Live-action Hollywood anime films: How YOU would do it.

1. Acquire mystical endless budget
2. Hire actors from Japan to play Japanese roles. In the case of young characters, a little Dawson casting may be necessary.
3. Cut out fillers, rehash plot so that it flows well through a sensible amount of films (say, three).
   • No seriously, start from scratch and beat the whole thing. In order to make a good adaptation, you have to break the story into its parts and put it back together again. Sometimes, to make a good film, you have to make changes to the plot.
4. Film on location in Japan.
5. Try not to overuse CG—use actors and props wherever reasonably possible.

edited 6th Jul '11 9:46:30 PM by annebeeche

The reason why live-action Gurren Lagann would be pointless, is because the show's main selling point is its expressive animation and the "live-action" film would be mostly animated anyway, just CGI instead of hand drawn. I don't think live actors could bring anything to it either. Some over the top characters like Kamina, Yoko, Leeron and Kittan could easily become embarrassing in live-action and toning them down would be missing the whole point of the series.

Besides, I don't really think the compilation movies work as well as the tv series.

1. True, it would be hard for actors to be as over the top, especially in live action.

2. Yes, the movies didn't work as well, but they had to work with the footage from the original series, while a new movie could pretty much start all over.

Fate Stay Night might be done, although it may only cover around the first route and all. Cutting down the sex scene, would be necessary.

from what ive seen on comic book films (X-Men: First Class etc.)

the live action films need to be understandable, accessible, witty, and faithful

and of course have appropriate races unlike that atrocity that shall not be named

of course this is hollywood we are talking about

they are going to butcher it to the death

not just to death, to THE death

damn

speaking of evil dead

i will like to see sam reimi's Noir

i hope he wont butcher it to the DEATH

For future archival reference my avatar is Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead II at this moment in time. Click on the little picture button, whoever is reading this old thread right now!

edited 12th Jul '11 2:05:46 AM by Sporkaganza

About anime adaptation, I think what the writers should have in their minds is that they should understand how certain style of animation evokes certain feelings and try their hardest to emulate it.

Also, it is really hard, not impossible, to make a completely faithful (Hollywood and it only because no other studios have enough budget to make any speculative or big scaled movies) anime adaptation because of different cultural value.

So the writers should change modify the story so that it would appeal to viewers from all culture, and yes there are animes that are created with exclusively Japanese viewers in mind and would therefore completely be ineffective if set in other cultural background.

In the end, the writers, producers, and the directors should be very familiar with the material they are trying to adapt, and most importantly, try to make a good movie in general.

yes i do quite agree because of one film

A Fistful of Dollars

it is a westernized ripoff of Yojimbo

and it works

i do see a need to balance the cultural values of both western and eastern

but its always unfair to see films like AKIRA get a total western treatment

maybe with NOIR that can break the chains

since i always see it as a Gateway Series to anime

Hmm, I never saw either of the movies but I can believe that. I think it has to do with the fact that the values of Samurais and cowboys are quite compatible.

some critics say akira kurosawa's Yojimbo is probably part of the inspiration or ripoff of

Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest

so i think its possible to go both ways

@ dRoy: Fate Stay Night would be too long to adapt into a movie. Instead, I would adapt Tsukihime into a trilogy, each movie focusing on four of the twelve days (the first movie would conveniently end with Chaos' death, which could both act as a stand-alone and still end with a Sequel Hook). It wouldn't be too hard to combine parts of the other routes into Arcueid's.

EDIT: I almost forgot: must have Yuki Kajiura do the soundtrack.

edited 12th Jul '11 7:04:02 PM by shiro_okami

Awesome. It might even attract vampire fans who had their genre butchered by Twilight. :P