... anyone seen it lately? I can't imagine it holding up given the way these kind of white savior narratives have long been told -- stories where the white guy shows up in a different culture and masters the culture better than the people who've built the culture a la
The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise. But we seem far more aware of that destructive story-arc now, so I have hopes this will be an updated take. Here's
how Deadline describes Shōgun:"Sanada and Jarvis will play the male leads, Yoshii Toranaga and John Blackthorne, respectively, in the project, which tells the story from both a Western and Japanese perspective... Written by Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, Shōgun is set in feudal Japan. It charts the collision of two ambitious men from different worlds and a mysterious female samurai: John Blackthorne (Jarvis), a risk-taking English sailor who ends up shipwrecked in Japan, a land whose unfamiliar culture will ultimately redefine him; Lord Toranaga (Sanada), a shrewd, powerful daimyo, at odds with his own dangerous, political rivals; and Lady Mariko, a woman with invaluable skills but dishonorable family ties who must prove her value and allegiance.
... Sanada’s Yoshii Toranaga is a living legend. He is a powerful daimyo from a feared lineage, isolated and outnumbered by his enemies in Osaka Castle when the story begins. But little does anyone realize that Toranaga is a brilliant strategist, a master of the long game, and the holder of Japan’s ultimate fate.
Jarvis’ John Blackthorne is a restless English pilot in search of a destiny far from the world he was born into. His mission is to forge a path into the Pacific islands and disrupt Portuguese and Spanish interests in Japan. But Blackthorne finds more than he bargained for when his ship washes ashore within the territory of Toranaga, a deadly warlord who becomes his captor and spiritual mentor."
They haven't cast the third role, for the female character; the head-writer Justin Marks has credits on the live-action Jungle Book movies and the forthcoming Top Gun sequel so, uhh... we'll withhold judgement. He also did a TV program I've never heard of, something called Counterpart that starred JK Simmons and Olivia Williams? There is so much TV now, you guys. I have no idea.
Anyway if you're not familiar with
Cosmo Jarvis yet it's okay since he hasn't done a ton, but what he has done has made me very curious about what he might be capable of. I already mentioned
Lady Macbeth -- Florence Pugh got all of the attention and she deserved it but I wish we'd thrown some of it Jarvis' way too, since I think he one hundred percent holds his own against her there. Since then he's been pretty choosy but in the past year we got to watch him do his fine beefy-weirdo thing in
Calm With Horses opposite Barry Keoghan and then again in the eensy little thriller
Funny Face,
which I wrote about here and which genuinely proved to me that he's the real deal. He does a lot of capital-A Acting in the latter but I kinda loved it?
I should add in "News I Missed" I see on his IMDb page that Cosmo also has been cast in that forthcoming modernized adaptation of Jane Austen's
Persuasion that will star Dakota Johnson and Henry Golding, posted
previously about here -- as admitted in that earlier post I have never read
Persuasion so I'd just assumed Henry Golding was playing the romantic male lead, named "Captain Frederick Wentworth," but no! It turns out it'll be Cosmo in that role! Okay! I'll enjoy staring at all of these people. On that note there are a few more shots of Cosmo from this photo-shoot I've been sharing above (
via) and I will now let us just happily stare at him
after the jump...