Voltron Headed For The Big Screen

An anonymous reader writes "Following the success of the Transformers movie, Hollywood is preparing to make another live-action film featuring giant robots from the 1980s: 'Voltron: Defender of the Universe'. The script, by Justin Marks, is described as '...a post-apocalyptic tale set in New York City and Mexico. Five ragtag survivors of an alien attack band together and end up piloting the five lion-shaped robots that combine and form the massive sword-wielding Voltron that helps battle Earth's invaders.' Let's go, Voltron force!"

Comments

Original

[Bibz]

My god, I can't believed that I found the PowerRangers original when they came out... It's the "same" thing as Voltron!

Re:Original

[falcon5768]

There is a good reason that it is the same thing. Go-Lion (the anime Voltron came from in Japan) was a anime version of the Super Sentai shows there... which is what eventually power rangers was developed out of.

Technically Power Rangers is much older. The series had started as early as the mid 70's

Re:Original

[garett_spencley]

I used to watch Voltron when I was around 4 or 5 years old. I had the toy robot that you could assemble / dissemble etc.

Around the age of 11 or so the Power Rangers became "huge". Being a young, impressionable kid with no free will I watched it after school with my friends even though I thought it was "total crap". Anyway at that time I had completely forgotten about Voltron yet I KNEW that it was a rip-off of something that I used to watch as a young(er) child.

I remember absolutely loving Voltron and for years I tried to figure out what that cartoon I used to watch as a kid with the cat-like vehicles that could assemble into one. Every person I described it to, in hopes that they would remember, could only think of "power rangers!" to which I'd respond "no definitely NOT the power rangers ... it was a cartoon!" and they'd just think "err... transformers ? :\"

It was actually thanks to this /. article that I've discovered ... it was Voltron! :) ... and now, thanks to another poster, I know why the Power Rangers was so similar. Some days it pays it to slack on work and just hang out on /.

Shit my boss is calling me ... oh well, he'll understand when I tell him "it was Voltron!"

Re:Original

[Capt James McCarthy]

Screw that, it's all a copy of the Banana Splits. Just with different a different agenda.

Re:Original

[elh_inny]

I highly recommend seeing the Robot Chicken remake:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=OGNCWxWTGFg

Re:Original

[Dogtanian]

Some days it pays it to slack on work and just hang out on /. Shit my boss is calling me ... oh well, he'll understand when I tell him "it was Voltron!" Oddest response to "You're fired, you lazy sonofabitch!" ever...

Re:Original

[petsounds]

Actually, no. Voltron took a huge influence from the anime series Gatchaman which ran in the early 1970s. It was the first anime to feature team dynamics, and set up many standard elements of later anime shows. It was produced by Tatsunoko Studios, who also did such early series as Speed Racer and Astro Boy. It was (and still is) a hugely loved series by the Japanese. Gatchaman was later brought to the States in Americanized, no-violence form as "G-Force: Battle of the Planets." Incidentally, Gatchaman is also in production as a movie, although it is being done in CG.

Re:Original

[KutuluWare]

Around the age of 11 or so the Power Rangers became "huge". Being a young, impressionable kid with no free will I watched it after school with my friends even though I thought it was "total crap". Anyway at that time I had completely forgotten about Voltron yet I KNEW that it was a rip-off of something that I used to watch as a young(er) child.

At the risk of being ridiculously pedantic:

Power Rangers is not, technically, a rip-off of Voltron. If anything, it's the other way around, but even then "rip-off" implies intentional but unathorized copying, which didn't really happen.

The Sentai series started airing in Japan in the early/mid 70's (it's been around longer than I have, so at least mid-1975), and as far as I know there is still a version of it churning out new episodes as of 2007. The show is produced jointly by Toei Animation, an animation studio, and Bandai, a toy studio, which is a pretty common arrangement for these types of shows. With the exception of a couple of early seasons, the Sentai series are all referred to as "Super Sentai" due to the use of mechanized things (vehicles, robots, etc).

Since Japanese TV studios love spin-offs, there were bound to be some Sentai ones. One of the spin-off shows Bandai/Toei produced was GoLion, which was very similar to the Super Sentai shows, only animated. (Fun fact: "go" is the Japanese word for "five", so "go lion!" literally means "5 lions.") This was quite intentional, as the Super Sentai shows are some of the most popular in Japan, and are ripe for spin-offs. Another spin-off, Dairugger, was also produced by Toei, and also had a combining robot theme, though it was unrelated plot-wise to GoLion. Both series ran during the early 1980s in Japan.

In 1984, Toei started what was supposed to be a series of three American anime shows called "Voltron" that were basically re-dubbed (and heavily edited) versions of the earlier shows. GoLion became the first season, and Dairugger the second. I don't think they ever made the third, so I don't remember what it was going to be based off of, but I'm sure Google knows.

Somewhere along the line, some other company bought the rights to the old Sentai footage. Disney owns the whole mess now, but I think they acquired it from a company called Saban Entertainment (the Dragonball Z people, IIRC), who got the rights from who knows where. Anyway, Saban took one of the Super Sentai seasons and spliced the action sequences into newly filmed American footage, overdubbed the Japanese dialog with English, and released the Power Rangers.

So, strictly speaking, both Volten and Power Rangers are American "rip-offs" of earlier Japanese shows, all of which are "rip-offs" of the original Sentai season, but since the footage and use rights have all be acquired legally and legitimately, it's more proper to call them all "spin-offs" than "rip-offs".

None of which changes the fact that a Voltron movie is going to suck for the same reason every comic book movie after X-Men sucked, namely, there's no way Hollywood can accidentally fail to fuck up quality source material more than once every 10 years or so. --K

Good old Holywood

[hine_uk]

...a film does well and they start looking for the next easy cashin. Think back to how the recent comic adaptions were kick started by the likes of Xmen, one does well and all of a sudden there is a bandwagon trundling down the hill.

Now a giant robot film has done well so the bandwagon looks for the next passenger it can send down. Personally I think voltron will tank. Hardly anyone knows what it is and it lacked that 'cool' factor when I was a kid growing up, even my father knew what transformers were then and wanted to see the film now. But Voltron?

Its over reaching and says straight to dvd.

I know I know, flamebait, troll, whatever you want but this is just my opinion from the UK, in the US it might be different.

Re:Good old Holywood

[Overzeetop]

A comic (whos name I cannot recall now) commented on the amazing popularity of March of the Penguins a couple of years ago. He pointed out that this was a turning point for Hollywood, to see a well-shot documentary with a solid actor doing narration and a storyline to hold the piece together. He felt that with the commercial success of this documentary we would see many more like it in the coming years. Not other documentaries, of course, but lots of penguin movies.

Re:Good old Holywood

[CastrTroy]

Gabe and Tycho saw it coming the whole time. Here's 2 approriate comics

Part 1
Part 2

Re:Good old Holywood

[Bazar]

I think its also worth mentioning the Perry Bible Fellowship's take of Guntron!

http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF186-Guntron_Alliance_ Force.png#172

If you don't get it, you clearly don't remember voltron

Re:Good old Holywood

[Ecuador]

Actually, "March of the Penguins" was not a Hollywood documentary, but a French production. What's more, having seen both the original French version and the English
translation, I have to say that all Hollywood did to the movie, by adding the narration of Morgan Freeman, was to destroy one great and original aspect of the film. You see, the French version doesn't have a narrator, but voices for Mother, Father and Baby penguin. It sounds very silly doesn't it? Well, apparently it was very hard to make it good enough, so that it doesn't sound silly, and the translated versions followed the easy route of narration. Now in the original French version, the voice over was done brilliantly so that it does not sound like a "animals are talking" kids movie, but rather an alternate and more "personal" narration that added more feeling to the movie.
</offtopic>

On the current topic, I always thought it would be very hard to make a good live action Transformers movie. They pulled it off very well. But Voltron? Come on! From the far-fetched Transformers we are going to ridiculous lion headed fighters (or even worse, lionhead-limbed when combined as Voltron). If you want giant mecha, do Macross or something...

just stop

[radarsat1]

I,Robot, Transformers, all the comic book movies lately.. ... When is the movie industry going stop pissing all over my childhood?

One would hope that they at least write a decent script this time.
From the summary though, I doubt it.

Sorry to be a downer. I just find that this trend of ransacking all our 80's childhood memories is starting to get on my nerves. It feels like they've just made some kind of list, with $$ next to each item, and they will continue down that list until the $$ gets lower than the expenses of creating CG effects. (And the latter is constantly getting lower.)

They don't pick these movies to make based on good scripts, good ideas, or good director/writers, they are just knocking them down one after the other because people will go see something they have good memories of. They're completely taking advantage of everyone's misplaced hope that the next one will be better, because "that was sooo awesome when I was a kid." (Perhaps they have the right to do so... you can only vote with your wallet.) I went to see Transformers hoping it would be something decent, but these movies are constantly disappointing. (X-Men wasn't bad to be completely honest..)

I think, this time around, at the very least I'll wait and heed the reviews instead of going to see it on opening day. (The hard part is finding a reviewer that usually agrees with you.)

Re:just stop

[garett_spencley]

They don't pick these movies to make based on good scripts, good ideas, or good director/writers, they are just knocking them down one after the other because people will go see something they have good memories of. They're completely taking advantage of everyone's misplaced hope that the next one will be better, because "that was sooo awesome when I was a kid."

If one single person feels obligated to pay his/her hard earned cash on a movie for that reason alone and then feels "duped" afterwards then they got what they had coming.

Come on, seriously! I realize it's cliche on /. to bash big money but it's not like they're employing slave labour to produce these films or robbing money right out of people's wallets at gun point. You're talking as if they're exploiting a group of people and forcing them to do something against their will. They're bloody movies! If you don't like them don't go see them. It's really as simple as that.

Honestly, for a crowd who is so vocal about free speech and copyright law I get the feeling that the same group of people, if given the power, would strip the rights of anyone to make movies based on anything that they feel close to. It's like, they just can't do right. No matter what. Even though Transformers was a huge success you just can't escape the bitching and whining and, in this case, total exagerated teenage drama queen hyperbole about evil corporation raping some childhood memory and forcing you to consume it "mwuhahahahahaha we're rolling in money and it's all at the expense of some Joe Blow's precious childhood interpretation of a corny and cheesy cartoon who's sole purpose was to sell a line of toy's and make massive amounts of money anyway..."

But then, I supposed it really is the "geek" thing to do. To quote Kevin Smith / Ben Affleck "The Internet is a communication tool used the world over where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another".

/ rant

Re:just stop

[Chris_Jefferson]

I,Robot, Transformers, all the comic book movies lately.. ... When is the movie industry going stop pissing all over my childhood?

When people stop paying money to see the films.

Re:just stop

[DeepHurtn!]

I sympathize with you. I really do. (I mean, have you seen the poster for the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie???) But it's worth keeping in mind that all of our precious 80s childhood memories are memories of consumer-culture commodities to begin with. All the Transformer shows, comics, and so forth were *really* just ads for the toys. You're losing perspective if you think they were not exploitative cashgrabs to begin with. These endless remakes (err, reimaginings or whatever they're called these days) aren't bastardizations of these properties, but the perfectly natural and logical extension of what they were designed to do in the first place. Don't blame the studios, what they're doing is perfectly rational (although you can certainly despise them for it). Blame Transformers, and all the other "properties" that get recycled. It's in their nature.

Re:Voltron is Japanese..

[Bombula]

they don't understand how to do a deep plot involving robots

You mean like a giant alien robot made out of five smaller robots shaped like lions that wields a sword?

But...Voltron got SERVED!

[SCHecklerX]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVswFzaYcCM

For some reason...

[david.given]

...I can't get this sequence from ReBoot out of my mind when reading the story...

Re:Voltron is Japanese..

[Chineseyes]

I dub thee Comic Book Guy.

Go forth and overstate the seriousness of children's cartoons wherever you shall go. Be a menace to all those who may decry the merits of such entertainment for this is your calling!!

Volt-who?

[Dogtanian]

Lame. Transformers got away with novelty. Voltron will tank. I don't think that I'd ever heard of Voltron before this. My first thoughts were "wasn't that the baddie's name from Battle of the Planets?" (Apparently that was "Zoltar", whatever...)

Going by the YouTube link to the 80s Voltron cartoon in the summary, it looks almost exactly like someone created carbon copies of the Transformers cartoon and Battle of the Planets and welded them together.

Transformers were massive in the UK when I was about 10, so it's obviously going to benefit from nostalgic parents and thirtysomething media types. By contrast, I don't know how big Voltron was in the US and Japan, but it's pretty unknown here, so I doubt it's going to get the same free pass. It can't even have been *that* big elsewhere, because I'm sure I'd have come across more about it on the net if it had been.

What's next???

[Ctrl-Z]

What could possibly follow up a Voltron movie? Thundercats?

Re:What's next???

[gatzke]

Thundercats is in pre-production, slated for 2010.

http://imdb.com/title/tt1047015/

Re:Voltron is Japanese..

[alexgieg]

You mean like a giant alien robot made out of five smaller robots shaped like lions that wields a sword?

No, he means something like this or this.

Something to think about...

[PJ1216]

A lot of you are complaining that they are basically strip mining our childhood and taking these awesome shows and turning them into mediocre movies with big-budget special effects. Well, yea, they are, but I don't think its completely their own fault. We're blaming them for not having decent story lines, but lets think about this for a second. Do you *remember* the story lines these shows used to have? We grew up in a different time back then. Personally, I think it was because we were better at having an imagination. We didn't need things like "realism" and "believability". We were fine when some guy was shot in the face, had plastic surgery, and became a crime fighter along with his sidekick: a pontiac grand am that can talk and had a cool red light that flashed back on forth on his hood.

Yea, these guys see nothing but dollar signs with these things. They're not trying to bring a childhood memory to the big screen to make us happy. However, lets remember the scripts the original writers of these shows used to throw at us and realize that maybe the script that went along with Transformers wasn't so bad. In this day and age, people need realism and all that and they *tried* to do that with Transformers. But, come on, how many plausible ideas can you think of for the creation of a talking semi?

I for one am going to see this movie and I'll probably be pleased by the special effects and the nostalgia that will come to mind from my childhood. Let them strip mine my memories... I for one think that awesome explosions, great advances in CGI, and fight scenes are a decent trade-off. Let's not forget Underdog was from our childhood as well. At least they didn't do *that* to Transformers...

Re:As popular?

[zakezuke]

I believe I'm not alone to still own both Transformers and Voltron toys from the 80's, but somehow Voltron doesn't do me as much as Transformers does.

I don't know how to explain it, but does anyone feel the same? Or do you think Voltron has a stronger, more emotional and deeper storyline? It's hard to tell as Lion Voltron was a somewhat bastardized version of Hyakujuu Oo GoLion, a series that doesn't seem to exist in a dubbed DVD form. Even worse, the English version, they after a main character died (The prince), they rewrote another 10 or 16 episodes.

Reviewing "Transformers" I can't say there was really a deep emotional storyline in the English version, but rather it seemed to be a vehicle to sell toys. Voltron is however a better example as an obvious attempt to adapt a short lived cheap Japanese series to the American market, and an excellent example of how stupid marking things the average sub-teen is.

Now Macross is another animal. It was well well writen, and even the first part of the English version Robotech was very much watchable. It's not seen as being as popular as there was a dispute over the rights to the toys. It seemed in the early 80s the yen was somewhat weak and kids who were interested had a choice to buy either Robotech toys, or Macross toys, where Macross Toys were slightly cheaper.

Re:CoPA bait

[countjared]

No, she was fifteen at the start of the series. She turned 16 (Sweet Sixteen episode) around episode 7 or 8. Then she would have been like 18 or 19 by the end of the series.

The Man Who Just... Wasn't

[SpaceToast]

Marks on imdb.com:

Writer:

• Voltron (2008) (announced)
• Masters of the Universe (2009) (pre-production) (screenplay)
• Unbroken (2003)
• The Stranger (2003)
• Fast Forward (2002)

Producer:

• Unbroken (2003) (producer)
• Risk/Reward (2003) (associate producer)
• The Stranger (2003) (producer)
• Fast Forward (2002) (producer)

Miscellaneous Crew:

• Saved! (2004) (assistant: Sandy Stern)
• Family Secret (2000) (assistant to director)

Editorial Department:

• Family Secret (2000) (assistant editor)

Basically, Marks self-produced a couple of indy shorts early in the decade, then there's a big gap where he fell off the radar. Hard to say if he was script doctoring, working the business side of the industry, or just had enough money to bum around Hollywood bugging people to read his screenplays. Suddenly he reappears screenwriting two big (the studios hope) franchise relaunches.

I have to wish him all the luck personally, but resumés like this don't fill me with confidence about the final product.

Up next Go-Bots the Musical

[grapeape]

If Hollywood really has to go after also ran robot properties to create movies why cant they at least go after something semi-repectable like Getter Robo G or Mazinger rather than one of the shows that tried to rip them off?

What we really need is the Patlabor 2 movie

[monopole]

One of the best Anime films ever made. In this cereberal political triller, a series of carefully calibrated terrorist attacks with possible military links pushes the civilian goverment of Japan to the verge of collapse. As the Self Defense Forces take to the streets of Tokoyo a small group of police desparately atempt to unravel the secret behind the attacks before a military takeover and near certian American intervention. Made well before 9/11 this film has remarkable resonance today. Giant Robot Alert: Strangely enough there are giant robots (well thought out rescue and crowd control robots, as well as a praticularly neat traffic control robot) at the beginning and end of the movie (if you really don't like robots, just jump ahead to the third chapter, it won't take away from the plot). The robots function in the same manner as the witches in Macbeth: as plot devices which move along the story (what Hitchcock would call a McGuffin), and just as Macbeth is not a story about Witches, this is not a story about robots. If you like Patlabor 2 you may also enjoy Patlabor 1 and Patlabor WXIII.

Re:Let there be lions.

[DigiShaman]

Wonder how he's going to address the creation of the lions?

They are (are you ready?)...found in some deep dark cave. They don't know how long they've been there, but the language on the instrument panel changes from something alien to English!

Seriously, does it matter? It's a fuckin Voltron movie for god sake! Where talking about mechanical lion mech warriors (painted in different colors no doubt)!!!

Re:Obligatory

[Stormwatch]

You're doing it wrong. It is:

>:3

JESUS CHRIST IT'S A LION GET IN THE CAR!

.
.
.

(posting more text here to work around lameness filter)

Re:Let there be lions.

[jollyreaper]

They are (are you ready?)...found in some deep dark cave. They don't know how long they've been there, but the language on the instrument panel changes from something alien to English!

Seriously, does it matter? It's a fuckin Voltron movie for god sake! Where talking about mechanical lion mech warriors (painted in different colors no doubt)!!! But it's a Hollywood movie, it's gotta have poop jokes. Tell me they have poop jokes! If not, dick and fart jokes would suffice. And if the robots can piss on something, so much the better. We've got to maintain the standards of the craft here, people.

Re:You like comic book movies? Weird!

[theNeophile]

Comic books movies are embarrassing. Comic books are for children and we aren't children. To tell people that we really like comic book movies, such a Superman, Batman, X-Men, Transformers, is to tell people that you are still a child in your cultural development. Not as in 'child-like', but in 'retarded'. This is not a good thing. I really can't fathom how insecure and fear-based you must be to advise hiding you enjoyment of these movies like there were a crack addiction. I don't know how long you've been in a cave, but comic book movies have never been more respectable. Yeah, Batman Begins, A History of Violence, Sin City, American Splendor, all kids stuff!

Now before you start to flame me or boot me down to -2 Score, just a short word. This is simply a warning to people who usually don't interact in the non-tech world. If you actually are a serious fan of comic books and comic book movies, keep it quiet. Be quite discreet. This same advice goes out to the guy who still thinks that Turtle LOGO is a serious programming language. Fuck that shit. How about, instead, you just admit what you like without a crippling fear that people won't think you're cool. You'll be much happier.

No, seriously, shut up.

[StarKruzr]

Transformers was way, WAY better than ANYONE expected, and you know it. It was a great popcorn flick and didn't try to be anything more.