Ninja Fall From Grace!

Ninjas: the cannon fodder of martial arts films. With wide ranging skills like flipping around aimlessly and piling up in bloody heaps under the slashes and blows of the film’s hero, these anonymously-clothed foes have always served an important purpose. To die, and quickly.

Some have the power to use really akward and inefficient weapons like duel bo staffs, ancient Chinese smoking boomerangs, and nets. The net being my personal favorite as a weapon, as no one ever expects that during a life-or-death kitana duel, their oponent will throw a shit load of knotted rope at them. I’ve also never seen two people fighting eachother with nets only, which would be the epic final scene in any movie, regardless of genre.

My point is this: Ninja are awesome, but they’re always in the background, never the hero. Sure they practice assassination, espionage, and generally sneaky and dishonorable ways of fighting. They’re like the CIA of the Orient. But they need to given a chance as the hero in a movie. I was actually considering holding onto that thought until someone with much better knowlege of martial arts films proved me wrong in about 5 seconds, until I saw this garbage.

With movie titles such as Ninja Destroyer, Ninja Masters of Death, Ninja Warriors of Fire, Ninja Extreme Weapons, Ninja Death Squad, Ninja Powerforce, Ninja Apocalypse, Frauenlager der Ninja, Ninja Commandments, and Ninja Terminator, they really set themselves up for failure.

Just in case you were confused, the costume designers make sure you know what these guys are:

Whatever weapon this guy uses at the end is terrifying:

For a brief period, ninja movies were just a bunch of white guys spazzing out (the reaction at the end is very unninja-like):

Some people say fighting is 10% physical and 90% mental. Being a ninja is 50% doing a lame presentation to your opponent and 50% dying:

Only true ninjas can harness the true power of editing:

After all this, I like ninjas less, but still, look at Asia’s worst compared to our worst:

Then again, think about the people who failed ninja tryouts…