@@Chef_Jeff69 It's a good read. I've listened to the audiobook twice and I'm on my third right now. Brock, Gorth, Struan, Culum, May-May, such great characters. I wish to see a proper re-telling through a film/mini-series some day.
@@paco8191 Precisely. I practically got ridden out on a rail for defending James Clavell in the Asian-related thread pages on Reddit. Most discussions I have regarding this literary masterpiece and the rest of the Asian Saga now are forced to take place in fetish forums for guys who are into Asian women or on 4chan (lots of overlap on those). There's zero way in hell they could get away with making a proper adaptation today. Had it been a censorship-defying miniseries like Shogun, Tai-Pan would still be remembered. That's what reviewers even said back in the 80s. The film may be flawed, but it unfortunately might be as close as we'll ever get.
@@Chef_Jeff69 They used to have Shogun on there until the PC police took it down. Shaka Zulu got to stay since many black audiences appreciate it due to being well ahead of its time when both the novel and miniseries came out. Ditto with Zulu and Zulu Dawn on other streaming platforms. Many colonial-themed films and series have suffered from this sidelining or even being given outright bans. Tai-Pan and Noble House have only remained on Amazon Prime thanks to the dedicated efforts of fetish forums (the first time in a long time 4chan has done something worthwhile).
YES... As a young man I was always interested in the orient as it was just so completely different from Western societies language philosophy etc, as if they stepped out of a UFO somewhere. Clavel teaches us the psychology behind Japan and China melding history and novel characters unlike any other.
Struan: "Dinna give up, Tai-tai! (Chief Wife)" May-may: "Never! I love you husband!" And the Supreme Winds (Tai-fun) fell on them... Last words that still give me the feels in 2023.
Such a True Testimony Of Undying Love 💕 Even Though She Could Not Give Him a Son, OR Bear Children. I Suggest You Watch The 2 DVD Version Of BROKEN TRAIL.
Thank you for posting this. I watched my DVDs of Noble House earlier in the week and had to grab my DVD burn of Tai-Pan. I recorded my pan & scan copy off a EP VHS recording and the sound wand picture suffered. I'm thinking now of looking for the DVD now that I know it's widescreen. It's been so long since i read the novel but I remember back when this movie was released that it received a lot of negative reviews and I remember not understanding the hatred for this movie even back then. It's not a perfect movie but it's a fair representation of the novel, given the communist Chinese government objected to a lot of what was in the book.
This has to be made into a 2-season TV show (by HBO, not Netflix)! this and Gaijin. Except for Shogun by Jerry London, for it will always remain unrivaled, a true masterpiece!
sorry, seen you folks already commented a lot. I come from a different world - a world in which I was conceived in Wong Nai Chung Road, Happy Valley, summer of 69 - I'm 52 now ! - when Hong Kong was still governed by a comparatively benevolent power. As Clavell wrote in the first pages of Noble House - perdition to her enemies
strange comment from I presume a normal healthy straight man there's nothing degrading when it comes to how a woman can express her love to her man porn culture that has invaded all the internet is the true definition of degrading of morals and warped common sense
This was the best book and the worst movie ever. I swear I almost cried when I saw the movie! It was awful, but I can still pick up the book anytime open it to any page and enjoy it.
Saw it as a kid in tv as well as Shogun, I don't remember much now unfortunately. Probably a lot of things passed over my head than. I remember I preferred this one over Shogun, my guess is Brian Brown had a lot to do with that.
I do not understand the obsession to "remake" Classic that don't need to be remade which are flawless in their casting (both English & especially the Japanese actors & actress), production, score and rather than remaking it, why not complete the James Clavell's Asia Saga; there are four other novels remaining (Tai-Pan & NobleHouse already produce) in conjunction with the "re-release" theatrically for new audience. Tai-Pan was and is an underrated film, the casting, production & the film score are perfect, it was the screenplay structure that I felt wasn't adapted well too much too be told and not enough screen time and it should have been a TV mini series not an abridge single film or at the very less (although Hollywood was no longer aim for) the Historical Cinematic Epics. It's great that the Noble house TV mini series filled in some of the gaps. If they do plan on producing all of them and not just Shogun, then I will be impress in their ambition vision but I doubt heavily, for they are not that creative, hence the remake aiming for another GOT success rather than sincerely unveiling this novel to a new audience without "modern revisionist of history." There is already a warning sign, when they aren't giving credit to the author JAMES CLAVELL'S SHOGUN in the title or trailers for the 2023 version. And it is just me or does this cinematography appears too dark in the "new" one? I understand the different style regarding 1970s & 1980s TV production verse cinematic direction of photography in film but nevertheless one looks gloomier than the other while the other celebrate the beautiful light of the island of the rising sun. Thus far visually in costuming and production I am bias, but prefer the original by far. The score alone brings back memories of watching it aired from my childhood, the epic scope set the standard for all TV min-series for that decade.
yegenek that's a comment only an ignorant fool could have written with no culture and no education there can be made NO parallels or similarities between them the situation and historical context were completely different
This would suck as a modern TV series: woke politics, bad writing, soft-porn sex blah blah blah. Although it's missing the most important scene it's a good movie. Glad the Shogun remake never got off the ground.
A nice job, well done! It's a real shame that Raffaella De Laurentiis made so many bad decisions. Deciding to film in China, which she thought would get an enormous amount of free publicity (it didn't), was naive and foolish, not to mention disastrously expensive. The Chinese demanded script approval and squeezed money out of her at every turn. No competent producer would have even thought of going to China or allowing any entity script approval. Her choice of director was the worst problem; he's to blame for most of what's wrong with the film, though the bad script doesn't help either. Before De Laurentiis got the rights, a previous producer had hired George MacDonald Fraser, author of the great "Flashman" series of novels and others, to write the script and he wrote one which everyone involved said was one of the best they'd ever seen. That includes Steve McQueen, who was going to play Struan, Roger Moore who signed on after McQueen dropped out (likely because of his cancer which killed him within a year), director Richard Fleischer and others. Brown looked terrific and with a better director would have given a better performance, John Stanton ditto, the scenes with and the appalling dubbing of Joan Chen's 'May-May' are silly and embarassing. With a little luck, "Tai-Pan" and "Gai-Jin" will be made into mini series, but having watched the absolutely lousy (and totally unnecessary) re-make of "Shogun" produced partially by Clavell's daughter, who should be horsewhipped for p***ing all over her father's masterpiece, maybe it's best to leave them alone. If anyone wants a great film experience, watch the 12 hour 1980 mini-series of "Shogun"; it's terrific. The "Noble House" mini-series was quite good, too, and the film of "King Rat" is excellent.
