missed Call, the film industry will have to wait until The Ring 3 will come out to see if the domestic gross rises again.
Ringu came out on top of all x films with the highest domestic gross and the lowest production budget. This could be because at the time of its Japanese release, there weren’t many big horror films coming out.
Ringu/The Ring in Pop Culture
References to The Ring have popped up many times in different forms of media. In the popular animated show Family Guy, Peter finds a video tape and places it inde his VCR machine. The movie Mannequin comes onto his screen and peter falls to the floor with a twisted face. This scene is one of the most shocking scenes and occurs in both Ringu and The Ring. In the televion show The O.C, the character Seth refers to a letter from Oliver as ‘the video tape from The Ring’. This is quite ironic as Seth is played by the actor Adam Brody, who has a small acting role in The Ring. One of the biggest references to The Ring is in the film Scary Movie 3 (2003). The Scary Movie franchise specializes in spoofing popular horror films, they tend to focus on one film, and add in elements of up to 20 other horror films. The Ring was used as the main film in the third Scary Movie making it the second most successful out of the four.
For admirers of the film, they may or not like that there are references in other forms of media. They might like it because it is promoting the film to a whole new audience and therefore the film becomes a greater success. The fact that Hollywood finds East Aan source-genres attractive, with hits like Ringu, Ju-On (2002) or Dark Water (2002) as well as Infernal Affairs (2002), Il Mare (2000) and My Wife Is A Gangster (2001), lets consumers seek these out in their original forms. On the other hand, they may not like it because nce it’s getting directed at a new audience, the original fans think that they will not understand it as much as them. But that’s just a matter of opinion really. However, the films are still gaining new viewers which will result in a bigger profit for the production teams and a bigger fan base.
Cast Choices
When looking at the cast choices, they have all been involved in films with milar genres to The Ring. Naomi Watts tends to be cast in horror/thriller films such as; Down (2001), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996). Martin Henderson hasn’t been cast in that many films, Windtalkers (2002) is the only feature length one beforehand which was an action/war film. For David Dorfman, this was one of his first big roles; he then went onto being cast in the horror film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (2003). Daveigh Chase has been previously cast in the cult psychological/horror Donnie Darko (2001), also done the English voiceover for Spirited Away (2001) which was a masve animated hit in Japan. The casting director for The Ring (Denise Chamian) has cast various other horror films beforehand; A Pason to Kill (1994), Bodily Harm (1995). So looking at her past, she has clearly picked the right actors for this film.
http://i42.tinypic.com/x6c29v.
The original veron of The Ring has gone for a typical ‘older man, younger woman’ relationship, compared to the remake which is exactly the oppote. The American couple (Naomi Watts and Martin Henderson) has a much smaller age gap, whereas the Japanese couple (Nanako Matsushima and Hiroyuki Sanada) have a thirteen year age gap. This could posbly be because for American audiences they tend to have ‘traditional’ couples where the male is older. There is a gnificant age difference between the two actresses who play Sadako/Samara; this is most likely because in The Ring, Samara stays a child all the way through it. Compared to Ringu where Sadako grows up and by the end of the film she is in her late teens.
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http://i39.tinypic.com/r2ueyw. Ringu ... The Ring Both theatrical posters do not give much information about what the film is about. They both feature a glowing ring with the title inde of it; Ringu stands out with its bold, red writing whereas the writing on the American poster matches the circle going around it. The main difference between the two is the taglines that come with it. Ringu uses the fact that it was originally a book to promote it while The Ring gives a very discreet hint at what the film is about. Out of the two, the original poster looks much more menacing as the orange and red colours contrast so much more on the black background, compared to the other poster which just has white information on a black background. Although, the wavy lines across The Ring poster imply that it has something to do with a videotape, which is the main theme throughout the film.
Reviews
IMDB is a film database webte which gives information about almost every aspect of a film. Users can vote out of 10 for how much they like a certain film, Ringu has an average score of 7.4 whereas The Ring has the score of 7.2. The gap between both films popularity is very small, the reason for this is that the users of IMDB are primarily Americans, so The Ring would have been eaer to access than Ringu. Also, only The Ring had a theatrical release in the US, whereas Ringu went straight to DVD. Another reason could have been that Ringu was held back from release in America until the release of the US remake.
Rotten Tomatoes is a UK based film database webte in which the public can post their own reviews on. They can either give it a fresh or rotten review, and then the ‘tomatometer’ collates all of the given reviews together.
It then gives the film an average rating based on the percentage of good and bad reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives both The Ring and Ringu high scores, but, Ringu came out on top with an extremely high score of 97%. The Ring only managed to get 71% potive reviews.
Both film review webtes (IMDB - US based and Rotten Tomatoes – UK based) have confirmed which of the two films is better. The UK based webte gives Ringu a much higher score as The Ring was an American remake so it would have had a bigger release over there. Also, the UK is not dependant on remakes, they favour watching the originals in all of its glory.
Concluon
The Ring made its way into Hollywood as a new type of horror film dealing with a cursed videotape. Hollywood had never seen anything like this before as their horror genre was filled up with the use of material items and clichés. The Ring and its original counterpart - Ringu, have many milarities and differences; the biggest difference is most likely the use of the camera angles. Realism, props and muc are also very different from the original. The connections they share with one another are the settings, storyline and characters. Out of everything examined, Ringu came out as the better film almost every time. This proves that this film should perhaps not have been remade and the original was perfectly able to entertain its audiences. From the corporate de of the film buness though, the remake was a big success making over $249,000,000 worldwide.
It’s down to a matter of opinion though whether a film should be remade or not. __ p.s - i wrote this a couple years ago for college and i thought you guys might be interested
sickkgirl
Tuesday 2/28/2012 at 06:46 PM | 90890
Fantastic.
I agree that Ringu is the better of the two, as I dislike the American veron so much. It was built up for me from friends upon release, and really just disappointed me when I
got around to it. I saw Ringu a few years later, and saw everything I wanted from The Ring.Funny timing to post about these films, I just started a book on the Ring series today.
got around to it. I saw Ringu a few years later, and saw everything I wanted from The Ring.Funny timing to post about these films, I just started a book on the Ring series today.
HorrorDaily
Tuesday 2/28/2012 at 07:37 PM | 90892
Fantastic article! Love the shot for shot comparison. Very in-depth comparison and a great look at the changes made to "Americanize" non-US films, often to their detriment. Love it.
dew
Tuesday 2/28/2012 at 07:57 PM | 90893
Very detaild artical.
Well done.
Just goes to show when your a fan off something, u will look for every detail in the films.
Well done.
Just goes to show when your a fan off something, u will look for every detail in the films.
cat
Monday 3/05/2012 at 02:26 PM | 91116
