SuperStiltzkin
Member
Yeah. Ghost in the Shell is more like the anime titties you saw on the cover of Animerica.
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Ghost in the Shell bombs at the box office
- Thread starter Korey
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Yeah. Ghost in the Shell is more like the anime titties you saw on the cover of Animerica.
If you were school aged in the 90s (in the US/Canada), you knew what Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z were, even if you never watched anime. They were the only two with any real mainstream crossover at the time. Stuff like Akira and the Ghibli films would have been under that. Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, etc followed.
TDLink
Member
Yes, people who have watched Toonami have a decent chance of knowing what GITS is. But for everyone else in the West, they don't know. Sailor Moon was everywhere.
Honestly I didn't list DBZ because I view it as the same category as Naruto/One Piece. Mainly just entry level stuff.
I don't think that's really the case nowadays though. Would be interesting to see whether Crystal has had a noticeable impact on current merchandise sales.
Corronchilejano
Member
It was an awful adaptation. It presented an amazing ambience and made some 1 to 1 scenes that were great, but it utterly missed the philosophical point of the original, threw it out the window and replaced it with garbage.
Sailor moon was the entry level equivalent for girls. It just didn't have the same sort of merchandising longevity.
EDIT: Sailor Moon was named dropped in One Week by the Barenaked Ladies, which was basically the 90s song equivalent of a Big Bang Theory episode. Nerd stuff that almost everyone aware of pop culture would have heard of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC_q9KPczAg
Fine, it's more popular. The point of my original post is that outside of a few anime, almost all of which would turn out atrocious as live action adaptations, GitS is one of the most popular.
Why don't you watch your language instead of attempting to insult me because I used the word "trigger". You seem to be a little too sensitive.
George Oscar Bluth II
Banned
Honestly can say this is the first film I've really wanted to fail.
I'd say GITS is on par with Akira. Those two were always the films mentioned, but I'd add in Robotech was in the slot prior to DBZ. If I recall, that's basically what happened. CN use to have Robotech and Sailor moon, replaced it with DBZ so it became DBZ and Sailormoon.
Then eventually their Toonami block started where suddenly, these normal cartoons had the name of anime straight from Japan. The films popularity were definitely way under the shows. Where the only mention was typically at the local Blockbuster or Hollywood Video and their anime collection scattered.
No, they'll keep doing it.
Z..
Member
I love this. You only got the most basic layer of the narrative and it's the film's fault that you're clueless. The whole movie is an allegory to the dawn of the übermensch Thus Spoke Zarathustra first established in 1883. Not as good as 2001 but there's no shame in being second best to the main man himself... Alot of the symbolism and visual direction takes cues from and pays homage to the works of Tarkovsky, Bergman, Mellvile and Antonioni and others (though not as noticeably as these 4), as well as the narrative aproach. Your reductive analysis of the movie as a big chase is just preposterously naive and systemic of an industry ehich is progressively more entertainment driven... I suppose Waiting for Godot and Stalker would be uneventful and overrated under your incisive critical lens!
In plain words, this movie was made for the auteur crowd and ended up becoming popular with an audience that to this day does not understand the nature of the film they are watching. You are trying to understand something you are not equipped to, essentially. The mere fact you're even looking for a dense conventional plot in this type of film says it all, really.
R u serious? GITS is niche as fuck. Like literally nobody care about it except small group of people who only care about thsi kind of movie.
Sailor moon on the other hand is on DBZ level for the popularity. It is just everywhere. My god do we even need to compare that? Are u living in the cave or something.
Even Power Ranger is more well know than GITS.
Yep, same people making decisions.
Corronchilejano
Member
They'll probably blame Scarjo for not having the starpower or saying women just don't pull in numbers.
GitS is an active franchise though unlike Akira. It had Arise a few years back and the movie. Supposedly a 3rd Gig is coming out at some point too.
Gully State
Member
Given pacific rim's success, I'm surprised we haven't seen a robotech or gundam(another one that is) live adaptation. Heck I feel like robotech would be perfect for a Hollywood adaptation.
I think they're coming out with one in Japan about Josuke 4 sometime this year. I saw the poster for it.
I think Wan is working on that. It's supposedly being worked on.
Geeks. Geek culture is big right now.
Success? They had to kick and scream to get a sequel
Stop talking about Arise I'm trying to pretend it DOESN'T EXIST.
They don't even know what the hell it is
MHWilliams
Member
If you pay $15 million to an actor make $10 million more, did you really win?
The winners this year and last year remain brands and well-written films. It's more about what you're selling and less who. People turn up for Iron Man, not RDJ. I'm not saying he adds nothing to that role, but the brand will likely outlast him. Take the biggest actors from 2016 and look at their solo projects and it's generally a list of non-starters and middling pictures.
Star power is an executive safety blanket and since they hold the purse string, it'll continue being a thing.
Pacific Rim barely broke even and that's with the numbers they did give us. It's why Del Toro had to fight for a sequel.
It resulted in the 2015 movie though so it ekes out to the point of "This exists I guess".
Gentleman Jack
Member
They'd have to avoid some of the problems GitS faced, they'd actually need to 1) actually make a good movie worth watching and 2) distinguish themselves from other sci-fi action films without counting on nostalgic fans of the original to recoup their production costs. All that on a pitch of 'the power of human love and japanese pop music helps to repel an intergalactic invasion of earth' if they still want to call themselves Robotech. It's a really hard problem!
UnemployedVillain
Member
RBelong2Us
Member
I don't wanna talk about this crappy movie but how in the flying f*ck did Lucy make so much money?!? 335m overseas? JFC...
CosmicGroinPull
Member
Yeah, I was hoping it would at least do okay, because I can see that they tried.
Hollywood should stop with anime adaptations now. A medium with little public recognition, and a niche, sensitive, hard-to-please fanbase to boot. There's just no winning here.
And this is a minority reason as to why people didn't see it
Gully State
Member
Instead of j rock, they could set it to 80's hair rock/ power ballads.
I mean, if they made good adaptations like they've been doing for comic book fans for awhile now and refrained from whitewashing, anime fans would certainly have less of a leg to stand on. But we're still waiting, so...
True.
Something I am curious about too with all this talk of popularity and brand naming, but how has the cyberpunk/sci-fi genre been fairing lately at the box office lately?
The main reason I'm disappointed about all this is because I think Hollywood is ripe for another big cyberpunk movie. It's just a matter of getting someone behind it that actually knows what they're doing. Neil Blomkanp's movies sort of hinted in this direction, Elysium most of all. I guess we're getting Blade Runne 2049? But GitS at first glace is kind of the perfect mix of cyberpunk themes and SWAT/Military-style action that American audiences would really go for. I was just afraid of Hollywood packaging it into a typical "action chick" film. I was afraid of that when the casting was announced and it looks like what's what we ultimately got. It seems like the studio tried to get by on the name and the "style" of GitS alone.
I see some talk in this thread about how popular GitS really is. It's nowhere the biggest crossover anime hits. I think in terms of notoriety in the west it's a step or two above an art-house film that's mainly well-known among auteurs. Maybe SAC being broadcast on Adult Swim made it a bit more well-known, but it's still mostly just known to anime fans. It's nowhere near DBZ, Sailor Moon, One Piece, etc.
That's why I think the studio should have gone the full-blown adaptation route: just treat it like a little-known foreign property to lift the script from and re-write for western audiences. It should have been treated like The Departed (Infernal Affairs), The Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai), or Edge of Tomorrow (All You Need Is Kill).
I always thought Robotech made a lot of sense for Hollywood if they could justify the budget.
Gundam would be an interesting challenge but probably has a ton of pitfalls in balancing appeasement of the fans with attracting western mainstream audiences. I guess they could work it out like one of those YA movies (Ender's Game being the most similar one I can think of): young main characters having to survive in a somewhat dystopian setting (in this case being an apocalyptic war. I'm just not sure Hollywood would be willing to make it as political as Gundam can sometimes get.
I see some talk in this thread about how popular GitS really is. It's nowhere the biggest crossover anime hits. I think in terms of notoriety in the west it's a step or two above an art-house film that's mainly well-known among auteurs. Maybe SAC being broadcast on Adult Swim made it a bit more well-known, but it's still mostly just known to anime fans. It's nowhere near DBZ, Sailor Moon, One Piece, etc.
That's why I think the studio should have gone the full-blown adaptation route: just treat it like a little-known foreign property to lift the script from and re-write for western audiences. It should have been treated like The Departed (Infernal Affairs), The Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai), or Edge of Tomorrow (All You Need Is Kill).
I always thought Robotech made a lot of sense for Hollywood if they could justify the budget.
Gundam would be an interesting challenge but probably has a ton of pitfalls in balancing appeasement of the fans with attracting western mainstream audiences. I guess they could work it out like one of those YA movies (Ender's Game being the most similar one I can think of): young main characters having to survive in a somewhat dystopian setting (in this case being an apocalyptic war. I'm just not sure Hollywood would be willing to make it as political as Gundam can sometimes get.
I think a Macross/Robotech film could work if they excise like...
The Zetlandi/Meltlandi stuff.
The pop music saving the world (although the love interest could be a singer)
The actual SDF, just make it a colony ship
Max Genius and that other guy
And then focus on:
The human/zetlandi conflict
Awesome transforming robo planes
Whitewashed Hikaru Ichijou, played by Chris Pratt
Focker and Claudia's secondary romance
Love triangle with Lynn, Lisa
And then some "it was earth all along" TWEEST to make the audience roar.
The Zetlandi/Meltlandi stuff.
The pop music saving the world (although the love interest could be a singer)
The actual SDF, just make it a colony ship
Max Genius and that other guy
And then focus on:
The human/zetlandi conflict
Awesome transforming robo planes
Whitewashed Hikaru Ichijou, played by Chris Pratt
Focker and Claudia's secondary romance
Love triangle with Lynn, Lisa
And then some "it was earth all along" TWEEST to make the audience roar.
UnemployedVillain
Member
Please let them never even think about doing a Gundam movie if they're going to go this route. This sounds awful
ronaldthump
Member
^bladerunner has harrelson ford and ryan gosling. It'll do very well. And the franchise is known
Suzushiiro
Banned
Until they do this
HOTD is an anime that Hollywood could potentially not fuck up an adaptation of, honestly, since it's all guns and tits and zombies which are things Hollywood can do pretty well. Half the problem with GitS (both in terms of the final product and in terms of why nobody had any faith that it would be good) was that while the original work had lots of the flashy action sequences that Hollywood loves its plot was at least a little too smart for the audience that the suits who call the shots on $100M+ movies imagine watching them. And they might have been right- weren't there rumors that the ending was initially going to be closer to the original but audiences didn't like it so they switched it out for more shooting and explosions?
Gully State
Member
He's already known as Rick Hunter in the West... I think you need to have a really charismatic well known actor play Roy Fokker and have Rick played by an up and coming one.
CadetMahoney
Member
We need a bingo card about why it bombed. . . just for lolz.
Ideally they would only use the transforming planes space opera concept and distance themselves from Robotech proper. I don't think anyone really wants to invoke Robotech.
It really is baffling how badly it seems they dropped the ball in that case. SAC is part police procedural, part political thriller and people tend to go for that sort of thing. You could probably adapt and expand the first episode and get a pretty good movie out of it.
Gully State
Member
I agree that you can't take a 1:1 with the source material especially the plot but the tone, visuals, characters and concept seem easily adaptable with Hollywood. Get the writers to come up with a self contained plot with the characters involving transforming jets.
They whitewashed for money and it failed them, that's beautiful. Tho Hollywood is still going to say Asian stars aren't bankable, I bet. There's probably a couple producers sitting in a room right now saying shit like "The film would've made $0 if it stared an Asian." and "We should've cast only whites in the whole film."
As much as I want this to be a wake up call to Hollywood suits, it won't be.
As much as I want this to be a wake up call to Hollywood suits, it won't be.
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