Anime Eyes

December 8, 2017 12:16 PM

The first trailer for Battle Angel Alita (US version) is here
posted by Artw (219 comments total)

Leave to Robert Rodriguez to CG actual anime eyes on a woman.

Anyway, this looks unbelievably gross.
posted by selfnoise at 12:19 PM on December 8, 2017 [13 favorites]

Battle Angel Uncanny Valley
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:21 PM on December 8, 2017 [12 favorites]

Dude, someone elsewhere made the quip "Uncanny Valley Girl" and for the first time in my life I want to write a science fiction story.
posted by selfnoise at 12:22 PM on December 8, 2017 [30 favorites]

👁️ 👁️
posted by griphus at 12:22 PM on December 8, 2017 [14 favorites]

Jesus Christ- that's the Uncanny Grand Canyon.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:22 PM on December 8, 2017 [17 favorites]

It's a sequel.
posted by Catblack at 12:24 PM on December 8, 2017 [6 favorites]

Every time she looks at the camera, I let out an involuntary yelp like I've just seen Mr. B Natural.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:24 PM on December 8, 2017 [15 favorites]

Eyeballs aside, from the trailer they have mashed up ALL the narrative arcs in the Scrapyard. I have no hope of this mess having a coherent plot.
posted by sukeban at 12:26 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

Come back, Scarlett Johansson, all is forgiven!
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:27 PM on December 8, 2017 [19 favorites]

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.
posted by snwod at 12:29 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Waltz and Connelly are both really, really accurate animated representation of themselves - there are a few shots that taken in isolation a lot of people might assume are photo stills. The protagonist has crazy anime eyes, yes, but the others are way closer to photorealistic humans than I've seen so far. A couple more PhD theses on skin rendering and we're there.
posted by GuyZero at 12:32 PM on December 8, 2017 [7 favorites]

To elaborate: it seems they are following more or less the first arc, except they are replacing Makaku with Zapan, and there's a character that looks half Hugo half Figure Four as love interest? We can only count ourselves lucky they didn't put motorball in this too.
posted by sukeban at 12:35 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

ME BEFORE WATCHING THE TRAILER: Man, this is gonna be weird, Gunm/Alita is like Body Horror Central and they're using actual actors for characters who get hella dismembered all the time.

ME THREE SECONDS IN: ....can the dismemberment be shot from behind?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:40 PM on December 8, 2017 [9 favorites]

Wait, what the....it's just Alita? That's somehow worse!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:42 PM on December 8, 2017

I have to wonder how many talented creative professionals had to look at that piece of character design, considered how it would fit into a film in which nobody else appears to have those proportions, and said, "Yes, this is the way we're gonna go here."

Maybe somebody had to try it once, and really commit, just to see how weird it'd be?

The answer is weird. Fully weird.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:43 PM on December 8, 2017 [6 favorites]

There should be a moritarium on 80s animé/Manga adaptations until we can make a new blade runner on a budget à tenth as small as the current one. Otherwise, ew.
posted by tedious at 12:45 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

WAIT WHAT
posted by Caduceus at 12:45 PM on December 8, 2017

Can they just...undo the CG eyes? Like, when we all scream out in horror and are like, "this looks cool but WTF eyes," can they recut this trailer with normal eyes 2 weeks later?
posted by explosion at 12:47 PM on December 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

OF ALL THE 80s ANIME TO MAKE A LIVE ACTION VERSION THEY CHOSE BATTLE ANGEL ALITA
posted by Caduceus at 12:49 PM on December 8, 2017 [11 favorites]

god DAMMIT i love GUNNM so much im about to probably cop the mangas for the third time and this is not what i'm trying to see ever

god those eyes are the fucing worst, also not foregrounding the crazy body horror and nonstop ass kicking + class resentment that is : gun dreams


gimme a motorball movie or when gally gets reconstituted and is on the damn train instead of always the first book or two come onnnn
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 12:51 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

gimme a motorball movie or when gally gets reconstituted and is on the damn train instead of always the first book or two come onnnn

Yeah, even in the best of circumstances this is still moving into full-on Berserk Syndrome. If you count Last Order the manga is roughly eleventy zillion volumes long, but we've always gotta do the beginning.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:52 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

OF ALL THE 80s ANIME TO MAKE A LIVE ACTION VERSION THEY CHOSE BATTLE ANGEL ALITA

We're really rooting against Akira, TBH. Anything they make that isn't that is an ablative loss?
posted by Artw at 12:53 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Fullmetal Alchemist, mayyyybe?
posted by sukeban at 12:55 PM on December 8, 2017

Alita is the only one who is CGI, right?
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:58 PM on December 8, 2017

Maybe we could get Taika Waititi to direct a version of Bubblegum Crisis?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:58 PM on December 8, 2017 [19 favorites]

If I'd fault Rodriguez for something, it would be hiring Steven Seagal and Mel Gibson for the Machete movies, not putting big goony eyes on a manga-based character. I'm not sure that this will get me into the theater--it would have been nice for Cameron to have taken a break from ever-multiplying Avatar sequels (how many are there now? 1024?) to do a straight-up cyborg fight movie--but it doesn't look as weirdly flat-out wrong as ScarJo's thing.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:59 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

You appear unfamiliar with the Spy Kids franchise.
posted by Artw at 1:00 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yeah, hard to watch. I've been uncanny-valley freaked out enough times by from friends who do the face filters on social media apps in a certain way to where it's becoming a low grade phobia.
posted by MillMan at 1:01 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Color me unsurprised that this comes from James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez.

Can Rodriguez do me a favor and go back to making cult classics like El Mariachi in near complete obscurity?

Because fame and fortune has not helped his movies get better.

The big eyes, come on...

The last profitable movie Cameron directed (Avatar) was successful in part because he used cheap audience manipulation techniques to get the thrust of his story across instead of, you know, developing characters. (Surprising considering the fucking length of the god damned film.)

"Disney eyes," those big, watery puffy balls that show innocence and trustworthiness.

I mean, compare Avatar with Disctrict 9.

Avatar didn't develop their alien characters, instead making them look sympathetic by making them seem like dogs/cats with big, sad eyes that just need some love. Making them seem like dogs/cats do in films, innocent, like they don't understand what's going on. It works really well for people who aren't looking for depth in a film but are just looking for their emotions to be played like a fiddle. (See also: the bad guy in Titanic, the most flat, uninteresting, uninspired villain in movie history.)

Dictrict 9 had disgusting "prawns" as aliens, and yet throughout the film, the director managed to humanize them more than the humans. They looked nothing like you could sympathize with, lived in squalor, and rooted through garbage.

The point is, Cameron knows what he is doing, and he knows that as long as the big, sad eyes make the character look disarmingly innocent, most people will ignore the fact that the plot and character development are as shallow as a kids pool in the front yard. They will sympathize with that character instantly, complete lack of character development be damned.

My guess is this will be a box office darling, just based on these factors.

Critics, of course, will pan it just like we've panned all the garbage the blows up the box office, like Titanic, or Avatar, or Transformers, or this really is a godless uncaring universe isn't it?
posted by deadaluspark at 1:04 PM on December 8, 2017 [13 favorites]

She was just garbage in a junkyard until some kindly feller came along and fixed her up so she didn't have to be garbage no more, and she was so grateful for the patronizing way he wiped away her tears that she devoted her life to him. The eyes don't bother me nearly as much as the countless ways in which the story could just be a total piece of shit...

To whatever extent it fails to be a shining example of progressive thinking in screenwriting, one could at least hope that the world was gonna look amazing or that the action would be good, but there's nothing like that on display; for the 'wow' factor they went all in on the eyeballs. I don't know, I'd like to be excited about this, but instead I'm just cranky as usual.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 1:04 PM on December 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

I'm the person who likes how the eyes turned out. I know nothing about the source material.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:04 PM on December 8, 2017 [8 favorites]

Naw, Navelgazer, I also was not alarmed by the eyes, so much as fearing for the plot.
posted by crush at 1:07 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Critics, of course, will pan it just like we've panned all the garbage the blows up the box office, like Titanic, or Avatar, or Transformers, or this really is a godless uncaring universe isn't it?

Avatar was 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, FWIW. Titanic was 88%.
posted by Artw at 1:08 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

Waltz and Connelly are both really, really accurate animated representation of themselves - there are a few shots that taken in isolation a lot of people might assume are photo stills. The protagonist has crazy anime eyes, yes, but the others are way closer to photorealistic humans than I've seen so far. A couple more PhD theses on skin rendering and we're there.

Wait what?
posted by CrystalDave at 1:08 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

I know I watched Battle Angel Alita back in the 90s but I don't remember anything about it other than rocket-powered war hammer, and I didn't see a rocket-powered war hammer in this trailer, so ... color me unimpressed.

(okay so I did see the hammer but I didn't see proof that it's rocket-powered hence my lack of excitement)

The eyes thing didn't bother me at all, because I'm not going to watch this movie because I didn't see any proof of a rocket-powered war hammer.

off to go find a YouTube clip of the original rocket-powered war hammer that I suddenly wonder if I dreamed up, and now I'm paranoid that it's just a relic of a dumb discussion we had twenty years ago about how "the movie would have been cooler if ..."
posted by komara at 1:09 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Avatar was 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, FWIW. Titanic was 88%.

Godlessness of universe confirmed.
posted by deadaluspark at 1:09 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

They've ruined my beloved Patlabor.
They really want to ruin Akira, but maybe Taika can stop them.
For some reason they can't get their hands around Evangelion to ruin it.
They may NOT have ruined Full Metal Alchemist.
Ghost in the Shell is better off not being mentioned at all.
And now THIS.
These people.
I swear.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 1:10 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

There is absolutely a rocket powered war hammer.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:10 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

"There is absolutely a rocket powered war hammer."

oh thank god
posted by komara at 1:11 PM on December 8, 2017

For some reason they can't get their hands around Evangelion to ruin it.

Thankfully, they just ripped it off with Pacific Rim. Why can't they do this more often to save the source material some trouble?
posted by deadaluspark at 1:11 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

t zarquon plz last order is not canon >:|
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 1:13 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Looks more like a rocket powered pike to me.

Aren't hammers usually blunt objects?

Now I'm just arguing semantics, because either way, it's a kickass weapon.
posted by deadaluspark at 1:17 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm glad to see the alien doctor from Star Trek 2008 found another role.
posted by SansPoint at 1:18 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Interesting that they didn't show the berserker body at all, usually trailers go right for the flashiest thing they can regardless of spoilers. Yet she was wearing the fancy non-combat body that Ido gave her at first.

I was also puzzled by the lack of the mark of Tipheres on Ido. What's up with that?

Sing Or Swim There's a lot of not so great things about the Battle Angel manga, but one thing that was nice is that it started in the way you describe and then ran up against Alita/Gally's personality and Ido's dream of her as a pretty little doll for him to take care of went bye bye and he even helped her be who she really was and then fades into the background.

He even gets friged later, in an especially gruesome sort of way.
posted by sotonohito at 1:18 PM on December 8, 2017 [8 favorites]

Looks more like a rocket powered pike to me.

Easy now Gary Gygax.
posted by Artw at 1:19 PM on December 8, 2017 [25 favorites]

t zarquon plz last order is not canon >:|

Wait, is that how people see it? I've just gone off Kishiro's "I hate the last chapter of Gunm, time for a do-over" logic.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:19 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's clearly a rocket powered bec de corbin.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 1:21 PM on December 8, 2017 [13 favorites]

deadaluspark : Thankfully, they just ripped it off with Pacific Rim. Why can't they do this more often to save the source material some trouble?

Come on, PR was Mazinger Z and all the other Go Nagai giant robot shows that Evangelion deconstructed. The Saber Athena mecha from the sequel is so much of a nod to Aphrodite A from Mazinger Z.
posted by sukeban at 1:22 PM on December 8, 2017 [6 favorites]

I never thought this would actually get made.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:24 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

As for the eyes, I'm kind of on the fence. She's a cyborg, she's supposed to look a bit odd. At least they didn't go for emphasizing the octopus lips.

So far I'm cautiously optimistic. It looks a bit like they're trying to do what the first anime did and sort of skoosh together the first two manga volumes. And, to be fair, I think the storytelling in the first volume was almost as inconsistent as the scale. To be honest, there's just not really a lot that happens in volume one and it gets stretched over a preposterous number of pages.

I think, given the time constraints of moviemaking, they'd have been better off just going for the full bore action flick that volume one could be than trying to squeeze in the (ill conceived IMO) romance subplot of volume two. But moviemakers never can let a romance subplot go.
posted by sotonohito at 1:25 PM on December 8, 2017

bec de corbin

Points for not just going for lucerne hammer like a noob.
posted by Artw at 1:27 PM on December 8, 2017 [10 favorites]

Although I like Christoph Waltz quite a bit, I am just NOT seeing him as Ido. Not thin-faced enough. Not going to lie though. I am looking forward to this.
posted by Samizdata at 1:29 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Gollum eyes. She looks just like Gollum.
posted by Vaike at 1:30 PM on December 8, 2017 [14 favorites]

I have too much teen time wrapped up in BAA/GUNNM to come to the movie with anything like an open mind. Hours reading and re-reading, heading to Powells to get new volumes as they came out, grabbing fan translations off of IRC DCC bots, etc. This is one of my "hey this is MY thing get away from this" stupid nerd reflexes.

Hopefully Kishiro gets some bucks from it, I guess!

I'll echo above that at least they went with the eyes and not the lips.
posted by curious nu at 1:31 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

There should be a moritarium on 80s animé/Manga adaptations until we can make a new blade runner on a budget à tenth as small as the current one.


You misspelled Bubble Gum Crisis...
posted by happyroach at 1:31 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

Points for not just going for lucerne hammer like a noob.

GuisarmeVoulge4Life

(I remember seeing one in RL at The Wallace Collection and making an audible exclamation)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:32 PM on December 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

You can't make Bubblegum Crisis on a tenth of anything's budget, that's literally what the name means.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:33 PM on December 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

Avatar was 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, FWIW. Titanic was 88%.

I remember Avatar being raved about when it came out, likewise Titanic (and insane word of mouth)... but Avatar has definitely not aged well in critics - you'll rarely see it on best-of lists, plus apart from the 'when are the sequels coming out, how many billions will they cost' stories it's never talked about. Also with the public it seems to be the forgotten blockbuster. Titanic fares a bit better but again I fairly sure it's no longer seen as a total classic.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:36 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm going to throw a few terrible ideas out into the universe:

One Punch with Bruce Willis.
Tim Burton's Kiki's Delivery Service.
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure James' Weird Journey, this fall on CBS following The Big Bang Theory.
posted by codacorolla at 1:39 PM on December 8, 2017 [7 favorites]

mahershala ali

Sold. I loved his part in Luke Cage - acting *way* above his (presumed) salary.
posted by Popular Ethics at 1:40 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Avatar is the canonical forgotbuster but well received at the time, and got a lot of return visitors. Maybe put it down to the 3D being that much better than anything else at the time, it really loses something on the small screen. Also even with the modern criticism of either film the idea that Cameron doesn't know how to make movies does not bear out.
posted by Artw at 1:45 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Tim Burton's Kiki's Delivery Service.

Far too horribly plausible. Really it should go to Jean Pierre Jennet but let's face it he's already made it.
posted by Artw at 1:47 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Maybe put it down to the 3D being that much better than anything else at the time,

Saw it in iMAX in 3D with girlfriend at the time. We both fell asleep at various points in the film. 3D didn't save that movie at all.
posted by deadaluspark at 1:47 PM on December 8, 2017

Avatar has definitely not aged well in critics - you'll rarely see it on best-of lists, plus apart from the 'when are the sequels coming out, how many billions will they cost' stories it's never talked about.

There's a phenonema in video games where certain games get really great reviews but a year later all anyone remembers is how bad the game was. My personal favourite example is Donkey Kong 64, but there's one every couple of years. The underlying driver of it is that it's a young medium, and usually these games take certain aspects of design to an excess.

Avatar, I suspect, is the same thing. It was a tremendous technical achievement - they built an entire virtual world - but it had the storytelling of a mediocre videogame without the virtues of the medium. Once you stopped being impressed, you realised how boring it all was.
posted by Merus at 1:48 PM on December 8, 2017 [10 favorites]

Far too horribly plausible. Really it should go to Jean Pierre Jennet but let's face it he's already made it.

Oh, you don't want another Alien: Ressurection?
posted by deadaluspark at 1:48 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Also even with the modern criticism of either film the idea that Cameron doesn't know how to make movies does not bear out.

My criticism is that he knows how to play his audience too well using cheap techniques, which, in effect, makes him very good at making movies. It's just a style I personally can't stand because it functions by having a very passive audience that wants to be lead to it's destination by hand. However, I would never, ever say that James Cameron doesn't know how to make a movie.
posted by deadaluspark at 1:53 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Can they just...undo the CG eyes? Like, when we all scream out in horror and are like, “this looks cool but WTF eyes,” can they recut this trailer with normal eyes 2 weeks later?

Just do reshoots real fast getting Christopher Plummer to play the eyes.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:54 PM on December 8, 2017 [13 favorites]

Dirty Pair.
posted by glonous keming at 2:01 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

Titanic was 88%.

Leo DiCaprio drowns at the end.

This is probably also why Romeo + Juliet, Blood Diamond and The Great Gatsby were popular.
posted by zarq at 2:07 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Wow.

This is gonna feature in that podcast 'How did this get made?" Isn't it?
posted by Faintdreams at 2:08 PM on December 8, 2017

> I'm going to throw a few terrible ideas out into the universe:

"Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid" by JJ Abrams
Danny Boyle's "Food Wars!"
Christopher Nolan's "Digimon"
Guy Ritchie's "Mob Psycho 100"
"Recovery of an MMO Junkie" by Woody Allen
no you watch too much anime
posted by ardgedee at 2:13 PM on December 8, 2017 [7 favorites]

Takashi Miike's Kill La Kill
posted by Artw at 2:16 PM on December 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

"Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust" by Tim Burton.
posted by loquacious at 2:17 PM on December 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

"Serial Experiments Lain" by M. Night Shyamalan
posted by J.K. Seazer at 2:20 PM on December 8, 2017 [13 favorites]

Sword Art Online by Oliver Stone
posted by Artw at 2:22 PM on December 8, 2017

I was gonna make a joke about Cronenberg doing "The Guyver," but I'd watch it.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 2:22 PM on December 8, 2017 [9 favorites]

"Star Trek: The Animated Series" by Quentin Tarantino... oh, god, I've crossed the memes...!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:24 PM on December 8, 2017 [7 favorites]

Shit, I'd watch David Cronenberg's "Battle Angel Alita."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:24 PM on December 8, 2017 [20 favorites]

3D didn't save that movie at all.

That's because it didn't have anything to save except for the 3D. I also saw it in IMAX with some friends who uncharacteristically invited me to that toe cheese sandwich of a movie.

Normally they're about indies and weird art films if they're going to go out to a theater at all (or, lately, going to the cartoon happy hour at a local indie cinema with their toddler).

So I said "Sure, why not?", apparently like 90% of the rest of the occasionally movie going world.

I didn't fall asleep but I remember getting really bored at how much work it was to actually see anything or what to focus on. The initial "gee whiz" was pretty cool for a few minutes because of how high definition the IMAX version is pretty spectacular in 3D. And then it wore off it was a huge slog of a movie.

The same thing happened to me with Gravity, which was also insanely bad and everyone involved except for NASA should be shot into space and left there.

I really only went for the real 3D IMAX space shots and laboriously spent a lot of time trying not to get involved in the plot of the film at all. The 3D space shots were glorious, and I would have happily sat through several hours of that all by itself.
posted by loquacious at 2:27 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

"Ranma 1/2" by Wes Anderson and Ron Howard.
posted by loquacious at 2:28 PM on December 8, 2017 [18 favorites]

> Takashi Miike's Kill La Kill

sorry you're wrong, that is an excellent idea. I mean aside from the whole "live action movie" part. Maybe.
posted by ardgedee at 2:32 PM on December 8, 2017 [6 favorites]

Takashi Miike's Kill La Kill

sorry you're wrong, that is an excellent idea. I mean aside from the whole "live action movie" part. Maybe.

Give him time. At the pace he's currently doing manga adaptations, he'll get there by 2023.
posted by Room 101 at 2:35 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Kuso Miso Technique with Kevin Spacey.

_{I'll show myself out.}
posted by deadaluspark at 2:35 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Give him time. At the pace he's currently doing manga adaptations, he'll get there by 2023.

Did actually check to make sure he hadn't already made it.
posted by Artw at 2:37 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

zarquon - no i'm pretty sure last order is canonical but i just can't be bothered with gun dragon ball z dreams cuz im old and boring.

takahi miikes' mai the psychic girl come on aim high
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 2:38 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

(shame voice) hi my name am nixon and despite in my 30s i liek anime
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 2:39 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Dee Snider's My Neighbor Totoro
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:40 PM on December 8, 2017 [6 favorites]

Terry Gilliam's Dennou Coil
posted by phooky at 2:41 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Oh, God, you had to go after Ghibli.

"Spirited Away" by Marvel, produced by Stan Lee.
posted by loquacious at 2:42 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

His sole involvement would be as a cranky old man head or something.
posted by Artw at 2:43 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

Terry Gilliam's Dennou Coil

He's too busy doing Don Quixote again... and again and again and again...

Maybe someday he'll get it so right that people won't want to be listed in the credits because the film will be expected to bomb so badly.
posted by deadaluspark at 2:43 PM on December 8, 2017

Did the threat of live action Cowboy Bebop recede?
posted by Artw at 2:43 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

John Waters's Urotsukidoji
posted by delfin at 2:49 PM on December 8, 2017 [15 favorites]

Alejandro Jorodowsky's "Howl's Moving Castle."
Christopher Nolan's "Paranoia Agent"
Quentin Tarantino's "Samurai Champloo"
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 2:49 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

For Artw:

Tommy Wiseau's Cowboy Bebop
posted by deadaluspark at 2:52 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

He's too busy doing Don Quixote again...

(a bit off topic, but I just looked this up and apparently he's actually managed to film the damn thing and it's now in post-production. Sooooooo clooooose)
posted by phooky at 2:53 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

David Lynch's FLCL

Coen Brother's Bakeonogatari

Sam Raimi's Elfen Lied
posted by glonous keming at 2:56 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

(a bit off topic, but I just looked this up and apparently he's actually managed to film the damn thing and it's now in post-production. Sooooooo clooooose)

Fate will only slap him down harder.
posted by Artw at 3:02 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the Uncanny Valley was exactly what they were very deliberately going for with Alita's look, including the eyes...

I, personally, am excite.
posted by killdevil at 3:05 PM on December 8, 2017 [8 favorites]

I'm feeling kind of lucky now that my childhood anime period was the 70s. It seems that for those shows, the reboots are 1) still anime and 2) promise to be fantastic.

Space Battleship Yamato (Starblazers) was amazing (okay, there was that crap live action movie for that one, but let's forget about it). Mazinger Z looks amazing. Voltes V, sniff, will never be rebooted because only Filipinos of my generation loved it.

It especially helps when they keep the same music.
posted by linux at 3:06 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Wes Anderson's Flip Flappers
posted by Pendragon at 3:07 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Richard Dawkins' SuperBook
posted by deadaluspark at 3:08 PM on December 8, 2017

John Waters's Urotsukidoji

I'm so conflicted. That would be incredibly disturbing. And/or hilarious.
posted by loquacious at 3:12 PM on December 8, 2017 [8 favorites]

The first trailer for Battle Angel Alita [Oh Goodie!] (US version) [uh oh] is here.
I'm a fan of the manga, I don't have the whole run. I've been hoping for a big-budget Battle Angel Alita for decades. Animated. Oh well.
I disagree also with doing her eyes that way when everyone else's are normal - stylize everyone or no one. But, after 30 minutes into the movie I'll probably get used to it.
posted by King Sky Prawn at 3:23 PM on December 8, 2017

Quentin Tarantino's Gunsmith Cats is actually plausible and would require no CGI. Just lots of guns! guns! guns! and muscle cars.
posted by SPrintF at 3:31 PM on December 8, 2017 [10 favorites]

I was big into manga back in the 90s when I was 12-15 and these jokes are bringing back a lot of memories. One thing that's never brought up when discussing manga is how fucking horny it is. I can't think of any of these properties that I would feel comfortable reading at work or showing to my partner. The design is great, some of the stories are great, but to be honest there's also just a lot of hot panty action and pubescent pinups. Alita is a great example of the whole complicated thing.

Having acknowledged that, where is the All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku-Nuku adaptation????
posted by kittensofthenight at 3:39 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

I should have said "One thing that's never brought up when discussing manga *on mefi"
posted by kittensofthenight at 3:40 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Edgar Wright’s Black Lagoon.
posted by valkane at 3:43 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Ok I've been enjoying the comments here and finally got a chance to watch the trailer, and... this seems pretty interesting? I've been into Manga in the past but never Battle Angel Alita. I imagine a lot of people are going to be turned off by the eyes, and I agree it's weird to say "She's from a Manga so she should have Big Eyes... but not any of these other people who are also from a manga." That said, I think it's not actually weird for a person to have weirdly huge eyes in the kind of cyberpunk world they depict, and it's useful for the "innocent girl... who will kick your ass" vibe they're obviously going for.

Honestly my greatest fear is this movie will be super successful and touch off a flurry of manga/anime adaptations that also do CGI big eyes for increasingly bad reasons.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:03 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Maybe we could get Taika Waititi to direct a version of Bubblegum Crisis?

My next comment after the previous two was going to be "WHAT THEY COULDN'T GET THE BUBBLEGUM CRISIS LICENSE?" but then I realized I haven't seen Bubblegum Crisis for going on 15 years and I wasn't sure it would hold up from my 2017 perspective as a MeFite feminist. Does Bubblegum Crisis hold up? Also I ran out of time at my lunch to make Metafilter comments on my phone.

Quentin Tarantino's Gunsmith Cats is actually plausible and would require no CGI. Just lots of guns! guns! guns! and muscle cars.

HOW DID I FORGET ABOUT GUNSMITH CATS?!?!1

Also does Gunsmith Cats hold up? Now that I remember its existence, I remember it being pretty horny, so I'm dubious it does, but maybe?
posted by Caduceus at 4:19 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I figured they'd given her big eyes because she was built to be sweet and innocent except they also gave her powered limbs so she figures she needs to deck some bad guys. Like a 10-year-old with a grenade launcher.

I know Cameron has been sitting on Alita for a while, but I think after Ghost in the Shell, which wasn't faithful enough for the fans and wasn't palatable enough for the masses, I doubt we'll see a lot more manga adaptations for a while. I don't see Cowboy Bebop happening any time soon.
posted by Merus at 4:23 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

GitS is a weird fucking mix of over and under faithful but mostly just suffers from being really boring, the ultimate sin.
posted by Artw at 4:27 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

> (shame voice) hi my name am nixon and despite in my 30s i liek anime

Welcome, kōhai!
posted by ardgedee at 4:35 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Michael Bay's "Gundam"
posted by ardgedee at 4:38 PM on December 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

Guys. can we talk about the song? Because that cover of Angel is a crime against humanity. And I don't even really like Sarah McLachlan.
posted by fshgrl at 4:43 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Michael Bay's "Gundam"

Surely Macross. Gundam doesn't have enough transforming.
posted by Caduceus at 4:44 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

Guys. can we talk about the song? Because that cover of Angel is a crime against humanity. And I don't even really like Sarah McLachlan.

Oh, yeah! That song is an abomination. It took me two thirds of the trailer to even realize what it was.
posted by Caduceus at 4:45 PM on December 8, 2017

Well...that was creepy as hell.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:47 PM on December 8, 2017

Michael Bay's "Gundam"

Surely Macross. Gundam doesn't have enough transforming.

au contraire if we stick to gundam '79 with all the docking scenes and stuff like the g-sky and g-bull and g-armor
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 4:51 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Guys. can we talk about the song? Because that cover of Angel is a crime against humanity. And I don't even really like Sarah McLachlan.

This is actually low-key the dumbest fucking thing about this trailer. It takes the lazy trend of "here's a pop song but slow and in a minor key" and applies it to a song that's... already slow!
posted by selfnoise at 4:53 PM on December 8, 2017 [6 favorites]

Guys. can we talk about the song? Because that cover of Angel is a crime against humanity. And I don't even really like Sarah McLachlan.

sorry if I am being the That's the Joke person today but it is not that song, it is an unrelated crime against humanity. every time I hear a Sarah McLachlan song, even a cover version, I have a flashback to Buffy's broken heart, abused puppies and kittens, or my first lengthy dental work (there was a radio on.) none of these things came back to me during the course of the trailer, so I know I am right.
posted by queenofbithynia at 4:56 PM on December 8, 2017

Guys guys please don’t mention macross cause JJ Abrams may ruin it if we give him any ideas.
posted by Annika Cicada at 5:03 PM on December 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

Sure, fuck it, why not...

Michael Bay's "Macross"
posted by ardgedee at 5:04 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Does Bubblegum Crisis hold up?

In a lot of ways, yes. The remake was, uh, not so good IMHO, but the basic themes and ideas of the original do keep up.

Priss is the most ridiculous still, being the Biker Chick With A Heart Of Gold Under All The Anger. Nene is the Too Cute Hacker Girl, but you can still work with it, as she's the direct ancestor of Criminal Minds' Penelope Garcia. Linna and Sylia are reasonable, even with the implied lesbian relationship between Priss and Linna. Just give Sylia the 2040s identity issues and it can work.

Better as a Netflix or Hulu series instead of a movie, though. Most of these would be.
posted by mephron at 5:09 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Maybe Gundam would be better as an anthology movie series, with each installment by a different director.

And since in a different mefi thread that could sound like a genuinely pretty great thing to do, just assume for argument here that the most inappropriate director for any series adaptation will be chosen.
posted by ardgedee at 5:09 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

No. wait. fuck it. throw all that out the window.

Ken Burns' "Gundam"
posted by ardgedee at 5:10 PM on December 8, 2017 [21 favorites]

Bobcat Goldthwait presents Mushishi
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 5:13 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Peter Jackson's Record of Lodoss War
Zack Snyder's Hellsing
Darren Aronofsky's Perfect Blue
Charlie Kaufman's Mind Game
M. Night Shymalan's When They Cry
George Miller's Redline

Michael Bay can't do another mecha, y'all. He'd need to go back to Bad Boys buddy cop stuff. But that's not my genre, so I can't think of anything.
posted by Room 101 at 5:25 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

M. Night Shymalan's When They Cry

Don't even say that. After the disappointing anime adaptation, an Umineko film directed by M. Night Shyamalan would probably break my poor heart in two.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 5:31 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Lars von Trier's Puella Magi Madoka Magica
posted by Tenuki at 5:42 PM on December 8, 2017 [10 favorites]

Dario Argento's Perfect Blue.
posted by Artw at 5:46 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Um, about that live-action Macross adaptation...
posted by ardgedee at 5:47 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

I like it. Waltz as Ido is perfect casting - he's too good to be true so he comes off as a creep, and oh, yeah, he's worse than a creep he's a paid killer. He's broken and tossed on the trash heap in his own way... and, yeah. He has a rocket-hammer. This is the single best unrealistic hand-to-hand weapon in all of Japanese visual fiction, including all of the Final Fantasy swords.

Also, put me on team Killdevil in believing the invocation of the uncanny valley was a deliberate choice, and a cogent critique of the 5/8ths eye-to-face ratio of a lot of manga (and hence Anime).

The world was already built, the character already developed, and it looks like Cameron nailed the visuals, and Rodriguez has the action and characters down solid. The only question is how deeply they mess up the plot by trying to cram in too much.

Also I would pay cash money to watch Ken Burns narrate "The History of the Gundam Wars, Episode Four: The Colony Drop"
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:51 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

Wes Anderson could do a really good Detective Conan OVA. Or maybe a Lupin one.
posted by codacorolla at 5:55 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Wes Anderson’s Captain Harlock
Woody Allen’s Queen Emeraldas
Zack Snyder’s Galaxy Express 999

so i watched a lot of leiji matsumoto back in the day, ok?
posted by needled at 5:56 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

> Also I would pay cash money to watch Ken Burns narrate "The History of the Gundam Wars, Episode Four: The Colony Drop"

How about Ken Burns narrating 110 episodes of Legend of the Galactic Heroes?
posted by needled at 6:02 PM on December 8, 2017 [6 favorites]

Taika Watiti's Gunbuster: Aim for the Top!

He would NAIL the super-deformed science lessons.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 6:04 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

In principle I like the literalised anime eyes.
In fact they give me the twitches.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 6:15 PM on December 8, 2017

Michael Bay can't do another mecha, y'all. He'd need to go back to Bad Boys buddy cop stuff. But that's not my genre, so I can't think of anything

Megan Fox in You're Under Arrest!

(And Fox actually has comedy chops, so it might work if Bay brought his Pain And Gain game)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:16 PM on December 8, 2017

This thread made me look it up and apparently Universal Pictures acquired the rights to Naoki Urasawa's Pluto in 2010.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 6:19 PM on December 8, 2017

Michael Haneke's Neon Genesis Evangelion
Steven Moffat's Steins;Gate
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 6:19 PM on December 8, 2017

Patty Jenkins' Astro Boy.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 6:21 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Takashi Miike's Kill La Kill

sorry you're wrong, that is an excellent idea. I mean aside from the whole "live action movie" part. Maybe.

Give him time. At the pace he's currently doing manga adaptations, he'll get there by 2023.

can I derail the Alita thread for a sec to say that Miike's adaptation of Blade of the Immortal was far better than I was expecting it to be? I mean, sure, there's no way to really pull off those execution centerfolds in a live action movie, but shit did he nail all of the ridiculous gore and twisted honor tragedies that made the manga so compelling.

also -- Wings of Honneamise by Ava DuVernay
Grave of the Fireflies by John Hillcoat
Appleseed by Alfonso Cuaron

and I would watch the shit out of a David Cronenberg Alita
posted by bl1nk at 6:21 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Werner Herzog's "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind."

"Maria Watches Over Us." by Adam Sandler.

"Emma: A Victorian Romance." by Uwe Boll.

"Macross 2: Minmei's Revenge-a-loo." by Kevin Smith.
posted by loquacious at 6:24 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy's Berserk
posted by Mister Moofoo at 6:27 PM on December 8, 2017

Phobos the Space Potato: "I was gonna make a joke about Cronenberg doing "The Guyver," but I'd watch it."

Me too. Given what I remember about "The Guyver" it fits.
posted by Samizdata at 6:28 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm actually interested in this. If nothing else, it looks like Rodriguez is trying for the first time in a long time. The eyes don't bug me. She's supposed to look strange and inhuman.
posted by brundlefly at 6:29 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Takeshi Kitano's Toi Sutōrī

I'm doing this wrong, right?
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 6:32 PM on December 8, 2017

Michael Mann's Dominion Tank Police
posted by Mister Moofoo at 6:38 PM on December 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

Mister Moofoo: "Michael Mann's Dominion Tank Police"

That I would actually watch. Pay money to watch? Jury's still out.
posted by Samizdata at 6:42 PM on December 8, 2017

Leave to Robert Rodriguez to CG actual anime eyes on a woman.

This is going to be the new normal, isn't it.
posted by rokusan at 6:51 PM on December 8, 2017

Leave to Robert Rodriguez to CG actual anime eyes on a woman.

This is going to be the new normal, isn't it.

Considering the sheer number of people who admit they would happily have a partner who was really just a robot: yes.
posted by deadaluspark at 6:52 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Any movie with the line "It's a harsh world- the strong prey on the weak down here" cannot be well-written.
posted by Apocryphon at 7:12 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Really? It's a two minute trailer for a movie coming out next summer, people. That's a lot of months to go for several more trailers to dribble out (so more Tiphares, more rocket hammer, more actual story). The eyes are freaky, but it's a live-action anime. It's a risky decision, but why not?

I'm fairly old. I've never been into manga, barely into comics, and I was well into adulthood when I encountered Alita. I bought the whole series in both left to right and right to left. I've been waiting for Cameron to get off his Avatar and make this. Rodriquez isn't, in my opinion, a bad choice.

What I saw here, I liked. I honestly don't know if I can get used to the eyes, but I'm willing to give it a chance.
posted by lhauser at 7:17 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Harmony Korine's Ah! My Goddess!
posted by delfin at 7:24 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

There's a ton of snark in this thread, but this looks 1,000 times better than I thought a hollywood adaptation of this material would look. I'm into it.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 7:26 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Lars Von Tier's Polar Bear Cafe
posted by codacorolla at 7:27 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

..best YouTube comment: “Go Home Hollywood, you're drunk.”
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:29 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Sofia Coppola's Little Witch Academia
Richard Linklater's FLCL
Mike Leigh's Flying Witch
David Cronenberg's Uzumaki
David Cronenberg's Gyo
David Cronenberg's Mob Psycho 100
David Cronenberg's Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:33 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Lars Von Tier's Polar Bear Cafe

I had a dream where I watched the first few minutes of Lars Von Trier's Superman, and it was amazing.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 7:36 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Its been a while since I watched Bubblegum Crisis, but I bet some of it works even today, and a lot could be updated well enough. Power armor is awesome, the whole AI vs human vs what it means to be people theme is still valid, and the sexbot/sex slave subplot would (if handled properly) have some relevance both given the revelations of so many powerful men being sexual predators as well as our coming ethical debate over sex robots IRL.

And, of course, the giant megacorps running everything in an amoral to outright immoral way is completely relevant to modern audiences.

Like most 80's anime (and modern anime for that matter) there's also a lot of pointless male gaze appeal crap put in.

I think a new BGC series, live or animated, could work. 2040 kinda fell flat, but I think that's mostly just because the writers didn't really have a good idea of what to do with the series (and, frankly, neither did the writers of the original, it sort of went all over and sputtered out).
posted by sotonohito at 7:44 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Considering the sheer number of people who admit they would happily have a partner who was really just a robot: yes.

The line where she asked if the guy would accept her even though she wasn't entirely human, that was the part of the trailer that felt unintentionally creepy given external factors.

The eyes are unsettling, sure, but that seems to be the point?
posted by dumbland at 7:50 PM on December 8, 2017

I kinda like how we’re all throwing out auteurs; I mean, maybe Norman Jewison woulda done a pretty good anime adaptation back in the day, or Rob Reiner. My point is sometimes you want a director who can follow the script, and not make the material their own. Just thinking out loud.
posted by valkane at 7:54 PM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

sotonohito: "Its been a while since I watched Bubblegum Crisis, but I bet some of it works even today, and a lot could be updated well enough. Power armor is awesome, the whole AI vs human vs what it means to be people theme is still valid, and the sexbot/sex slave subplot would (if handled properly) have some relevance both given the revelations of so many powerful men being sexual predators as well as our coming ethical debate over sex robots IRL.

And, of course, the giant megacorps running everything in an amoral to outright immoral way is completely relevant to modern audiences.

Like most 80's anime (and modern anime for that matter) there's also a lot of pointless male gaze appeal crap put in.

I think a new BGC series, live or animated, could work. 2040 kinda fell flat, but I think that's mostly just because the writers didn't really have a good idea of what to do with the series (and, frankly, neither did the writers of the original, it sort of went all over and sputtered out)."

EVERY show would be better with power armor.
posted by Samizdata at 7:56 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

So, what are the good anime converted to live action movies? I can only think of a handful, no, maybe not even that many. I'm generally not even sure what the point of them is beyond the obvious cash grab for the most part.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:08 PM on December 8, 2017

Werner Herzog's "Natsumi's Book of Friends"


Patty Jenkins' "Bubble Gum Crisis"

vs

Joss Whedon's "Bubblegum Crisis"

Choose wisely.
posted by happyroach at 8:27 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

So, what are the good anime converted to live action movies? I can only think of a handful, no, maybe not even that many. I'm generally not even sure what the point of them is beyond the obvious cash grab for the most part.

I caught the 90s Fist of the North Star adaptation when it was on Netflix some years back, and it's hammy and stupid, but a pretty entertaining movie that fits somewhat into the spirit of the original (which is also hammy and stupid).
posted by codacorolla at 8:28 PM on December 8, 2017

Ew!
posted by eggkeeper at 8:30 PM on December 8, 2017

Oh, and Edge of Tomorrow is adopted from a Light Novel, All You Need is Kill. It's got Tom Cruise working against it, but is otherwise quite fun in terms of action Sci-Fi.

Otherwise I'm drawing a blank...
posted by codacorolla at 8:32 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Between this and “quicksand porn” I am starting to wonder if our species is really worthy of sentience after all
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:35 PM on December 8, 2017

Robert Zemeckis's Mysterious Cities Of Gold
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 8:40 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

This might be truly meta, but if we had a problem with whitewashing in Ghost in the Shell, why don't we have a problem with Battle Angel?
posted by keep_evolving at 8:44 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think we haven't gotten over the eyes yet, but that it's set in, like, space Minnesota or something probably helps.
posted by Artw at 9:12 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

Definitely it's not being able to get past the eyes.

For me this is like the CGI baby in Children of Men all over again. Completely disconcerting and makes me wonder why the fuck why? Why not just use a real baby? Why not just make her face a normal persons face?? Why did Porkins have to die???
posted by deadaluspark at 9:17 PM on December 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm holding out for the gritty reboot of Sailor Moon.

(Wait - that was the original Sailor Moon. I'll just go back to drawing fan art of sailors Uranus and Neptune. )
posted by jb at 9:25 PM on December 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

This might be truly meta, but if we had a problem with whitewashing in Ghost in the Shell, why don't we have a problem with Battle Angel?

Maybe because Alita is originally from Mars and The Scrapyard city that she lands in is in North America, near what used to be Kansas City? (Possibly St. Louis. Either way, when they go to Granite Inn later in the manga, it's clearly what used to be NORAD, and they didn't have to cross any oceans to get there.)
posted by radwolf76 at 9:53 PM on December 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

Seth Rogen’s Neon Genesis Evangelion
posted by grobstein at 10:00 PM on December 8, 2017

Otherwise I'm drawing a blank...

Yeah, while I'm sure I'm missing something, maybe a movie that I didn't know was also an anime, the list of movies from mangas has a few solid titles, Our Little Sister, Oldboy, Lady Snowblood, Uzumaki, a couple Lone Wolf and Cubs, and others, the list of decent movies that were animes first I have as Gantz, Initial D, City Hunter (sorta), Shinobi (kinda since its related to Basilisk), Speed Racer just for the look of it, and Ghost in the Shell for being a movie about why it should never have been made in a really bizarre way.

Gantz and Initial D are the only two I can think of that just work as live action as well as anime for reasons that their "world" and emotions fit the live action format well. Gantz because its premise becomes even more apparent when the people and aliens are more distinctively separated in live action in a useful way, and Initial D because the driving action and humor translates well to being actually shown as real. The rest I've seen gain nothing in the translation and lose emotional impact from differences in style and inability to create their fantastic or highly circumscribed worlds.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:33 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Akira Kurosawa's Samurai Jack
/thread
posted by I-Write-Essays at 10:52 PM on December 8, 2017 [9 favorites]

My favorite part of this trailer is how every single person watching it is like, "WTF? Her eyes?! What's going on with her eyes? They gave her CG anime eyes?"

And then, well after we've all had that reaction, the trailer shows us a close-up of the guy wiping a tear from her eye as if to say, "Guys? Look. Did you notice her eyes? They're big!"
posted by straight at 12:44 AM on December 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

If they decided to make a movie based entirely around a Snapchat filter, I suppose they could have done worse for the source material.

I mean, it could have been an offshoot of The Emoji Movie.
posted by ananci at 12:49 AM on December 9, 2017

Urusei Yatsura movie 2: Beautiful Dreamer - Terrance Malick
Dagger of Kamui - Nicolas Winding Refn
His and Her Circumstances - Hal Hartley
posted by coolxcool=rad at 1:24 AM on December 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

This might be truly meta, but if we had a problem with whitewashing in Ghost in the Shell, why don't we have a problem with Battle Angel?

Maybe because Alita is originally from Mars and The Scrapyard city that she lands in is in North America, near what used to be Kansas City? (Possibly St. Louis. Either way, when they go to Granite Inn later in the manga, it's clearly what used to be NORAD, and they didn't have to cross any oceans to get there.)

Gally starts the narrative as an amnesiac, but later on we learn that, in her childhood in Nazi-ruled Mars, she was initially named Yohko. So, well, Daisuke Ido also has a Japanese name and looks gaijin as hell in the manga, but come on.
posted by sukeban at 1:30 AM on December 9, 2017

The eyes freak me out as well, but i'm fine with it being adapted, as much as I loved Gunnm it always felt a bit trashy which lend it well to being adapted to other mediums.
Also John Carpenter's Wicked City.
posted by SageLeVoid at 3:54 AM on December 9, 2017

Nah, save Wicked City for Zack Snyder. He needs it.
posted by BYiro at 4:07 AM on December 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Here for Rosa Salazar. I hope this works out for her.
posted by filtergik at 4:30 AM on December 9, 2017

Todd Solondz’s Grave of the Fireflies
posted by brand-gnu at 5:23 AM on December 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

I swear when I snap I'm going to hunt all of the "director's anime series" people down and hit them in the head with a rubber chicken. Can we stop now?
posted by mephron at 5:28 AM on December 9, 2017

As for whitewashing, I don't think think I see a problem because, as others have mentioned, Gunnm is explicitly set in a post-apocalyptic North America and the big city itself is explicitly shown on a map as being around the area of modern Kansas City or St. Louis [1].

Further, the manga is explicitly multi-ethnic and features characters of a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Its one of the very few manga where you an actually point to blonde characters as possibly/likely being actually of European descent. And Alita's ancestry seems to include some German as well as Japanese.

Which is why, unlike with GITS, I don't really care that the cast is mostly white folks.

[1] Which, BTW, is a major scientific problem. In theory the Factory is the Earth end of a space elevator, with the floating city of Tiphares having once been anchored to the ground, and it all leads up to the orbital end. Problem, of course, is that the orbital mechanics don't work. You have to locate a space elevator's anchor end within a few degrees of the equator... But, well, you don't expect accurate orbital physics from a guy who wrote a manga where an unaugmented human can vibrate his hand fast enough to make the contents of a can of beans boil into super hot steam and turn the bean can into a makeshift rocket.
posted by sotonohito at 6:16 AM on December 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

Werner Herzog's "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind."

This is the best timeline we were all supposed to be on.
posted by Annika Cicada at 6:30 AM on December 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

> Lars Von Tier's Polar Bear Cafe

Yesss...
posted by ardgedee at 6:34 AM on December 9, 2017

I guess I’ve watched ten hundred million hours of anime and read so much manga and looked at so much fan art on tumblr that I’m like “those eyes aren’t big enough”.
posted by Annika Cicada at 6:36 AM on December 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

> My point is sometimes you want a director who can follow the script, and not make the material their own.

You realize some of us are trying to come up with the most entertainingly train-wrecky combinations, right?

(Although tbh after thinking about it overnight, a Ken Burns production is probably the only way you could get me to sit through an entire series of "Gundam".)
posted by ardgedee at 6:40 AM on December 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Akira Kurosawa's Samurai Jack
/thread

With apologies to Mephron, but a challenge was laid down:

Akira Yoshida's Big Hero Six
posted by Artw at 6:42 AM on December 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

> I'm generally not even sure what the point of them is beyond the obvious cash grab for the most part.

The source materials are often themselves lurid cash grabs of some kind or another, and many of the manga that aren't are often still too schlocky and melodramatic to accommodate adaptations that can be simultaneously straight-laced and faithful to the material.

To the discussion of "Bubblegum Crisis", that legitimately seems like an optimal candidate for a reboot and adaptation. It's a little bit cyberpunky/rebellious, has a girl power motif and a lot of bombastic ass-kicking, and wallows in the sort of late-80s visuals (Big hair with color streaks! Pastels! Neon over black! Futuristic electronics that just look clunky now!) that we've been primed for thanks to a few years of V A P O R W A V E A E S T H E T I C percolating upwards.
posted by ardgedee at 6:54 AM on December 9, 2017 [5 favorites]

Incidentally, you all know there was a live-action Gintama this year, right?
posted by ardgedee at 6:55 AM on December 9, 2017

Upon reflection, Ken Burns's style would definitely lend itself visually to the Monogatari series, which is sometimes described as the best powerpoint voice-over ever produced.
posted by glonous keming at 7:27 AM on December 9, 2017

It's a little bit cyberpunky/rebellious, has a girl power motif and a lot of bombastic ass-kicking, and wallows in the sort of late-80s visuals (Big hair with color streaks! Pastels! Neon over black! Futuristic electronics that just look clunky now!) that we've been primed for thanks to a few years of V A P O R W A V E A E S T H E T I C percolating upwards.

Priss' concert scene at the beginning of the anime was literally lifted from the beginning of Streets of Fire -- and people have noticed.
posted by sukeban at 8:11 AM on December 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

Guy Maddin's Attack on Titan
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 8:39 AM on December 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Also, watched the new Blade of the Immortal last night. Cheers for the pointer, bl1nk! It was goooood.
posted by Samizdata at 9:14 AM on December 9, 2017

(Also I used to work at a company with a completely abysmal LAN that all used bright pink cabling. Yeah, I called the LAN "Bubble Gun Crisis".)
posted by Samizdata at 9:16 AM on December 9, 2017

Werner Herzog's Lain: Port of Call: New Orleans.
posted by cortex at 9:51 AM on December 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

An acquaintance worked on this and so I got to see some of the production and though I don’t know the first thing about this (me:’battle what/who?’ acquaintance:’some anime thing. I think’ me:’riiiiiight. Looks cool though.’ acquaintance:’ yeah, it’s pretty cool.’)

So I’ll totally go see it just for that reason. That said this thread is fascinating, like opening a door and realizing there’s a whole ‘nother city through here...
posted by From Bklyn at 11:54 AM on December 9, 2017

This trailer would have me SO FUCKING PSYCHED but I just want to scream into a pillow for like six hours and claw my own normal-sized eyes out so I can never see anything as soul-wreckingly misguided as that ever again
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:05 PM on December 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ken Loach's Neon Genesis Evangelion.
posted by panboi at 12:29 PM on December 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

This might be truly meta, but if we had a problem with whitewashing in Ghost in the Shell, why don't we have a problem with Battle Angel?

Well, the counter-question here is, "Who's 'we?'", because I've seen plenty of Asian Americans and other folks from the diaspora complaining that there are only a few Asian actors playing minor roles* and no Japanese actors whatsoever. But there are a few reasons there's been less of a furor:

1) As commenters above have mentioned, the source manga is fairly multicultural by design, so even though several major characters have been un-Asianed there's less of an issue of whitewashing a specific, Japanese cultural milieu (Akira, Ghost in the Shell) or blatantly mining an Asian culture or cultures for the aesthetic while sidelining actual people from those cultures (The Last Airbender, Doctor Strange/Iron Fist/the rest of MCU Netflix). Doesn't mean the problem's not there, but it's not as egregious, or as obviously wrongfooted to people not familiar with the source material.

2) Instead of Scarlet Johansson or Tilda Swinton, they cast Rosa Salazar. Hollywood has been playing this game for a while where they try to get away with de-Asian-ing Asian properties by casting lots of other people of color besides Asians, and they're starting to figure out that they can get away with it as long as the lead character isn't played by a white actor (which was the mistake Marvel made with Doctor Strange and Iron Fist). Because hey, can't have too many Asians in the same film, right? They're all the same, that's not diverse!

3) On MetaFilter specifically, there were a few discussions about whitewashing and appropriation in the past few years that went really, spectacularly badly, and while I think the community culture has moved towards having these conversations with more nuance and respect, there are a lot of diasporic Asian posters I used to see around who have gone or aren't commenting as much. (See above re: my counter-question.)

*Okay, Koyomi isn't a minor role exactly, but I don't see how she can possibly have a big part in this film with everything they're trying to cram in there.
posted by bettafish at 12:43 PM on December 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Oh, and as far as good live action adaptations of manga go, I'm going to throw my hat in the ring for the Rurouni Kenshin trilogy. They're not staggering works of art or anything, and the second one manages to be both too faithful and not faithful enough, but they're solidly enjoyable and the performances range from good to great, especially for the actors playing Kenshin, Megumi, Saitou and Hiko. Props also for condensing 17 volumes of the manga into three films which can be followed and enjoyed by a non-fan.
posted by bettafish at 12:48 PM on December 9, 2017

Okay, Koyomi isn't a minor role exactly, but I don't see how she can possibly have a big part in this film with everything they're trying to cram in there.

There are way too many characters with Japanese-ish names like Hugo (originally Yuugo), Makaku (who is a gigeresque horror), Zapan, Jashugan (depending on how you romanize it), Den (who... let's say looks 100% mechanical, but his biological parts are very much caucasian) and so on, and very few of them scan as ethnically Japanese. I personally think the guy who really looks like a stock Japanese hick character is Figure Four. Hugo too. Gally and her clones, of course. But not too many. As I mentioned, Daisuke Ido doesn't look Japanese either.
posted by sukeban at 1:09 PM on December 9, 2017

I’m gonna watch it.
posted by P.o.B. at 1:16 PM on December 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

To be blunt but I hope not unkind, sukeban, I am familiar with Gunnm (as it's still called where I live) and its characters, but I'm not interested in legislating which specific members of the cast look Japanese enough that their casting with non-Japanese actors counts as Bad. There's been extensive writing in English about why projecting Western ideas of how to draw racial differences onto Japanese manga doesn't hold up well; Rachel Matt Thorn's essay Do Manga Characters Look White? is a good short primer on the subject.

It's been my experience as a longtime fan of comics and animation that almost without exception, no matter the cultural origin of the comic or cartoon in question, every East or Southeast Asian character who isn't bright yellow with blatantly diagonal eyes gets called out by non-Asian Westerners as either racially ambiguous or whitewashed -- even ones who have obvious non-white features and are immediately identifiable as Asian to myself and other Asians in those same fandoms.

Also, like... multiracial Asians exist? Some of them are even in the acting industry? It doesn't have to be an either-or thing.
posted by bettafish at 2:10 PM on December 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

yeah, I'll say that as an Asian immigrant, I was disappointed that they couldn't manage to show a single Asian person with a speaking role in this trailer; but I didn't bother to bring it initially because:

a) I was packing for a hiking trip and I honestly didn't have the energy to relegislate this debate with Metafilter

b) as others pointed out, Alita's multicultural makeup makes it a less worthy hill to die on

c) the mashup derail was kind of fun

but, yeah, as someone who loved the series when it first came out and was generally intrigued with this, seeing no credited Asians moved this into tentative boycott territory for me.
posted by bl1nk at 5:33 PM on December 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

Weird. I just rewatched Guardians of the Galaxy 2 tonight on Netflix. Mantis has distinctly edited eyes, and I don't remember everyone complaining about how creepy they were here.
posted by Samizdata at 9:07 PM on December 9, 2017

Mantis has distinctly edited eyes, and I don't remember everyone complaining about how creepy they were here.

She's also green, has antennae and is obviously not Earthian, and there isn't the same kind of loaded kawaii/Japanese/anime/neotany and/or whitewashing going on with live action anime adaptations as there is with a Marvel title that only has one ostensible Earth born human in it.

And, well, Mantis' eyes aren't nearly as obtrusive, uncanny, or unsettling. Her eyes look like they belong there. Alita's eyes look like they've been pried out of the stuffed cat toy that used to belong to a Bratz doll. They really don't look like they belong there in a really jarring way.

And while I certainly wouldn't begin to call myself an expert in manga or anime - the stylistic choices for larger eyes are obviously a thing, but there's a context, scope and scale and purpose for the use of them in visual, expressive and emotional communication because of the often colorless black and white medium of manga and small page size.

There's a context to it and a tradition, and it's... I think a lot of people think it's tone deaf and a bit weird how pronounced Alita's eyes are compared to the rest of the cast. I'm not super super familiar with Gunnm/Alita, and I understand that Alita is supposed to look weird and synthetic, but even just taking a cursory glance at images online show that her eyes aren't that massively pronounced compared to other characters in the manga.

And I don't think people are complaining about her eyes being creepy, but they're uncanny and unsettling. If not outright so jarring they are tearing people out of their suspended disbelief in ways that just aren't good visual story-telling because of how jarring they are, in the wrong ways or for the wrong reasons - especially in a story and world that has lots and lots of room for jarring, unsettling imagery, it feels like a cheap trick.

And visual storytelling is what manga is all about, and I think that has a lot to do with why people get so passionate and outright hypercritical of Western (and whitewashed) adaptations of manga stories. This visual storytelling component is really crucial.

And it's not just the details. It's the overall aesthetics of the world and the worldbuilding. That's something that I think a lot of the best manga/anime shares is deeply meaningful and interesting art that's, oh, perhaps Zen-like in its attributes. There's a cohesiveness and deep care for the aesthetic and art direction that you just don't really find as much in Western comics and graphic novels that has a lot to do with the long history of visual arts and printing in Japan.
posted by loquacious at 10:11 PM on December 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

bettafish: Yes, I know about mukokuseki too. It's just that I already expressed my displeasure about the casting of the main character when it was announced *one year+ ago*. I already had few hopes but given the trailer I'm going to give this a hard pass anyway.

Also I have to carefully manage my fucks until they announce that the Your Name live action will take place between Texas and New York or whatever abomination they will think of next.
posted by sukeban at 12:03 AM on December 10, 2017

> Mantis has distinctly edited eyes, and I don't remember everyone complaining about how creepy they were here.

It's not an official and irrevocable rule that editing eyes is bad. It's a design decision that can be done well or done badly, and whether it's done well or badly is an opinion, rather than a fact.

Eyes in TV shows and movies have been getting CG treatment for years: changing color, adding sparkles, other effects that make characters look superpowered or mysterious or dangerous or whatever. Altering the shape of them is a more recent thing, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's already been done in other movies, sufficiently subtly (or competently) to escape general notice.
posted by ardgedee at 4:39 AM on December 10, 2017

Mantis is way up the side of the uncanny valley where it's obviously supposed to be alien

Alita is right at the bottom of the valley where it's not close enough to human but no too far away either and you just get weirded out
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:48 AM on December 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

Rodriguez doesn't know when to stop digging. He manga-splains to Empire:

It was always Jim [Cameron]'s intention to create a photo-realistic version of the manga eyes that we're so accustomed to seeing. We really wanted to honour that tradition and see that look standing next to any human character. To have the right person to emote behind it was really essential. Her origins are in the film and you understand why she looks that way. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, we have some pretty big windows. You can see a lot going on in there! When it gets to the emotional scenes it's really uncanny and striking. And captivating!

And he reveals Mahershala Ali has a dual role—"a villainous character called Nova who can, like, ride through other people. He can take over their bodies"—which means either Rodriguez can't tell apart characters from the source material or Cameron's adaptation is going to depart from it wildly.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:01 PM on December 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Also I have to carefully manage my fucks until they announce that the Your Name live action will take place between Texas and New York or whatever abomination they will think of next.

I'm voting for Halifax and Boston and the disaster is either the Halifax explosion or that time Boston got flooded by hot molasses.
posted by GuyZero at 8:14 PM on December 12, 2017

👁️ 👁️
posted by griphus at 12:22 PM on December 8

I missed this the on my first pass through the thread. Welcome back!
posted by paper chromatographologist at 6:34 AM on December 13, 2017