Since keanu decided to try and ruin Cowboy Bebop, I thought it would be appropriate to post about how good ole Leonardo Di'fuckingshitheadcaprio is trying to produce a live action version of Akira. here is an ign listing of a few articles, but there is tons out there with a simple google search as well.

http://movies.ign.com/objects/480/480898.html

Oh yea Warner bros are behind this one too.

I mean the Anime adaptation of the manga paled in comparison to the manga itself and was a little bit squished in the 3hr run time but was quite revolutionary in terms of animation. Also I really dont think a live action remake produced by leo and not even based in neo-tokyo is what we all wished for .

1/19/2009 8:39:53 PM

this cannot end well

1/19/2009 8:48:24 PM

making live action versions of video games and cartoons is stupid

1/19/2009 8:54:42 PM

^It depends on what's being adapted (eg. comic books seem to be pretty good for live action, with their quality being hit-&-miss due mainly to the directors), but in the end I fear you are correct.

1/19/2009 9:05:28 PM

Someone should make a thread on all of these. It appears that Spielberg is jumping on the band wagon with Ghost in the Shell.

"DreamWorks has acquired rights to the Japanese postcyberpunk manga Ghost in the Shell after Steven Spielberg took personal interest in the popular anime property. Variety reports that the studio plans to develop Shell into a 3D live-action feature-length film."

1/19/2009 11:33:49 PM

Hi,

I'm Hollywood.

I have no fucking idea what to do anymore.

1/19/2009 11:38:53 PM

next up, ruin ghost in the shell

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1/19/2009 11:43:08 PM

Hi,

I'm a fourteen year old American nerd.

I don't know how to handle Hollywood remaking the anime films I obsess over.

1/19/2009 11:44:43 PM

very nice.

i've never seen an anime film, aside from one or two i watched with DaphneGrey. Princess Mononoke? does that count?

still, hollywood is a vapid, fledgling wasteland of creativity.

1/19/2009 11:53:03 PM

^^lol, i think its more like the fact that most anime is pretty much polar opposite of hollywood, which means the world really might end in 2012 if this is happening.

1/19/2009 11:57:29 PM

They really are running out of ideas. I was actually glad when they started making comic films, there's a lot of very good material that never got the mainstream appreciation they deserved. However, it has been very hit or miss depending on the directors, the actors, and other factors.

Live versions of cartoons aren't going to do well, you saw the DBZ previews, I can only imagine how bad this Akira project will go, and god forbid they start trying to do something like Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Perhaps it's time to start looking at making modernized versions of great literature. I think there are some novels out there that we couldn't really do justice before, but now we can. Look at how well LOTR turned out (and I'm a huge Tolkien fanboy), I think we could finally make a good version of Dune (the Sci-Fi channel miniseries was pretty decent), a lot of Asimov and Clarke's books could be done. Hell, even things like some of the sweeping and epic books could be presented properly (War and Peace, Shakespeare's historic plays, etc.).

1/19/2009 11:57:59 PM

nah, the original War and Peace flick tried, but even at 3.5 hours, you're still missing about half the book's minute yet pivotal details. EVERYTHING in that book seems significant, and the movie left out a lot of tangential relationships and their subsequent backing.

I'd LOVE a modern adaptation of the Bros Karamazov. All the deceit, drunkenness. . .it'd be fucking fantastic. The Idiot (Dostoyevsky) as well.

[Edited on January 20, 2009 at 12:04 AM. Reason : asdfasfsdfee2233]

1/20/2009 12:03:18 AM

Princess Mononoke is awesome.

i just don't understand why they would remake these.

The people who were into them have probably matured into something else. They were great when they came out and don't really need to be made into live action movies. Its like if they remade Brazil or Apocalypse Now with CGI in 15 years.

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1/20/2009 12:07:31 AM

^I concur, another aspect I have been thinking about lately is that most of these sci-fi futuristic animes that they are buying the rights to(bebop, akira, ghost in the shell) tend to have the ability to portray ridiculous technological concepts because they have the advantage of being drawn and animated, whereas hollywood trying to portray these concepts is most likely to end up being half assed and a shitfest full of a shit ton of CGI. Which makes you think: why remake classic animation with half shitty live action and half shitty computer animation? I guess hollywood is out of ideas and is just going to start making movies for the sake of having something in the theatres.

1/20/2009 12:07:47 AM

Sorry, those books are too intelligent, audiences wouldn't get it.

Actually, I'd like to see some good special effects applied to some Jules Verne. 20,000 leagues under the sea could be an awesome movie.

1/20/2009 12:08:28 AM

yeah how will they pull off Ed walking on her hands whilst typing with her feet?
all the little details like that add up and made those shows/movies awesome. Those details tend to be sacrificed for the spectacle when these things hit the big screen

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1/20/2009 12:11:13 AM

WITH ELLE FANNING, THAT'S HOW.

1/20/2009 12:12:18 AM

i guess she does look like a dude

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1/20/2009 12:13:13 AM

I don't think Bros Karamazov--at least from a topical standpoint--is that difficult. Written very thick, but all classic Russian lit was. The story isn't hard to get your head around.

1/20/2009 12:14:40 AM

OR ELIJAH WOOD. WHAT A TRANNY.

1/20/2009 12:18:15 AM

DAAAWWWWW

1/20/2009 12:20:18 AM

i think this is a bad idea

but don't talk shit about dicaprio

dude's a badass

1/20/2009 1:43:23 AM

^ok yea departed was awesome, I think I was more angry at the fact that he is trying to play Kaneda heh.

[Edited on January 20, 2009 at 1:58 AM. Reason : grammah!]

1/20/2009 1:58:02 AM

I'm interested how this plays out. Can't see how it will translate to live action, but a huge cg ending seems like it would be interesting.

1/20/2009 1:59:22 AM

dude, you're way over-reacting

first of all DiCaprio is a huge anime fanboy

secondly, from all that's been written, he's not playing the part...his production company has picked it up and he will be a producer

1/20/2009 5:21:43 AM

Quote :

"god forbid they start trying to do something like Neon Genesis Evangelion"

Wasn't somebody trying to work on this? I forget who and I'm too lazy to do the google search, but I do remember that Asuka's english voice actor was completely behind the project and would have been one of the producers. I do not share her optimism, however. The show is too philosophical, too depressing, and....basically too much of everything for it not to be watered down to the point of being NGE only in name.

1/20/2009 5:27:43 AM

yeah they're already doing NGE, but its just ANOTHER remake of the end of the series.

End of evangelion, rebirth of evangelion ect. and its not live action

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1/20/2009 3:06:30 PM

Quote :

"Asuka's english voice actor"

i hate that bitches voice

i hate when the english voice actors who have 0 talent try to attach themselves to something as grand as NGE - i could NEVER watch the English dub because it was awful awful awful awful

i'm very passionate about that

1/20/2009 3:42:51 PM

^^ you mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebuild_of_Evangelion ? Its going to be 4 movies, all animated of course, the first 3 being an alternate retelling of the TV series and the 4th being an entirely new ending. I saw the first movie Evangelion 1.0 at Animazement last year, was pretty cool especially with the updated animation technology they have available to them now that its 10+ years later. Can't wait to see 2.0 this year.

But there is some info about a live action film that is in the works, theres a bunch of centralized info on the wiki for NGE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon_genesis_evangelion , apparently its in "development hell", but I read that they want to change character names completely, "such as "Kate Rose" (in lieu of Asuka Langley), "Ray" (Rei Ayanami), and "Susan Whitnall" (Misato Katsuragi)" fortunately I also read it might not come out til 2015 and we may all be dead by then.

1/20/2009 4:12:07 PM

^^I didn't mind Asuka's english voice actor all that much. Overall she did a decent job. The one I hated the most was Shinji's english voice actor. He had only two modes; whine, and whine louder. Shinji may have been an angsty, emo teenager who thought very lowly of himself and was socially stunted, and arguably he was a coward (I don't support that notion, however), but one thing he definitely was not was a whiner. I will forever damn the english dubbing of NGE if only because of that.

Dubs tend to get the timing of words wrong anyway. This is an unavoidable consequence of having to synch the actors' lines with the animation as best as possible, but there are so many times in a dub where the flow of a sentence is horribly off. That's mainly why I watch subs whenever I can. I'm not completely worried about accurate-as-possible translations in either case because I know there will be a ton of shit that gets lost in the translation, but the experience is ruined for me when the characters sound like they're stuttering.

1/20/2009 6:27:11 PM

let me rephrase that

I hated ALL the voice actors - I don't know much about anime but I've heard ADV is pretty bad about the talent of their voice actors

bebop did it well I actually prefer the dub to the sub

but i generally agree with everything you said

1/20/2009 8:11:31 PM