Gigaaaaaantooor

With the imminent release of the Dragon Ball movie, I've been wondering what kind of precedent there is for feature-length and widely distributed live-action movies based on anime. I can think of a few, but only a few, and on the whole I would say that they were not very good, regardless of whether they were made in Japan or America.

In the interest of giving these things another chance, I watched Tetsujin 28, the 2005 live-action Japanese movie based on the late 50s manga / early 60s anime series with the same name (known in the US as Gigantor). It was a fairly poorly constructed film, but I have to give it some credit for not trying too hard to "update" Gigantor, an effort made by many moviemakers in adapting an older property to film.

Not that there's anything inherently wrong with updating a story for a modern audience, so many stories are, after all, little more than modifications of ancient forms, but the problem as I see it is that the movies are attempting to update something that is still relatively modern, and so the updating seems largely unnecessary and therefore unwanted.

Take Casshern, for example. The hero of the original spends most of his time fighting against an artificially intelligent robot and its army of robotic creations. The hero of the film adaptation fights against genetic experiments who find an army of robots. There are still plenty of robot fights, but I can't figure out why they decided to make the principal antagonists non-robotic, unless they felt that gene therapy was "in" and would therefore "speak" to "today's audience" the way robots did thirty years ago. I don't agree with their decision, but I think I can see what they were trying for. Make the property relevant, or something. And really, if they had made it better than the original, then I'd probably be all for it, but it's significantly worse, and relies on plot points like "and then they fucking find a robot army".

Tetsujin's updates aren't nearly as offensive or poorly executed. The robot gets a few extra abilities and an improved method of control (Tetsujin is operated via remote control, so it's critical that the operator find a place to stand where he is both safe and able to see what's going on. (See: Robot Alchemic Drive for an accurate simulation of this control scheme) The film puts a camera in the robot's head and it transmits visual information to a headset worn by the operator. A smart move). Those changes make sense, and anticipate and address some of the suggestions a 2005 viewer might make for the 1950s design.

But frankly I would rather they not put even those sorts of changes into these movies, and just leave the damn thing alone. This is mostly because I can't help but think that whatever movie is made is the one shot at film these properties are going to get in my lifetime, so it'd better be good. Obviously this may not turn out to be the case, but I can't understand why they would make "updated" versions first instead of doggedly accurate ones, when there is the rest of mankind's future to make those reimaginings.

So here's hoping Dragon Ball gets a little respect, and some guy who thinks he knows more than the creators did doesn't cock it all up (See: Peter Jackson's Faramir).