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Keanu Reeves To Star In Cowboy Bebop
It excites me incredibly to know that a Cowboy Bebop movie is happening. But it makes me scared to think that Keanu is getting the lead in what might be my single favorite Anime series of all time. I'm very skeptical that he can pull off this role. For now we'll have to wait and speculate who the rest of the cast will be. I'm mostly curious who will get Faye Valentine. And we can only cross our fingers and hope that the soundtrack remains intact.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here:
I think he can do it.
My first thought was definitely 'oh no'. But then I remembered that Spike is a little quirky anyhow... And very, very rarely do they manage to make a live-action with characters that really match the Anime's.
What I'm most scared of is that they'll try to match the voice acting of the English version, instead of trying to get the tone and attitude of the Japanese version. Voice acting makes a huge difference to the overall feel of the character.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I'd cast Christian Bale as Spike... but that's just because I want to see him in every movie I watch now.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I think Reeves could, actually, work for most of the scenes (Spike tended to be very melancholy and low key most of the time) but the directory will have to really push to get strong emotion out of him in certain scenes (such as fighting Vicious). As for Jet, I think a shaved Ron Pearlman could pull it off pretty well. Not sure who I'd pick for the rest of the parts.
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This is absolutely made for Scarlett Johansson. She could play the part well, she has experience playing a noirish character from something that was not originally live action thanks to The Spirit, and she has all of the requisite... y'know... "physical properties."
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I don't quite understand why people dislike Keanu Reeves so much. Well, I think he has a tendency to end up in these lame movies with roles that are easily mocked. I wouldn't call him a great actor, but he's certainly far from the worst. And he's not nearly as obnoxious as others.
My problem with this movie is the fact that it's yet another remake and it will probably be crap. They'll try to reinvent everything, completely missing the character of the original. I expect the end result to be crap much like Speed Racer.
Part of my problem, however, is the source material. Cowboy Bebop is decent, but like most other anime is very derivative and features convoluted storylines. Over the years I've found that anime fans tend to have low standards. As long as it's Japanese they love it. I can't count the times I've read glowing reviews for one thing or another only to find it's not very good. Even what is widely considering to be average anime gets overly positive reviews. And when something is actually pretty good, then it's really blown out of proportion.
My point is why bother remaking anime? The fans will never be happy with it. Few others will know enough about the source material to be interested which means the movie will have to stand on its own merits. At that point, they may as well have just come up with something unique and potentially more interesting. But then Hollywood and unique go together like oil and water.
Speaking of anime remakes, Battle Angel Alita is also coming in 2011, with James Cameron as the director. The manga's storyline has turned to crap, but I still have a fondness for the original story. Even though I'll probably be disappointed I am foolishly looking forward to the movie.