3 ms·
Gosh that movie was awful. American live action Death Note was the same: I was hopeful since they cast Willem Dafoe and he's usually in good stuff, but no, it
by kerkeslager 7y ago
Gosh that movie was awful.
American live action Death Note was the same: I was hopeful since they cast Willem Dafoe and he's usually in good stuff, but no, it was also pretty bad. It seems like American film companies are just trying to capitalize on the popularity of anime without grokking what made the best anime great.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoDo you think they really don't grok it, or (as seems most likely to me) do those in control just not care about anything other than the monetary return?
- kerkeslager 7y agoWell, obviously they only care about monetary return, but generally not alienating fans of the source material and not making terrible content are much better ways to make money. Both films mentioned were commercial successes, but I think in the long run they burned audiences for this sort of film. I won't see any more American remakes of anime for some time.
- simonh 7y agoBattle Angel Alita. Cost $170m, Box Office $404m. Don't bet on it. Also the live action Akira is currently on hold, but Taika still seems keen to do it.
- kerkeslager 7y agoI actually saw Battle Angel Alita. I thought it was okay, but I hadn't seen the original source material to compare. Other commenters here are saying it was more loyal to the source material. The other American live-action remakes mentioned were profitable, but by much more narrow margins. If what people are saying about it being truer to the source material is true, then it seems that producing better remakes does in fact produce greater profits. We only have a narrow data set to look at for this, though. I really don't know what a live action Akira would look like. The body horror scenes are going to have to be CGI, which could go really badly.
- simonh 7y agoI think the problem is too many of them only care about how the film looks. The story is incidental, cobbled together using a lit crit course story construction kit formula. J. J. Abrams is the living embodiment of this approach, which is why his Star Trek and Star Wars movies look gorgeous and individual scenes are awe inspiring, and the overarching story arcs are all fantastic on paper, but the world building and and actual in-world logic of the setting or character decisions in it just don't make any sense whatsoever. Zack Snyder is just as bad.
- Loughla 7y agoNailed it. This is why the most recent Star Trek movies don't count as actual Star Trek to me. We had the 'pretty' and 'explosiony' action sci-fi movies in the form of Star Wars. Star Trek was supposed to wrestle with just a little bit deeper themes. But now they've devolved into beautiful looking action movies which exist just for the sake of action, with the story being secondary.
- MereInterest 7y agoThe major thing that I miss in NuTrek is the optimism. We have enough shows that are gritty, dark, and depressing. My favorite part of Star Trek was how is showed that optimism about the future is not naive.
- jimbokun 7y agoAbrams approach to creating new content for existing universes seems to just remake a previous beloved movie from the canon except much worse than the original (Wrath of Khan > Into Darkness, Return of the Jedi > Rise of Skywalker).
- bitwize 7y agoThe American Battle Angel was pretty damn good -- but it helps that they stayed faithful to the manga, only changing a few minor details. (Zalem is in South America rather than North, Alita is named for Ido's dead daughter rather than his cat.) I consider it a Hollywood take on a Japanese story -- done right.