the first battle royale was AWESOME. by comparison, the second one sucks ass. standalone, the second one is alright, but like someone said earlier, it's not great. the concept from the first one isn't carried over, and the worst part for me was that there was hardly ANY characterization. it's hard to give backstory on every character when there's like 40 students, but at least the first one distinguished a lot of the students.
to be honest, with so many asians on-screen, it's hard enough as it is to distinguish them all by looks alone. and i'm asian. when you don't even know the names for like half of them, it's hard to care or be struck by their deaths.
there were no subtleties (sp?) in br2. the analogy is so ridiculously obvious, that it was almost annoying to watch and it felt like it was a waste of a battle royale title. i have a feeling that going into this project, there was potential for a really spectacular film, but the execution just seems so... bleh. i mean, it's a real good message to get out, and in a film that involves the deaths of many young people, i can see why there would be cause for correlation. but again, bleh. good message or bad message, you can't help it if a movie sucks.
i WOULD suggest watching br2 first, but it might give away a few spoilers for br1. but as someone who watched br1 first, i can say i was incredibly

ing disappointed by br2. anyone else concur?