Now, then the people in the colon of the internet started erupting in to flaming.. poo... shit... lost chain of thou.... well you get the idea, they did what they always do. Now, I, for instance, wanted to say something about Timberlake, since that guy is 30 already and they want to cast him as a teenage biker, but most of the poopoo was thrown at Robert Patinson, I mean, Potatoson.
Now, Patinson is kind of like a more successful version of Hayden Christensen, in that both of them were cast due to them both being capable of making 14 year olds (the girl ones, it would be weird if it were the boy kind) frothy in their loins but ended up kind of shitcanned by the nerds later on due to the stigmata of being cast in analgarbage. Now mind you, the difference is that Christensen was in something that is now considered shit by everyone (who has seen Red Letter Media's reviews, atleast) and has promptly dropped off the radar, while Potatoson is in something that isn't quite as terribad in terms of everything as much as it is just written for 14 year old girls who don't know what a dick really is.
But the thing I wanted to say about Potatoson and Christensen to a lesser extent, is that they're not terrible actors, but saying that they are makes it easier for nerdprinces to hate them.
What I will say, is that I respect Potatoson since he made the same choice I would have : sold out.
I, the District Attorney of Hell, respect Potatoson for being a sellout. If you asked me if I wanted a couple of million dollars in exchange for participating in something I have no interest at best and will hate at worst, my answer would be ''I got my pen ready, motherfucker, I ain't got all day, it's gay vampire time! Shit! Where's my eyeliner?!''
Now, the average hipster or nerdprince would be like ''nooooo, do not compromise your integrity and sell out!'', to which I respond ''You can keep your useless integrity while I get payed, fucker! You're just haters who would never get a chance ether since you suck or are too stupid to!''
No but anway, this wasn't really the topic.
The topic would be hollywood adaptations of manga, and live action adaptations in general.
So you might ask me, what is the best live action film based off of anime made by the US. There's not much to chose from, atleast now, but still, let me surprise you.
Guyver 2 : Dark Hero, based off of the manga Bio Booster Armor Guyver and starring David Hayter, who is awesome. Now but here's the thing, when they adapted this thing, they weren't like ''let's find a big franchise and make it in to a million dollar adaptation'', shit no, they were like ''Kids are in to that Power Rangers thing, right? This Guyver shit is like that but like darker and way more violent. Eh, it's worth a try.''In fact, the very idea of Guyver as a manga in the first place is that it's inspired by Kamen Rider and other Tokusatsu, which was aimed at children and had FX budget limits, so the comic, made in the same era of violence in manga as Fist Of The North Star, was a way to have way more over the top powerlevel shit and gore without fear of censors or a limited budget (since it's drawings and shit). Guyver the movie is just Guyver the comic going back to it's roots. In general, Guyver Dark Hero takes some liberties with the source material, but atleast it's spiritualy true to what Guyver is like in the comics and the OVA (you might even say more true to the comics than the 2005 anime was).
So how can accept the changes made to Guyver while shun the ones they would put in to, say, Dragonball Evolution?
Well, here's the thing. I know it's impossible to make a straight-up 1:1 adaptation of anything unless the source material is brief and easly adaptable. Otherwise, you need to apply changes. If you thought that Dragon Ball Evolution should adapt every arc picture perfectly, then you don't actually want to watch a film based off of it, you just want to watch the series by itself again.
But it's still possible to remain spiritualy true, which is what Guyver : Dark Hero did. DBE didn't do that. DBE did stupid shit by americanizing a movie based off of a series that was Asian but not specific to any country to some extent, but then when you throw in the asian elements on top of the americanized fundaments, it all becomes a clusterfuck. Now, the Guyver movies did americanize everything, but the difference is that Guyver isn't as much culture specific with it's themes. It's about a guy in a techno-organic suit of power armor fucking up monsters, and it's fucking awesome. Any culture can relate to that.
I would actually say Akira might have a better theoretical chance at working as a movie than Dragon Ball could have had from the get-go.
While Akira was very much a product of Japan (if the title didn't tip you off) in a very specific time, atleast it's themes and shit can atleast be applied to the rest of the world and maybe to other ages, too. It's a movie about teenage rebellion, the scars that war has left on the earth and superpowers. Those are things we all could relate to. And it has a pretty simple act constructure.
Now, Akira and Ghost In The Shell are like the Watchmen and the Blade Runner of Japanese popular fiction, both thematicaly and in terms of significance. (well okay, Akira/Watchmen thematicaly maybe not as much, but GitS/Blade Runner, totally)
And like those two things, it is possible to do masterpieces out of them, on paper. But to do that in reality, you need a budget, a good director and simply not fucking up.
With DB, you run in to the first problem from the get go.
''Oh crap how do we work in the flying?''
''Does he have to be asian. No wait, what the fuck does the ethnical makeup of a Saiyan even compare to, he has black hair but that's all I can really tell, if I make him asian, they might call me a racist! Oh no wait, forget that, Hollywood themselves are racist so they won't want a main character played by an asian since that would make Joe McAverage remember his grandpa and Pearl Harbor and walk out''
''Energy blasts! How do we do that? How much will it cost?''
''This shit is like 48 volumes long, how the shit are we going to do this? What characters do we use? What part of the story?''
If you ask me what could be done what couldn't, the logic is simple. The more realistic and maybe short the manga is, or atleast has a story arc that can be opened and closed for the movie, the easier to adapt. Asia knows this. They stay the fuck away from doing something stupid like making One Piece or Naruto the Movie. They stick to what I just said, and do things like Death Note or Detroit Metal City. And those movies are cool. But they're also about guys sitting around having tense discussions about who is L and who is Kira or Spinal Tap meets Metalocalypse in Japan.
Hell, the chinese movie based off of Inital D wasn't that bad, altough I won't lie, I did watch it without subtitles and my knowledge in mandarin chinese doesn't stem beyond insults.
Or what about the Korean film Oldboy, based off of a Japanese manga? That movie was a good movie. But once again, it's all based in reality.
Riki Oh was also based on a manga, and it was batshit insane and I loved every minute of it, so I guess that proves that you don't always have to base it in total realism.
You know, a thing like Berserk, or Hellsing, or Trigun, or Cowboy Bebop, or Big O (eat a dick, mark) could be done, since, once again if done the right way, in my opinion. One Piece, on the other hand? Definately not. Bleach or Naruto could work in some way, but One Piece would be totally fucked. It would be like a huge acid trip that would alienate us all beyond belief.
