Legendary Pictures' Mobile Suit Gundam

Decided to give this movie its own thread:

For the uninitiated, Legendary Pictures is making a Hollywood live-action movie based on Mobile Suit Gundam alongside Sunrise.

And with that covered, we have an update!

Comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan will be writing the screenplay for Legendary's Gundam movie.

For the uninitiated, Vaughan is known for titles like Y: The Last Man, Runaways, Saga, and Ex Machina.

I hope they give it the same sort of nuance that the original series has. Like how both sides have both good and bad people despite Zeon being firmly in the wrong.

I'm actually sort of thankful for Hollywood's need for a clean narrative means we won't have "the Federation and Zeon were both equally wrong" that a lot of stuff has drifted towards.

Has it even been confirmed that this is a Mobile Suit Gundam adaptation, or is it just "based on Mobile Suit Gundam" like every AU ever is technically "based on Mobile Suit Gundam"?

Honestly I hope it's an original story. Mobile Suit Gundam is too damn long and involved to fit into a two-hour movie, and I don't see them going for the whole trilogy on an unproven (at least, in this format) property.

Neither’s been confirmed, with speculation being a wholly original AU, or an adaptation of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin.

Edited by Beatman1 on Mar 6th 2019 at 7:45:24 AM

I'm wondering if it might be a adaptation of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing considering that might be the most popular version worldwide.

Internationally it’s that and Mobile Fighter G Gundam, although the latter has the disadvantage of being completely and utterly insane in a way that wouldn’t translate to live action at all.

Edited by Beatman1 on Mar 6th 2019 at 9:44:37 AM

Honestly Wing wouldn’t translate well as well. It’s would be harder to condense than what Origin did to 0079... not to mention Wing is actually really boring once you sit down and watch it now.

An adaptation of Origin might actually work, it’s condensed enough and brought up to be more consistent Gundam style Real Robot instead of all over the place with flails and such.

What with Legendary and Giant things? ( Godzilla, pacific Rim, now Gundam)

Don’t forget King Kong.

Because kaiju and mecha are awesome. The real question is why did it take so long to get to this point?

Of course, knowing my luck, this monkey paw induced fever dream is going to end with a godawful Hollywoo Evangelion adaptation.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Mar 7th 2019 at 9:22:06 AM

Honestly, a During the War thing like Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket or Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team probably makes the most sense.

A sweeping Space Opera needs time to breathe and relies on downtime as much as up time to create a sense of a journey, which just doesn't work as well in a single movie. Hell, I'd say MSG didn't even really pull it off with three movies.

However, telling a more personal story with an already existing war as a background would work really well. December Sky is probably the single best stand-alone Gundam movie, and part of that is the premise.

Edited by Larkmarn on Mar 7th 2019 at 9:22:47 AM

Because the US anime market needed a few years to recover from its 2008 low point, and streaming services like Hulu and Netflix showing Gundam series’ by the handful helped to restore that cult popularity where “Gundam” can be synonymous with giant robot.

That and the cameo in Ready Player One apparently went over really well.

Edited by Beatman1 on Mar 7th 2019 at 9:25:07 AM

"It would be hard to condense the events into a movie."

That's the point of a adaptation. Not everything will be translated exactly the same, certain events might be omitted, certain things might get added. They don't need to stick 100% to the source material.

Plus, is clear they want a franchise with multiple movies. A movie could just cover a certain arc - the first movie obviously being a origin and introduction to the world.

8th MS Team would make a great movie, I bet.

I mean, I don't think Miller's Report was that great on its own.

But joking aside, it overall does lend itself well-enough to Hollywood. It has a decent obvious Final Boss, the elevator pitch ("The Vietnam War WITH ROBOTS!") works, and the inevitable shoehorned romance is... actually there in the source material.

Weirdly enough, my biggest issues with 08th MS Team are probably things Hollywood would probably try to shove in there anyway (romance, giant fuck-off end boss).

That said, there's no way in hell you could make Shiro and Aina's relationship not feel Strangled by the Red String in a movie.

Another thing the movie can't fit in is the slice-of-life kinda feeling that it's a day-in-day-out sort of life. For the most part, 08th MS Team isn't a narrative, it's a Slice of Life from the front lines. Hell, one of the best things the show does is have an end credits that's just a minute of showing Shiro reading and the base's antics around him, actually using the end credits to humanize the soldiers and create a sense of normalcy. It's really clever and obviously won't translate to the film.

Actually, Mobile Suit Gundam Side Story 0079: Rise From The Ashes would make a pretty excellent base for a Hollywood-style movie. Just replace the GM Sniper II with... a Gundam, because otherwise a Gundam movie without a Gundam would be weird.

Edited by Larkmarn on Mar 7th 2019 at 3:16:59 PM

While it's all but written in stone that the movie will be set in the Universal Century what other timelines do you guys think would make a good setting for a live action movie?

I believe someone already said that G Gundam probably wouldn't work because the things that make it good wouldn't really translate well to live action, and I would have to agree.

For my ten cents I would say that the Calamity War from Iron-Blooded Orphans background might make a pretty good setting for a couple movies. It would probably follow Agnika Kaerau and his proto-Gjallerhorn group's early efforts to fight off the Mobile Armors, possibly including the development of the Alaya Vinyaña system along with the Valkrja and Gundam frames. We could get a good emotional character arc exploring Agnika's relationship with his father since we know the latter had some kind of hand in designing both the MA's and at least some of the Gundams. Definitely plenty of chances for some crazy fight scenes. Maybe as a nod to the anime we see why Barbatos was abandoned on Mars, or maybe even how the Flouros and Hashmal got buried in what was implied to be an orbital strike. Heck if there ends up being more than one movie and we get to see the closing days of the war we could see some of the absolutely insane designs that were being cranked out besides the Dantelion.

Of course since there is so much we don't know about most of the Mobile Armors, Gundams, and other MS from that era there would have to be alot of stuff made up whole cloth and there is a chance about the movie revolving around a bunch of original designs. There would also be a good chance of critics accusing it of copying Pacific Rim.

In the (admittedly unlikely given the nature of this thread) event there's anyone in this thread who isn't familiar with any IBO stuff I mentioned and want to know more feel free to ask me. I love to give exposition dumps for things like this. In case this long ass rant I just typed out didn't tip any of you off already.

Gundam X would actually work really well for a setting. A post-apocalyptic world where a junker can find a Gundam?

Hell, you can sell it as "Mad Max, but they might have giant robots."

Wonder how crazy they'd want to go with the Satellite Cannon in that case.

Ever wondered how Legendary got the Gundam movie greenlit?

Here's how they did it, courtesy of Legendary's Robert Napton and Sunrise's executive expert in film Ken Iyadomi.

Takeaways:

• Napton and Iyadomi knew each from before Legendary was a thing.
• The Gundam cameos in Ready Player One and Pacific Rim: Uprising helped fans get prepared for a live-action Gundam movie.
• The Sunrise CEO was easy to convince.
• Since Legendary has less people than the usual Hollywood studio, it got decisions made faster, unlike Ghost in the Shell and Akira, which spent ages in development hell (and suffered for it in the former's case).
• Buzz from the media was more positive than expected, probably due to folks having more faith in Legendary thanks to Pacific Rim and Godzilla (and maybe Pokémon: Detective Pikachu). (Here, we raise our eyebrows accusatively at Paramount and their butchered efforts at GITS and Sonic the Hedgehog.)
• Napton commented on how Brian K. Vaughan was able to understand Gundam Narrative, which is no small feat due to how much it relies on foreknowledge regarding the Universal Century timeline.
• Iyadomi ended the panel with "Please watch Code Geass."

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Apr 20th 2019 at 5:41:47 AM

...They want to do that next, don’t they?

Huh now that I think about it, this is the quickest an anime film has gotten to work I think.

Probably should've left GITS in development hell, all things considered.

Without knowing anything about any of the stuff Vaughan has done before, this at least is a good sign. Regardless of opinions about Narrative itself, the fact that the film's writer is familiar with the franchise is reassuring.

On the subject on how to potentially adapt the UC- I think one could rather effectively slot MSG characters into 08th MS Team for a relatively self-contained, coherent narrative that could still lead into the end of the One Year War- Amuro's mostly the same as he was in MSG, but Sayla gets Aina's role (except without the romance, and she straight up defects out of guilt instead of bailing entirely), Char and Garma split Ginias' (and Garma's suicide Gaw run is repeated with the Apsalus), Ramba Ral obviously takes Norris's place...