Not bad, but deserves to bomb as hard as it did

I have wanted to see this movie since it was in production. I didn't like that they changed the story, but hey its Hollywood, they always change the story to make it more marketable. However, I remember all the hate when the trailer came out was due to them stretching the story so much that it looked like a fantasy film. The actual movie had much less fantasy than I expected, much more of a conventional samurai film, but now you aren't giving the audience what they want. Whoever went to watch this in theaters are the ones who looked past the fantasy stuff and expected a movie with tons of monsters and witches. So not only do you alienate a chunk of supporters of the real story, you have a chunk of people courageous enough to watch it coming out just thinking it was a crap film.

I'm also not sure why they just couldn't speak Japanese. Everyone in the cast can speak Japanese except Keanu Reeves, who happens to be the only person in the movie that is a "half breed", so he would have an excuse not to be able to speak Japanese. I'm sure if they could pull it off right they could pull a Han Solo/Chewbecca Star Wars angle where they both understand each other despite one speaking Wookie and one speaking English. It just felt like I was watching a B movie or I was watching a foreign movie with the terrible english dubs turned on.

This is also the first big gig for director Carl Rinsch. Looking over his list of work, he seems to have done a lot of shorts and commercials with Asian companies like Toyota and LG. I guess considering Hollywood execs have cast people through lesser significant connections it wasn't too bad of an idea, but for a $175 million movie? They seem to just ask for it to bomb.