On his way to trade with Han Chinese off the mountain, Mona Rudao also feuds with Temu Walis, a Seediq young man from Toda group.
Men are subject to low-wage logging jobs and prohibited from carrying guns they own, and from traditional animal and human hunting.
Young men, including Piho Sapo from Hogo village, see the mass punishment as unacceptable and urge Mona Rudao to start war with the Japanese.
Dakis Nomin, a young man who adopted the Japanese name Hanaoka Ichiro and became a police officer, notices that Mona Rudao is preparing for war.
When the news of war breaks open, policeman Kojima Genji is threatened by the natives, but convinces Temu Walis and his men to side with Japan.
According to an interview in Hong Kong, Wei's idea to make the movie began in 1996, when he watched a news story about an aboriginal group demanding the government to return some lands.
7 Wei chose non-famous actors, a story with multiple lines, and colonial period references to demonstrate the feasibility of these three elements.
Chin said he chose to use "Hollywood way" to shoot the epic in many short takes, which provide more choices for editing and reduce risk of failure.
Dakis Pawan, Iwan Perin and Zeng Qiusheng (actor of Rudao Luhe) coached the cast with the language, and served as translators on shooting site.
Polly Peng reports that: "Wei's film company frequently couldn't pay the crew on time [...] the Taiwanese scenic designers went on strike, the Korean action team just left, and the Japanese art team refused to hand over completed designs...."[2] In 2010, the Central Motion Picture Corporation under Gou Tai-chiang, invested 350 million and was said to end financial difficulty.
Taiwanese celebrities including Jay Chou, Jerry Yan, Chang Hsiao-yen and Doze Niu also invested, and were acknowledged in the credits.
[2] On 2 September 2011, Warriors of the Rainbow had its world premiere at the 68th Venice International Film Festival, but the original two parts are combined into the one cut version and its running time is two and half hours.
Lim argued that the most Korean audience are unfamiliar with Taiwanese history and ethnic groups, but the few who have seen it rated the movie positively, both for its quality and for their identification with its anti-Japanese theme.
Early reaction to the movie has noted both the realism of its violence (which is due to the historical accuracy of its depictions of battle), and its undertone of Taiwanese nationalism.
"[41] As Walter Russell Mead further commented, "This type of movie, done well, can inspire whole societies with nationalist pride, reinforce the prominence of folk heroes (including, quite often, violent ones), and strengthen a people's togetherness at the expense of foreigners.
[44] Justin Chang of Variety describes the film as a "wildly ambitious rumble-in-the-jungle battle epic arrives bearing so heavy a burden of industry expectations, one wishes the results were less kitschy and more coherent", but "still, the filmmaking has a raw physicality and crazy conviction it's hard not to admire.
"[45] Chang also writes "In terms of recent epic cinema, the primitive warfare in Warriors of the Rainbow recalls that of Apocalypto, minus Mel Gibson's sense of pacing and technique" and the "chaotic combo of hard-slamming edits, gory mayhem and Ricky Ho's forever-hemorrhaging score makes the picture simply exhausting to watch over the long haul.
"[45] On the positive aspects, Chang noted "there's an impressive degree of variation and anthropological detail in the weaponry and fighting techniques, from the numerous implied decapitations (the Seediq's chief m.o.)
Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter describes the film as "stunning to look at, authentic to a fault and a little tedious to follow", and praised the action set pieces as "spectacular, almost non-stop sequence of grisly hand-to-hand combat scenes" and "No martial arts here, but skillfully realistic fighting with spears and machetes, guns and cannons, which spare no one."
However Young also states that "no matter how ingeniously it is varied, the non-stop fighting becomes oppressive in the long run" and the film's best scenes are in its "quieter moments".
"[47] However Harris states "The story does not like complexity – the Japanese are almost universally portrayed as strutting hiss-boo villains or as hapless cannon fodder.
[48] Writer Chuang Hua-tang pointed out many the movie's deviations from history, such as Mona Rudao didn't participate some battles, and that the character Pawan Nawi is fictional.
Chuang then compared the movie to an earlier TV series Dana Sakura, and praising the latter for the respect to facts and more balanced treatment of characters.
Yuwen argued that the character is an allegory of ex-colonial people, who are used to advanced civilization, refuse to return to the backward native culture, and don't know where to go.
Noted failures include the short and insincere promotion, the 2012 April release clashed with blockbuster The Avengers and others, and the widespread idea that the 2.5 hours "International Version" is censored and incomplete.
The elder "said Mona Rudao was not a hero as described in the movie but a brutal man who killed 26 women, children and old people in the attack."
"[57] Ian Inkster, a professor in Taiwan, argued that the movie simplified the role of aboriginal women during the incident, for example they are not shown to be drinking or fighting.
Inkster also argued that it downplayed how Han Chinese settlers impacted the natives in the longer period, and concluded that the film should not be seen as a symbol of the present Taiwanese national protest against China.
In a 2011 talk show, Watan Nomin, a young student from Toda group, said that the conflicts between the Seediq tribes are not only a result of tradition, but are also influenced by the Japanese policy of setting up a "frontier guard line" (隘勇線) in the area.
[59][60] On a forum conference, Watan, a TV reporter from Toda group, criticized the movie for not describing the "gaya" custom of the people, and for its changes and mistakes of the historical details.