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."

Comments

What a bad idea

[Gyorg_Lavode]

Neon Genesis was completed in the anime and 2 movies. There isn't anything to add to it. The series contains all the monster fights and it contains the ending. The series isn't about the action, it's about the emotions of shinji.

I can't see this movie doing anything but hurting the rest of the plot of the series. If they want to do a live action they should do cowboy bebop. You can fit another cowboy bebop film in about anywhere you want. But Neon Geneis is completed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re:What a bad idea

[johny_qst]

I am just as concerned that an actor attempting to portray the depth of shinji's internal struggle will just make a cheesy patina atop some cool CG action sequences. This movie won't help by adding to the evangelion storyline... but it might get some people who would never have come into contact with the anime to actually find the quality that spawned this waste of film. I know I will see it but I also know that it won't stand up to its anime roots.

Re:What a bad idea

[Hasdi Hashim]

Neon Genesis was completed in the anime and 2
movies. There isn't anything to add to it.

By your argument, then there is no point doing X-MEN. The EVA movie will probably be a reinterpretation, looking at things a new angle.


The series contains all the monster fights and it contains the ending

Uh? what ending? Ive seen both endings and they both sucked. I am waiting for Sadamoto's ending (the manga).


The series isn't about the action, it's about the emotions of shinji.

The successful show combines as many elements as possible to capture all possible demographics. They got me on the robot action and sci-fi stuff.
They got u on psychological aspect. They'll probably drop in one or two nude shots to get the perverts on board.

Hmm.... to replicate the success of Titanic, maybe they can use Celine Dion's "A New Day has come" as the opening theme... just to be sure. :)


I can't see this movie doing anything but hurting the rest of the plot of the series.

X-MEN movie and SPIDERMAN movie has elements from the series but they are both on independent storyline and continuity. No Biggie. For all you know, they'll rename "Shinji Ikari" to "Saint John Anchorman" (see anno's website).

Hasdi

Re:What a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked the "end of evangelion" ending, when all the characters get killed off. IMHO it was a perfect ending to the crappiest, most overrated anime ever made.

SPOILER: (just in case)

Shinji and Asuka survive, which means you're factually incorrect. Your judgement also leaves much to be desired: Eva can't be the crappiest, because Dragonball Z and Pokemon exist. It also isn't the most overrated, because (IMHO) Ranma and Ghost in the Shell exist.

Just go back to watching Baywatch reruns... yes, they're jiggling again, you like that dontcha?!

why am I unenthused?

[Doktor Memory]

...perhaps because low-budget live-action anime adaptations do not have a reputation for quality?

gundam would be a cooler choice

[Adler]

What is needed is a live action Gundam film, and yes i know there already is one, i want one i can see in theatres. With the current crop of superhero/sci-fi action films doing so well (spider-man, x-men, the matrix) i thikn a movie about giant city smashing robots would do pretty well, its a fairly new concept to americans.

Animatrix

[gerf]

I never really thought much of Anime in general. I grouped anime watchers in with goths, freaks, Magic the Gathering players, and others i just ignored.

I'm a Matrix fan, and as such, i downloaded The Animatrix: The Second Generation, Part I. I was astounded. Rather than large mouth monkey drawn, slow plotted, boring anime, such as is found on the Cartoon Network, instead, something more akin to what i thought Asimov's robots would be like was presented. I've since downloaded all the free short stories from the Wachowski bro's, and plan on buying the DVD.

What i want to say though, is that perhaps this anime converted to real life will have the same effect on people, perhaps to a larger audience, showing more people that anime isn't just a cartoon for the vast unlaid, but rather something more meaningful, with great plots and scriptwriters. On another note, I'm going to watch Spirited Away this weekend, due to its great reviews, and the fact that i saw the first 5 minutes, and was impressed at the overall feel of it.

Good luck with this project, i hope it does great!

How long do they plan on making it.

[darkmayo]

Seriously.. Alot goes on in the anime.. 13 angels to destroy.. a shit load of character development and thats not even including the End of Evangelion movie.

The series is done. Let people look back and say.. "damn that was an awesome series" instead of " What the hell was that live action POS"

Re:How long do they plan on making it.

[Jerk City Troll]

Most of the angel battles were, in my opinion, just there for fluff. It was action to keep the less philosophically inclined audience glued to the TV sets for the next episode. All the plot development could probably have been condensed down into 4-6 episodes. Except of course for the occassional Ayanami Rei narratives. I for one would not mind seeing a live action movie that was densely packed, had a rapid time line, and showed how grotesque a lot of Evangelion was. For example, a lot of the emotional development of the characters was due to the horrors they witnessed fighting the angels. Cartoon blood does not effectively convey this to the audience. Also, whle EoE was intense -- gives me the chills just thinking about it -- an anime cannot properly portray the deaths of 7 billion human beings. I think a live action film will show quite nicely why so many of the characters lost their marbles.

Re:laws of nature

[Ryunosuke]

Amen. While I don't like to down a movie not even completed ... I'm saddened to think that one of the most overhyped, over advertised, and over fanboy'd will be made into a live action. As if the dub wasn't bad enough, now we'll have to SEE the people acting in it. I'm sure they'll rename and change things for us poor confused americans, since the dubbies are obviously the reason this is being made. I can't argue with the majority though ... as sad as it is, that's where the money is :(

Re:OK

[Jerk City Troll]

So they are going to make a movie about some kid who pilots a huge robotic weapon to battle alien invaders.

How can you watch Shinseki Evangelion and not understand:

- They aren't alien invaders (in fact, they're 98% human), they're angels. You know, as in from Heaven? They've come to earth to bring about the 3rd Impact which will (pressumably) destroy humanity.
- The fight with the angels is secondary to the plot. The story of Evangelion is about Ikari Shinji who embodies the inante human fear of other humans (hence the existence of the Absolute Terror Field or AT Field). The goal of his father, Ikari Gendou, is to eliminate the AT Fields so that all humanity can be united and thus ascend to the level of God.

Evangelion is intensely deeper than that and I've shaved off most of the details, otherwise this post would be pages long. But those two things are obvious if you've only seen the episodes (in which Gendou is successful and a "positive" 3rd Impact is achieved). The movies turn that around and show what would happen if things went wrong (because of Shinji's own emotional strife).

I could go on and on, but Eva is not just about action. In fact, the action often carries meaningful undercurrents (especially when Shinji first fights Sachiel).

*sigh*

Nevermind.

Re:laws of nature

[Bonker]

I agree on so many lives. Live action EVA is bad, wrong, and stupid. Are they going to have a tall, busty Japanese woman playing Misato? Are they going to have fourteen-year-olds in skin-tight vinyl? Are they going to have a penguin? Are they going to have lots of Rei clones? Are they going to invoke the wrath of the Christian right with the decidedly mangled Christian imagery in Evangelion? Is Misato going to die in the second reel? How about Touji? Is Gendou going to cheat on his cute pregnant wife (who will almost have to be played by the same actress as the various Reis) with Ritsuko and her mom? Will Shinji be allowed to oedipally fantasize about all the-- again, fourteen year old-- girls on the cast?

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.

Evangelion Live? You will be SO sorry...

[Mulletproof]

Is anybody going to watch a live action movie so filled with angst and self-loathing as Evangelion? I mean, leaving aside the attention span of the average movie goer, the plot of Evangelion is so damn convoluted it's scary. I'm firmly convinced that anybody claiming they really knew what Evangelion was about is A LIAR. Sure, the action is good, and some of the plot elements are well done, but it's going to have to be heavily edited and altered before this becomes anything but painful feature to watch.

Re:A Movie Not To See

[BJH]

Refer to my earlier reply to one of your posts as to the meaning of the last two episodes. I'd just like to comment further on your portrayal of the significance of EoE.

Shinji doesn't freeze at the moment of truth; he's eventually ready to unite with all humanity, but Asuka's rejection of this causes him to choose to return to individuality. The movie doesn't show a "failed" Third Impact, just a scenario in which the uniting of humanity does not take place as Yui planned. She ends up as the only human to live for eternity (that's why you see Shinji's Eva floating off; it's carrying Yui). Rewatch it and listen carefully to Yui's "conversation" with Shinji.

**********MAJOR SPOILER for people who haven't watched EoE***********

The final scene of EoE is very ambiguous; Shinji and Asuka (and possibly all other humans except for Yui) have been reincarnated as individuals as a result of Asuka's rejection of unification with Shinji. Many people see this as an indication of Asuka's feelings for Shinji, in that she doesn't wish him to know how deep her emotions are for him. Even the last line (which, in all the subbed versions I've seen, seems to be mistranslated) is ambiguous; it was actually an adlib by the voice actress, which Anno considered to be better than the script. What Asuka says could either be taken as a further rejection of Shinji as an extension of her earlier rejection, or as an indication of a genuine dislike of him. It's a bit hard to justify the latter considering what has occurred previous to that, though. I think the ending of EoE is actually rather positive - "humans should make the effort to do get along with each other as individuals".

Re:OK

[BJH]

Thanks for the thoughtful response - much appreciated.

Could you give a spoiler for this? I didn't catch that. I've seen 25 & 26 many times and as far as I'd gathered, Gendou's plan went about as intended. Certainly Shinji was tripping out (as any human mind would after experiencing that), but I basically saw it was a relearning/reeducation in a "perfect" world.

If you watch closely (can't remember if it's 25 or 26), there's a very quick flash that shows Misato's death scene, as well as another that shows Ritsuko floating in the liquid around Lilith. It all seems to indicate that what was happening in the 'real world' matched EoE, but Shinji was just rejecting it all (again, a more pragmatic explanation exists - Anno had already done some of the scenes for 25/26, following the plot of EoE (which wasn't planned at the time), so he put them in the mix).

Anno had already used up almost all of his funding by the time he reached episode 23 or 24 - that's why there's so many silhouette scenes, not to mention the roughs (pencil drawings) used in place of completed scenes. He wasn't able to get more funding until the fan outcry about 25/26 convinced the production company to cough up some more money.

Number one person to sign:

[Glytch]

Alan Rickman as Gendo Ikari.

That's a bad idea from the start...

[Hadriven]

You know, it has been imagined before that a live-action Evangelion movie could be done, but it ended with the conclusion : let's hope it doesn't happens.

There are a few reasons about this.

1. FUNDS. How can an adaptation of a series that's full of heavy steel, gunfire, apocalyptic explosions, mind-boggling psychotrips be correctly done, out of the "cellulo-space" ?
One of the reasons of why Anime earned such a success in Japan is that filmmakers there didn't have enough money to crank out movies without said movies seriously lacking... funds. Celluloid really IS cheaper for impossible scenes like some that are in Eva... And porting this to the silver screen should require some huge amounts of money. Where are they going to find the budget usually used for an announced blockbuster ? I hopa Gainax's not going to spend too much on that, I'd really get angry if they had to close before of the bankrupt following the release of that movie.

2. CHARACTERS. Ikari Shinji. Soryû Langley Asuka. Ayanami Rei. These surely sound European, heh ? What are they going do ? Rename all those people, thus moving the entire story in the US and getting American actors ? (yeah, "Washington-3", sure.)
Or will they stick with Japanese actors ? How can you even reproduce de-japanized japanese people drawn on celluloid well enough ? I'll be curious to see who gets the role for Ayanami Rei. If it destroys my dream vision of an almost-perfect (barring an introverted-beyond-autism personality) human being...

3. STORYLINE. How will you ever be able to summarize that twisted series that is Evangelion into something that can be seen in 2-3 hours ? Or if you take the problem the other way, how will you take a part of the series without screwing the entire context/continuity/complexity ?
And what about the complexity itself ? Will the scenario scaled-down for the non-depressed to understand ? I surely don't want to see an action film made out of THIS. Do you ?

4. WAY OF THINKING. There are things Japanese can stand that Americans can't, and the other way. What would be done about those things ? I mean, there are some in the storyline that are understood (and appreciated ?) by us nerds, but for the others... Remember the beginning of EoE, you'll get an idea of what I mean.

I spent too much weeks staring at the ceiling after having seen Eva to let it become a botched adaptation. Really.

- Hadriven