I reckon once Jupiter Ascending came out, there was a lot of reconsideration of just how bad a movie could be.
(I would like to think that Jupiter Ascending got massacred in the editing process, but I’ve also heard there’s not too much footage actually left out of the final cut, so maybe that’s just being wishful.)
Kon was a fucking genius and when he died tragically young we lost one of the world’s greatest directors.
Alita is like the one time an American live action anime adaptation got it right.
Battle Royale is absolutely great, and not based on an anime, but a novel. There is also a manga also based on the novel.
The article indicates it’s an adaptation of the novel.
I think it’s doable. Remember Perfect Blue was originally planned as a live action. Hopefully the series will be good, but there’s no way it will be Satoshi Kon good.
Darren Aronofsky has always wanted to do a live action Perfect Blue, and I would totally watch that.
On the other hand, if anyone ever tries to make a live action adaptation of Millennium Actress, I will be in the streets with a pitchfork.
There’s the homage bathtub shot in Black Swan
He bought the rights to remake the whole movie just for that scene. I hope that he will remake it someday, even if only to draw more attention to the original (which is often overlooked even here in Japan).
Paprika is one of my favourite anime films. I’ve watched it at least 4 times. The early sequence where the girl therapist slips in and out of the late night reality of Tokyo is one of the best pieces of imagination and music ever done imo.
As for Hollywood making live action versions, for years they’ve been adapting all kinds of foreign language films, not just Japanese (Ring, The Grudge) but also French (La Cage aux Folles) and lets not forget American TV remaking British programmes (The Office, Ghosts.)
Is it so bad? In Japan it’s typical for creative properties to migrate between media. Girls’ Last Tour was a web comic first, then a manga, then got adapted into anime. IDK if they’ve done a live version but plenty of other properties have, such as Gantz.
Death Note is an example of a manga which was made into a live action in Japan and got remade into a western live action. (I haven’t watched it.)
I don’t think that remakes are such a bad thing in and of themselves (the delightful Italian movie “Perfect Strangers” has been remade over a dozen times in the space of half a decade, and I think that’s great).
The problem is that Hollywood invariably fails to understand what made the original so awesome to begin with, and so we end up with a rehash of the basic concept that is lukewarm and tone-deaf at best and downright Stupid (with a capital S) at worst.
There are a few exceptions (“The Departed” was an excellent adaptation of “Infernal Affairs”), but it takes a lot of creative work to transplant a story from one culture to another without removing (and in fact adding to) what made the story great, and that is just not something that Hollywood is good at. You can watch “The Departed” and not even realize that the story was originally set in Hong Kong, but most of the time, something just feels off.
To give an example, “Oldboy” was a Japanese manga before it became a Korean film. Then Hollywood took a crack at it. It did not go well. It’s not a matter of changing between media (which happens more than people realize); it’s a matter of translating between cultures.
Which is what this would be. Adapting the novel to a tv series is not the same thing as remaking the anime film. The Talented Mr Ripley was not a remake of Purple Noon, it was another adaptation of the original novel. One can still ask “what’s the point?” when the first adaptation was done by a Polanski or a Kon but presumably there’s further material in the source that someone else can adapt in a different way.
RANT START - can we please stop using The Departed as an example of a good remake? It is not. Infernal Affairs is a lean, tight, edge of your seat thriller and The Departed is a bloated, hammy mess with a fucking cgi rat - RANT OVER
The Departed would have been a lot better if Scorsese hadn’t tried to work in a bunch of plot elements from Infernal Affairs II and III.
Verbinski did the same thing with The Ring. A lot of the explanatory backstory came from Ringu 2.
I am tempted to say that the combination of plot elements from the original and its sequel worked a lot better in The Ring, but it just wasn’t nearly as scary as Ringu…
I do not understand people who can’t engage with something if it’s not live-action. I have encountered this reluctance with anime specifically, because of the ecchi/hentai/uwu stuff that they hear about or that gets memed on the internet. But I can’t imagine not being able to connect with an animated movie or TV show because of the animation itself, regardless of content. And I’m fascinated with the source(s) of their dislike. There’s so much great stuff out there that, IMO, can only be done well in animation. I cannot imagine trying to make Paprika look good in live action without ruining what made it great. Same goes for Akira, Princess Mononoke (any Ghibli movie, really), Ghost in the Shell, or the aforementioned Battle Angel Alita. Leave well enough alone, yeesh.
Hardly unique to Hollywood; a good chunk of the TV anime industry is just being paid to take the first few volumes of a novel or comic series and bang out a 12 episode animated advertisement for it with no effort made to prepare for it not getting a second season.
I agree, and personally I also have misgivings with adaptations between even further unrelated mediums, like book/comic to movie/TV series. Even translations are dubious due to cultural differences; do you spell out the proper context for the reader and change the pacing and character of the work, or do find the closest analogue in the target culture and live with the consequences? Of course if you keep going down that rabbit hole, you have cultural differences between time periods, regions, groups, families…
And that’s just one of the arguments that’s led me to conclude that it doesn’t matter. Every work stands alone. The Wheel of Time TV series (and its production issues w/ COVID-19 and executive dictates) stand apart from the novel series (and its issues with a kudzu plot and changing authors)
And one person’s “well enough” is another’s “I could do better” or “I could reach more people” or “wouldn’t it be neat if we did it this way?”. Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell is wildly different from Masamune Shirow’s. Ghibli movies like Howl’s Moving Castle are often quite different from their source material, just like Hollywood movies; and not always in a good way. Just (metaphorically) ask Ursula Le Guin.
Point is, as much as I might have reservations about adaptations, translations, and other transformative and derivative works, I can’t flat out say that no one should adapt X into Y, or only A can translate B into C, etc…
Except Uwe Boll, he can kiss my
But to get back to this since it was your point… I agree with you, so I had to think for a while until I found a personal example that would maybe explain it: Shakespeare. I’d much rather experience the stories… in almost any other medium, adapted for any other time period, than actually see it on stage. (Granted I only made it through 11 episodes of the anime Romeo x Juliet before I stalled out, but that hardly counts…) And so maybe it’s kind of like that. In theory millions of people enjoy it on stage. But I don’t, and I’m not alone. And without doing too much self-analysis, it might be the same kind of superficial hang-ups you mention, where there’s some preconception, or some aspect of the medium that personally annoys me, that turns me off.
I refuse to watch The Departed. Infernal Affairs is one of my favourite movies and is still a taut, tense thriller on every watch. Damned if I need Jack Nicholson ruining that.
As for Alita, they could have finished the damn story!!
I have not watched the live action USAland version of Ghost in the Shell, and I shall not watch their Paprika.
The Japanese made live action versions of Death Note and Fullmetal Alchemist, and a Japanese live action Trigun is in the works. Those are worth watching. Hollywood has had little to no talent since the 1970s, with only a handful of films since then worth watching.
The first few volumes of a light novel or manga series represents years of publication, and the series can easily go on for upwards of a decade. They make a 13 or 26 episode anime series when the original is at the height of its popularity, not when the story is complete. Usually, they have no intention of continuing it for a second season one way or another.
Agreed. And my point is that Hollywood is not alone in not putting in the effort to make a good adaptation; the Japanese anime industry as a whole can be quite lazy and mercenary itself. Though if your point is that Hollywood is fundamentally incapable even if it tried… I can’t think of any counter-examples off the top of my head to disprove that argument. (Instead I’m distracting myself with cringey Japanese live action adaptation of anime and manga)
Rurouni Kenshin (although I dislike anything that potentially gives the mangaka money
Speed Racer
Death Note (first two Japanese live action films, anyway)
Guyver 2: Dark Hero
Alita: Battle Angel
Blade of the Immortal
Attack on Titan 2 (this is my most controversial inclusion, but I have no regrets)
These are just the ones I’ve seen, but there are plenty more held in high regard. But it’s also worth noting that there may be substantial enough differences between the Paprika novel and anime that the live action can pull on a thread that is true in spirit but not have to attempt being the same kind of visual spectacle that I think people might redirect it to be.
Space Battleship Yamato.
It lacks Desslock, but It is an ok movie.
It is not an adaptation of a japanese cartoon, but I think It is a good Cartoon related movie.
And I loved Eizouken. Maybe this movie is good too.
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