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Titanic Director to Make Battle Angel Movie
thelizman writes "Director James Cameron, who gave us the Terminator movies (I, II, III) , Aliens, The Abyss, and brought Dark Angel to the small screen will give us a new treat. According to AP, Cameron will direct a live action + cgi movie based on the Battle Angel Alita (GUNNM) book series. Slated for release in 2005-06, the movie will be available in 3D as well as 2D versions. Cameron will be using 3D technology developed for IMAX films to deliver the 3D versions (and on IMAX maybe?). Another twist is that the lead character will be CG, while other roles will be filled by live actors." Update: 11/25 22:42 GMT by T : Sunny Dubey writes "Terminator 3 was *not* directed by James Cameron. It was directed by Jonathan Mostow."
Cameron didn't give us Terminator 3. That was directed by Jonathan Mostow. Cameron didn't produce it either, just getting minor credits for character writing (i.e. he did the original ones so he is the guy that spawned the Terminator).
I'd like to think that nomatter what you think of Cameron at least he was smart enough to not touch T3 with a 50 foot pole.
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He will cover whatever gives him a license to make sweepign excessively dramatic CG shots. As fitting with Hollywood's nature, there will be a lot which is "gritty" but not much which is artistic. So we will get a Gally who knows Kung Fu, Ido knocking down waves of people with his hammer from lots of camera angles, but none of the coverage of Ido's desire to keep Gally "pure" besides a standard movie "master, I am ready to fight!" "you are not ready to fight!" sort of thing. We will get a "postapocalyptic" setting in which we see lots of twisted metal and a run-down bar at the edge of it, and lots of big evil robots for Gally to fight, but the true scope and extent of the Scrapyard or the nature of the dual civilizations feeding off of each other the city represents will go unexplored.
Basically we'll get a revisit of the future setting from Terminator 1, with some characters from Gunnm spit into it.
This has been announced numerous times over the past, oh, four years or so. Cameron's wanted to do it for a long time, but each time it looks promising, it gets yanked away. I doubt he's even started a screenplay yet.
As far as making a movie of it, I'd hope they were planning more than one, as there's no way you can tell the whole story arc in two hours.
It deserves to be made into a movie, but it also deserves to be done right.
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
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Let's recap the movies he's done, shall we. So far he has directed:
Piranha II (hey, everyone's gotta eat)
Terminator
Aliens
The Abyss
Terminator 2
True Lies
Titanic
He also wrote the script for the movie "Strange Days"
There are over-riding themes throughout all his films:
-Strong Female Character
-Use and misuse of technology
-The strength of human spirit in adversity
-Self sacrafice for the greater good
-The struggle of technology subsuming humanity
-The hubris of man who think (and usually a he) they have nature and technology under control
For anyone who has read the manga and watch all the James Cameron movies (especially the director's cut), it would be immediately obvious why James Cameron picked this project. As a matter of fact when I was reading Battle Angel I was saying to people that it felt like a James Cameron movie done by a japanese manga writer.
Battle Angel is not just another manga. Like Akira before it the books introduced many philosophical questions about humanity, and always asks many existensial questions. Those are the type of questions that were probed in James Cameron movies, even in Titanic. Rose was not just questioning her status as a woman in high society of early 20th century, she was questioning how she should live her life.
I have full faith in James Cameron. He is no fly-by-night fanboy. He is meticulous in the planning of his movies. I am sure he will focus on just one of the story arcs of Battle Angel. He is known to produce sequels, and he has already mentioned that he wants to "break up" the whole arc of Battle Angel if the box office would let him. I think that he's doing the main character in CG so he can really spend time on this project. There's no other way to keep a 200 year old cyborg girl that looks like 20 looking like 20 for 3 movies if it takes him 3-4 years for each movie. The 3 movie part is just my speculation.
For me, my vote goes to the Hugo story as the first arc because it's when the tone of the whole series begin to change and she starts to grow. But knowing what James Cameron has done he will probably do the Bounty Hunter story who was given the Imaginos Body by Dr. Nova that was wreaking havoc on the Scrap Yard. That story got all the elements of a good James Cameron movie.
OK. Will get modded down to oblivion for this but I got karma to spare and besides what I'm about to say is the truth. I'm not trolling. The Cameron movie that to me MOST closely resembles Terminator is in fact Titanic. The similarities are striking. If you bother to go deeper than the robots killin stuff part you'll see what I mean. OK here's my list
That's enough for now, there are lots more ... if you think about them long enough you realise the common elements in all of Cameron's movies, but Titanic and Terminator just really stood out for me. Personally, I think Titanic was a better movie by far than Terminator.... puzzling the negative press it gets here ... probably lots here didn't even see it.
Bitter and proud of it.
Also, speaking of CG -- I have nothing against CG in general, but the idea of a CG main character fills me with a vague boredom and distaste rather than excitement.
That's probably why James Cameron is choosing this project. So far noone has been able to create a convincing CG human character. The last sincere effort at trying this was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) which was a flop at the box office. Many critics attribute the film's failure to the 'wooden' acting and 'doll-like' eyes of the CG characters.
Films like Shrek and Toy Story II have more appeal because it feels like a cartoon, so belief is already suspended and the viewer has less hard-set expectations of the character's appearance and behavior. Creating believeable human CG actors is more difficult however because the viewer is very familiar and experienced with human behavior. Facial expressions, eye movement, and body language are supposed to be especially difficult to mimic.
James Cameron is a very competent technical director, so it will be interesting to see if he can be the first to bring CG human characters to "life".
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