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Evangelion Live Action Movie
Rob Sollanych writes "ADV Films has just announced the production of a live action movie based on many people's favourite anime series of all time, Neon Genesis Evangelion. Special Effects will be developed by Weta Workshop, Ltd, the company that made the Lord of the Rings look so good."
I love how ADV pats themselves on the back as often as possible in this "press release." My favorite line: "The Japanese anime and game studio Gainax Network Systems was one of the original production studios responsible for "Neon Genesis Evangelion.""
Not like they conceived, wrote, designed, and directed the series and movies as well...
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
A Search for "Evangelion DVD" on eBay yields some good hits. Otherwise, Amazon and other major DVD retailers carry the whole show in individual disc or boxed-set form. But I wouldn't buy it in bulk without seeing a handful of episodes, though. The first couple have aired on the Cartoon Network and the rest might show up eventually, so if you don't want to pay for discs (and can't find someone to borrow them from) it might be advantageous to take a wait & see approach.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I have to agree that the prospects for this seem very dim. Even in the age of CGI you're talking about an enormously complicated effects film. The original storyline (such as it was) cannot possibly even be condensed in a standard movie format, which means a radically revised storyline for the movie. So you're in that Catch-22 territory: hardcore fans may be angered by the revision, non-fans will ignore it (plenty of anime fans hate NGE), and the uninitiate will just be like "Evangawha?" Chances are pretty high it's going to suck - though you never know for sure. In the end it always boils down to the team. The only really bright point so far though is that Gainax is involved.
A couple of points...
- The uniting of humanity is not Gendo's aim, but rather his dead wife's (Shinji's mother). Gendo's aim is to be reunited with her; everything else is secondary for him. The reason for her attempt was to ensure that humanity survived effectively forever (at least until the heat-death of the universe).
- The Third Impact was not really "positive" in the series; some people think that the series ending was just Shinji tripping out. Anno dropped several hints as to what actually happened (in the series, there's a couple of very short cuts showing a certain death scene (don't want to spoil it for others). A more cynical view is that Anno's lack of funding at the end simply lead him to give a giant 'fuck-you' to the production company by producing the most unsuitable closure possible.
Unless the scriptwriter, director, and producer are willing to portray this story in all its gory beauty, they shouldn't even bother. I can't see them doing *HALF* of the things I listed above, and you really need *ALL* of them to get the story right.
You're probably one of those people who became livid when Tom Bombadil was stripped from "Fellowship of the Ring", too. Do you really intend to hold it against them if they don't develop every last character in exactly the same way as the 13-hour series during a 2-hour movie?
It'll be a translation of the story idea, the same as the X-Men movies had to do, and they'll reduce the number of developed characters to two or three and probably throw away most of the Angels and half of the Evas to keep it simple. If this movie works, it'll invite people to go back and watch the original animated series and manga, and that's good enough for me.
Quitcherbitching. We don't need ALL of those elements to get the story right; you do. The rest of us have learned that if you want to turn anything longer than a short story into a feature film, compromises need to be made, and not all of them are necessarily bad.
I'm a Matrix fan, and as such, i downloaded The Animatrix: The Second Generation, Part I.
;-)
I think you meant "The Second Renaissance." Some fanboy.
If you think Asuka is spelled "Osuka", I doubt you've seen enough anime to judge "every anime" as wacky 'n' weird.
;_;)
(I don't know why I read anime threads here at all, to tell the truth. They just infuriate me with the obligatory posts about tentiporn and "I don't get it".
The important thing is that there's no sign of any hollywood studio being involved. I suspect that means that most of the creative work will be done by Gainax, with ADV providing the $$$$ and Weta obviously doing the special effects. If Gainax and Anno are left to do their thing, then the project might turn out alright. The special effects might look a big cheap due to a (relatively) small budget, but I can't imagine Gainax and Anno sanitizing Eva like everyone says.
But then again, this is Gainax we're talking about
Hell yeah! Where are my mod points when I need them? The EVA movie, if done right won't be 13 hours of a television series packed into two hours of film in high detail. It will be a story that somewhat resembles the one from the series but has the correct feel to it. Direct comparisons are insane in this case (just like they are in the LOTR movies).
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Considering that EVA creator Hideaki Anno has done live action before (the feature film Love and Pop), I think he should be the one to direct a live-action Evangelion (as much as the idea itself disgusts me). Also, how much control will GAINAX have over the script and casting?
One of the only things that keeps eva from being a serious work of art is the amount of filler in it. The first 15 episodes are very slim on content, and are often painful to watch (for a non-anime fan like myself). It's only when the whole cast is assembled that things start to really get going. The series could have easily been pared down to a far shorter length if most of this commercial oriented filler was removed. For example that one episode where Asuka and Shinji had to fight the eva together was utterly retarded. The only purpose that ep seems to serve is to show Asuka in a bunch of skimpy outfits.
That being said, it's doubtful that the full effect of the imagery and mystery of the series will be conveyed in this movie. The eva creator was very unhappy that he had to do additional movies after the series was over, as he felt it had been finished when the tv series ended. IMO they should just dub the eva movies and release them in theaters. It'd be interesting to see people's reactions to the general weirdness that goes on.