204 LAST SAMURAI, THE
of apoplexy three months later, on 3 November 1757, at Albany. For dramatic
purposes, Cooper gave Monro two daughters. In real ity, he never married and had
no children.Last Samurai, The (2003)
Synopsis
The Last Samurai is an American period war epic directed and co- produced by
Edward Zwick, who also co- wrote the screenplay with John Logan and Marshall
Herskovitz. Tom Cruise portrays a U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment officer who becomes
a mercenary soldier battling samurai warriors in the wake of the Meiji Restoration
in late 19th- century Japan.Background
In 1992 screenwriter Michael Alan Eddy completed “West of the Rising Sun,” a
script about an American Civil War veteran who joins up with a samurai and helps
him lead a cattle drive to a starving city in Japan. Eddy sold his script to producer
Scott Kroopf of Radar Pictures in 1995. After several rewrites, Kroopf hired New
Zealand– born screenwriter Vincent Ward to write another draft and co- produce
the film. Both Kroopf and Ward bowed out in 1997 to pursue other proj ects, so
Edward Zwick (Glory; Courage Under Fire) took over as director. Zwick had seen
Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954) when he was a teenager in Illinois and
had been fascinated by Japa nese culture ever since; he saw Eddy’s script as the
vehicle for a Japan- themed movie he had long envisioned. Zwick spent the next
two years developing “West of the Rising Sun,” which went through further rewrites
by Garner Simmons and Robert Schenkkan before Zwick dropped the “Rising Sun”
proj ect in favor of collaborating on a related story about the end of the feudal era
in Japan with his longtime production partner Marshall Herskovitz and screen-
writer John Logan (Gladiator). Zwick did, however, retain involvement with Kroopf
and Ward at Radar Pictures. The new script that Zwick, Herskovitz, and Logan
began developing in late 1999 was inspired by the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, a revolt
against Japan’s imperial government by disaffected samurai led by Saigō Takamori
(1828–1877). To a lesser extent Zwick and his co- writers were also influenced by
the stories of Jules Brunet (1838–1911), a French army captain who fought along-
side Enomoto Takeaki (1836–1908) in the Boshin War (aka Japa nese Revolution,
1868–1869), a civil war between forces of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and those
seeking to return po liti cal power to the Imperial Court during the period of the
Meiji Restoration. Another source was the story of Frederick Townsend Ward
(1831–1862), an American mercenary who helped Westernize the Chinese army
by forming and then leading the Ever Victorious Army during the Taiping Rebellion
(1850–1864) until he was killed in battle. In 2000 Tom Cruise, who shared an
interest in Japa nese culture with Edward Zwick, signed on to play the lead role of
Capt. Algren and spent almost two years in preparation for the film, including his-
torical research, Japa nese language lessons, and swordplay instruction.