Hollywood blockbusters have been filling our heads with the same stories for a century, rarely straying far from the familiar characters and plot devices that are proven to sell tickets. But while studios continue to crank out one multiplex-filling cash grab after another, the rest of the world has been putting its own spin on them, quietly dipping those tired old cliches in pure liquid insanity.

7 The Ragtag Sports Team Movie (Where Everyone Dies Horribly)

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The Familiar Cliche:

A loveably plucky team of ne'er-do-wells and underachievers overcomes the odds and beats the slick regional champion squad.

The Foreign Version:

In the 2003 Japanese film Battlefield Baseball (mind-blowing trailer here), Jubeh is a high school student who is supernaturally talented at the game, despite being portrayed by an actor who has clearly never seen a baseball before and seems entirely uncertain how it works.



"I just squeeze it until sports happen, right?"

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The school's team desperately wants him to join so they can defeat their rivals at Gedo High, but Jubeh, bearing the heavy emotional scars of accidentally killing his father during a game of catch, refuses (this bit of personal history is told in flashback and narrated in song by Jubeh himself, stumbling through a minor key).

Jubeh eventually agrees to be the pitcher, but on the day of the big game, Gedo High murders every single member of the team, including Jubeh, who shows up late and steps on a land mine that is buried in the field for some reason.



This is what happens when you use BabelFish to translate the rules of baseball into Japanese.

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This turns out to be no more than a minor setback, however, because, through a combination of divine intervention, advanced cybernetics and time-bending reincarnation, everyone is more or less fine and ready for a rematch (please note that by this point in the movie, not one game of baseball has taken place).

After beating his mother with a baseball bat, Jubeh suddenly remembers how to do his special move, the Super Tornado Pitch (yes, that sentence just happened and now belongs to history).