I Don’t Want a Shinobi Movie That Doesn’t Have the Spider-Man/Batman Fight

Bolstered by its occurrence successful bringing the satellite of Sonic to the large screen, Sega is making bully connected its plans to bring its long past of gaming franchises to the large surface with the announcement of different classical getting a live-action rework: Shinobi. But are we going to get a grounded ninja-action movie, oregon are we going to get Shinobi astatine its astir delightfully weird?

Deadline reports that Sega has teamed up with Universal to bring Shinobi to the large screen, tapping Extraction manager Sam Hargrave to pb the film, with a publication from Sunny‘s Ken Kobayashi. A side-scrolling enactment bid that began beingness successful the arcades successful 1987, pursuing the escapades of Joe Musashi, the scion of the Oboro clan of ninjas, and his battles against a rival ninja transgression syndicate Zeed and its aggregate successors arsenic they effort to instrumentality modern Japan to the Sengoku period, and a clip wherever the ninja were ascendant. The franchise has gone connected to spawn implicit a twelve games successful the past 4 decades, including a caller 1 announced astatine past year’s Game Awards.

All that sounds similar the makings of a decent enactment movie. I mean, those Extraction movies were beauteous great, and you’ve got a winning operation successful ninjas, transgression syndicates, and the amalgamation of some in ninja crime. But I privation thing much than conscionable a ninja movie that has the Shinobi sanction connected it. I privation the unhinged and joyous copyright infringement of Revenge of Shinobi made manifest connected the large screen. The 3rd introduction successful the series, and a Genesis classic, Revenge of Shinobi had immoderate wholly retired determination cameos of random taste icons successful its archetypal versions. Enemies based connected Rambo, the Terminator, and Jackie Chan each appeared successful the game, and successful 1 level, players look disconnected against a elephantine kaiju that looks precisely similar Godzilla.

But the champion ‘homage’ comes in Revenge‘s sixth level, which climaxes with Joe facing disconnected against a villain named Metamorpher… who decides to conscionable consecutive up shapeshift into Spider-Man, climbing the ceilings, and thwipping webs astatine you. After capable damage, Spider-Man abruptly transforms into Batman of each people, flying astir the arena encircled by bats. It’s wild, and made wilder by the information that astatine the time, Sega had nary existent licenses for these characters.

Later versions of Shinobi had to beryllium changed to tweak galore of these alternatively evident cameos–but astatine slightest the Spider-Man 1 stuck astir successful these assorted versions, arsenic a mates of years later, Sega really had a licensing statement with Marvel successful spot to make the 1991 crippled Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin. The Batman information of the combat saw Spidey bid retired and beryllium replaced by a random winged monster, instead. Given the constricted quality of the statement however, Revenge of Shinobi was blocked from re-release for years acknowledgment to the fight, but yet versions released connected Nintendo’s Virtual Console, arsenic good arsenic the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network successful 2009 and 2012, respectively, were cleared by simply updating the Spider-Man sprite to a agleam pinkish palette swap.

The likelihood of Tom Holland shapeshifting into Robert Pattinson to effort and bushed up a ninja connected the large surface are, admittedly, beauteous slim, fixed that the Shinobi movie is being developed astatine Universal, alternatively than determination much license-convenient similar Sony Pictures oregon Disney. But fixed we unrecorded successful this property of franchise crossovers and the constitution of franchise meta-universes, a Shinobi movie without astatine slightest immoderate benignant of flagrant copyright skirting feels incorrect to me. Stranger things person happened, of course–remember erstwhile it felt similar we’d ne'er spot Spider-Man successful an MCU movie? Would the pinkish costume swap beryllium capable for a multi-million-dollar Hollywood blockbuster? We person a portion to ponder, astatine least.

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