I was having a decent enough day until this came across my rss reader:
DreamWorks Acquires Rights for Ghost in the Shell
And another of my favorite franchises gets mutated, warped and ruined. “But it’s DreamWorks and Spielburg“, you say. Exactly. Not only do I get to see something I love destroyed, I get to watch DreamWorks produce a turkey. To be honest I do hope they can pull it off, but I really do not expect it to happen. Even the franchise creator Masamune Shirow botched it (GitS2: Innocence was utter crap). They plan on making ‘it’ a 3-D live action movie (I think I just threw up a little in my mouth), but are very vague on what exactly ‘it’ is. The origional film from 1995 was revolutionary. It brought cyberpunk to a new level which has not been matched sense; not even by the rest of the franchise.
When I first hear that a TV series, GitS: Standalone Complex, was going to be produced I was concerned; just having been betrayed by Innocence. I was dismayed when I saw the opening sequence. You see in anime, the opening and ending sequences say a lot about the show in an indirect manner. The opening is usually orders of magnitude better than the actual show. The GitS:SC opening, rendered on a Playstation2, was so bad that I wrote it off (don’t get me wrong the music is top notch). That is until I heard from friends what I was missing. It turned out to be a good solid anime, shot through with moments of brilliance. Then came the follow up 2nd season, appropriatly named GitS:SC 2nd Gig. The entire season was phenomenal. The opening actually lived up to the series (without surpassing the actual content of the show). The sub plots were all tied together superbly. There were a total of 2 ‘filler’ episodes and even those managed to move the other plots along (which again were part of a seamless whole). GitS:SC Solid State Society actually made up for Innocence wrapping up the story and ending the franchise on a high note.
And therein lies the problem. The story is done. The only way to do anything more with it is to take it to a different country where the majority of people know nothing about it and re-do it in some botched way (ala ‘The Ring’, ‘The Visitors’, ‘Dark Water’, I could go on for pages…) Go see the originals of those films, especially ‘Dark Water‘. No comparison.That movie gave me nightmares; I turned off the US remake because I was laughing.
What really scares me is that another Masamune Shirow’s works (and another of my favorite manga+anime’s) AppleSeed was recently redone in ‘live action based 3-D‘, and… well… I could not watch more than 15min of it. I wish I had never seen those 15min as they have laid a taint on my memory. It was bad. I mean really really BAD. It’s Phantom Menace all over again (or at least Bubblegum Crisis 2040… why? The series was done… no need to ruin it!) [Yes I have the Priss Hurricane Video in origional japanese and Live Concert on import PAL VHS]
Postscript: What did we do before wikipedia and youtube!?!!?!?!?
I feel your pain. GitS was one of the first pieces of anime I saw as a young adult that I truly appreciated. SAC made an even bigger fan (still need to be season 2 on DVD). After they let Michael Bay butcher Transformers I instantly has the same reaction you did.
Interestingly gits was rendered with lightwave and it’s cartoon shading. Just like how south park is done in 3d
But I know what you mean… I hope they do it well.
I actually strongly preferred the 2005 3D mo-cap Appleseed anime to the old OVA, which always felt too clunky, inelegant, and just plain “light” compared to the manga. (I had a serious obsession with the manga back in high school; I even went by “appleseed” online at the time.) I’ll agree that for about the first 15 minutes I was a little iffy about the new version–the opening sequence was kind of arbitrary, and the music wasn’t the best of what’s in the film–but once it gets going it’s so much better. You probably shut it off right before it transitioned from “gosh this looks like it’s going to really suck” mode into “hey this could be all right” territory, and if you stick with it, it occasionally enters a solid “kick ass” zone. It’s much truer to the manga characters and stories than the old OVA ever was. Consider giving it a second chance.
That said, the live action Dreamworks version is sure to be an abomination. But I’ll probably see it anyway.
(And wasn’t there a live action Evangelion movie in the works at one point? I’m deeply fearful of that too, but some of the concept art from WETA looked realllly good…)
Do you think the issues with GitS:Innocence are Shirow’s fault (the story’s only “loosely connected” to a part of the original manga, which again was way better than even the first GitS film), or Oshii’s (who directed both GitS films)?
aawww come on - the original appleseed SUCKED - you can’t compare that piece of crap to the remake. sure, it had some novel ideas and all - but it looked just awful.
as for the gits acquisition - what you say is quite contradictory - if you see the franchise as a dead end, why does a remake bothers you? makes no sense.
@Mike:
I will need to give the new Appleseed movie another chance then. These days I have very limited time and as such I find myself turning things off when I never would have in the past. I just do not have time for bad movies, tv, or books.
I agree the manga was brilliant and much better than the movie, but that is true of most transitions like that.
As for Live Action EVA, that went on hold in 2005 (thankfully) and never went anywhere. It was being produces by ADV Films which has now gotten out of doing even doing their US DVD distribution of translated anime, preferring to do pay-per-view, an all anime cable channel, and an anime-only itunes like thingie.
I think the problem with Innocence was a combination between the director and a very weak choice of plot. If the story was good enough it could have survived the bad directing. It was a beautiful movie in appearance, but the transitions, motion, and overall flow were jarring at best. Combine that with a lack of anything interesting to watch except the ‘pretty pictures’ and there is not much to save.
@gh:
Ok, the original Appleseed was not the best, and it was not as good as the manga, but for its time it was a fantastic movie. Maybe I just have my rose colored glasses on, having seen it when it first came out (student subbed at the Avon in RI). I saw it again recently and thought it held up quite well.
My problem is that the story is told. It’s not a dead end. It is just done. Beginning middle and end. True it could be another ‘Battlestar’ or ‘Ah My Goddess!’, but more likely it is going to be a ‘Highlander 5′ or a ‘Grinch’ or ‘Cat in the Hat’, or ‘KoR: Summers Beginning’.
If someone told you Lucas Arts bought the rights to ‘Babylon 5′ and were going to produce a ‘re-envisioning’ of the story with all new people, lightsabers and in 3-D, would you be excited?
R.I.P GitS
Complete utter butcheries out of the Dreamworks/Spielberg corner include but are are not limited to:
- Memoires of a Geisha
- AI (losly based on a lot of Asimovs work)
- Minority Report (Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep)
- The Time Machine
I disagree. Spielberg will do a helluva job and he is cutting his teeth with 3D on “Tintin”. GitS 3D will not suck at all and will bury other live action attempts like Aeon Flux.
Spielberg is watching James Cameron CLOSELY who is now doing “Avatar” but will soon be doing “Battle Angel” both are in 3D. Those two will knock the kinks out of live action manga and come up with wonderful adaptions that WILL introduce millions to the genre. You should be happy about that I would think…
Anyway, you can read more about it here:
http://marketsaw.blogspot.com/2008/04/theres-new-epic-in-town-spielberg-buys.html
Best,
-jim
http://www.MarketSaw.com
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@Jim
I don’t know where you get your optimism from in the face of an industry that produces sheer mediocrity as a 95% rule.
You know, saying what you say, it’s a bit like saying EA is going to produce (inhouse) a GitS game, and it’s going to totally rock…
brruwaahahahaha aka get real.
@doug: Didn’t JMS already do that with season 5?
I agree with everything you said, except that I really enjoyed Innocence.
I can deal with Dreamworks picking this up, but I haven’t trusted Spielburg with a camera for years.