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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."
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.
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