I guess as far as fan-made short films go, ZVP is pretty cool. It goes for less than eight minutes, and simply imagines what would happen if famed blind swordsman Zatoichi crossed paths with the Predator, from the famous sci-fi series of the same name (the original of which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger).
It's enjoyable. Sort of takes a while to get to its central thing, at which point it wraps up and begins to feel like the opening scene of a hypothetical feature film, but the novelty factor's enough. It's also decently made for something of this scale, and I loved the use of the sound effects from the original Zatoichi films near the start. Some of the sets/costumes were quite impressive, too.
I don't remember how serious the post was, but I remember someone once suggesting a Predator film set in samurai times would be a good idea. The recent Prey (released in 2022, caused some buzz, but now everyone seems to have forgotten about it) took the Predator formula back hundreds of years to great success, so it could well work with a Japanese setting set long ago in the past, too. If it had the kind of energy that ZVP had while being feature-length, that could be something neat.
It's enjoyable. Sort of takes a while to get to its central thing, at which point it wraps up and begins to feel like the opening scene of a hypothetical feature film, but the novelty factor's enough. It's also decently made for something of this scale, and I loved the use of the sound effects from the original Zatoichi films near the start. Some of the sets/costumes were quite impressive, too.
I don't remember how serious the post was, but I remember someone once suggesting a Predator film set in samurai times would be a good idea. The recent Prey (released in 2022, caused some buzz, but now everyone seems to have forgotten about it) took the Predator formula back hundreds of years to great success, so it could well work with a Japanese setting set long ago in the past, too. If it had the kind of energy that ZVP had while being feature-length, that could be something neat.
