... when the western publishers have never ever treated the genre with ANY kind of respect in the first place.

Here in the west, most of these movies were only shown to us in a completely butchered and raped way.

The movies are often cut up. They are often dubbed with ridiculously bad voice-actors who camp it up. Often, the little plot that's left after important scenes have been cut out, are crapped on because the new dub has to fit the movement of the mouths, meaning often they come up with ridiculous lines instead of a true translation what's being said in the original scene.

Etc etc etc.

And that's even part of the problem. Not only were these movies completely butchered and raped. They were also very often very poorly marketed. Often no marketing at all, many of the movies going straight to video, in poor quality (pan and scan, scratchmarks, poor sound, etc etc), horrible coverart, etc.

So yeah, ofcourse the genre is looked down upon, because even the people who sell it to us look down on those movies, and they obviously look down upon it's target demographic ("Ooooh, they wouldn't want to read subs! Lets dub it!!!" "Ooooh they couldn't sit through 100 minutes of storyline and plot and all that nonsense! Let's cut out all the talky-talky boring stuff and just leave the fights!!! They'll love that!!! "Ooohhhh this soundtrack is too foreign! Let's replace it with some JayZ!!!")

It's ridiculous.

Even when Kurosawa's movies first came out in the west, they were cut up.

There are a lot of great gems in this genre, but the average mainstream filmfan has been used to being served up CRAP.

i still cant find the raid redemption... online or in theatres.. and its pissing me off lol.