Battleship Island is Japan's Real Life Bond Villain Lair

[soren7550]

Here's something I've been wondering: living space in Japan is really valuable and sought after, right? Then how come this island isn't being used? Sure, they don't need the coal anymore, but you can use the island for things other than that. Besides the before mentioned living space, you could set up a bunch of businesses there, maybe a small hotel or two, a ferry service to ferry people to and from there to the main land (islands?), and such.

 

[MegaManOfNumbers]

Oh shit. How did they find that place?! Thank god I moved my malevolent forces of darkness into a different Villain lair before it was too late!

 

[Ldude893]

I knew about this island from Cracked.com months before watching Skyfall. I wish they had a whole action sequence set on the island; it just seems like a place for a movie shootout.

 

[Terragent]

You know, this island was also the location for the very end of Killer 7. If you want a more videogame-ish angle, anyway.

 

[sb666]

Silent Hill 'Battleship island' edition, come on Konami.

That reminds me, Forbidden Siren 2 is set on this island.

 

[Therumancer]

Silent Hill 'Battleship island' edition, come on Konami.

That reminds me, Forbidden Siren 2 is set on this island.

Never seen that one, I was just about to ask if it was used for any J-horror movies. Sounds like someplace they might have used for an "Evil Dead Trap" sequel.

 

[Therumancer]

I knew about this island from Cracked.com months before watching Skyfall. I wish they had a whole action sequence set on the island; it just seems like a place for a movie shootout.

Well, if the island is in as bad a shape as it looks, doing any kind of serious stuntwork there would probably be quite dangerous, and a huge liability issue, even if they could find stunt people willing to do it as those people are ironically fairly safety minded and want to be in control of everything apparently (or so I understand from watching shows about it). To do it they probably would have had to make a soundstage that simply duplicated the look of Battleship Island and used that, and honestly that would kind of defeat the point, seeing as it's seems to just be a fairly typical pile of abandoned and decaying buildings like many others.

Not to mention I figure they probably blew most of the action-FX budget on the final sequences that they named the movie after. In this movie the entire "Battleship Island" lair was pretty much just a lead up to giving James Bond a reason to be a smart ass, before getting one upped on it later.

On a side note, Skyfall's success kind of bugs me on a lot of levels. It's not the vision of James Bond I grew up with, which arguably IS the point, but I personally think they humanized/gimped him a bit too much.

 

[excalipoor]

Once the most densely populated place in the world?

Spoiler: I find that hard to believe.

If my math is correct, in 1987 Kowloon Walled City had about 15 times the population density of what Gunkanjima had at its peak.

Spoiler: Sadly, they demolished the place. This is what it looks like nowadays

 

[shial]

Here's something I've been wondering: living space in Japan is really valuable and sought after, right? Then how come this island isn't being used? Sure, they don't need the coal anymore, but you can use the island for things other than that. Besides the before mentioned living space, you could set up a bunch of businesses there, maybe a small hotel or two, a ferry service to ferry people to and from there to the main land (islands?), and such.

The island is only 16 acres in size. That is only a little over 7 city blocks in size total. (using the engineers 100k sq feet for a city block, actual blocks vary a bit in size)

 

[mixadj]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the old U.S. Coaltowns like the one depicted in Rocket Boys (October Sky). There was an old extremely large paper factory that burned down in my town that sat abandoned for quite a few years. It was an experience to go back there and walk through the ruins. It was especially interesting how fast the woods surrounding the factory were reclaiming the building and what was left of the parking lots....

 

[Not Matt]

*adds "visit Gunkanjima" to list of things to do before death*

just realized. this is THE perfect place for any hide and seek, paintball and hungergames imitation. i suggest for rounding up bunch of people, go to gunship island and have fun! yay

 

[Jhonie]

Oh, so THAT's where Toei animation came up with the name of that island in that One Piece filler arc... Huh. You learn something new every day, I suppose.

 

[duchaked]

that island really is cool. looked great in the film too