Mobile Suit Gundam....the movie?

[marcvader]

Is there a concensus best series.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Frankly, they should just to an original story, with original characters.

Follow the Gundam design aesthetics and have a rival with a mask, and you have 90% of a Gundam story.

No border politics and war stuff necessary?

 

[The Big G]

Is there a concensus best series.

IDK.

I think it depends on the person and when they watched it.


Zeta is my fave followed by G

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Tough nut to crack? Robot action?

Okay.

First of all, Gundam isn't about robots. It's not "Transformers." They don't have personalities and talk. They're mobile suits...they're fighter jets made anthropomorphic with arms and legs, piloted by people. Yes, they're mechs but they're hardware, they're combat vehicles.

"Mobile Suit Gundam," particularly the Universal Century material, is essentially the Japanese "Star Wars"...Amuro Rey is Luke Skywalker, Newtypes are Jedi, The Earth Federation and Zeon are the Rebel Alliance and the Empire, and instead of X-Wings and TIE Fighters, you have the Gundam taking on Zakus...then Doms...then Gelgoogs, etc.

It's the easiest nut to crack, especially if the intention is to adapt the original 0079/One Year War material. Treat it with the reverence, scale and drama of "Star Wars" and you're practically there.

As far as doing an original story, whether it be UC inspired or Wing inspired, I think it comes down to getting it across to audiences, again, that this isn't like watching Optimus Prime fight Megatron.

The drama is in the human characters and their conflict; the drama of politics and war, elevated into the mobile suit combat.

I think that's something that would not only be visually compelling but easily translatable so long as people aren't under some assumption that the Gundam itself is the main character.

The bellow is what my response would have been so thanks for doing it for me.

I’m down for this but it better be compelling. On the surface it’ll probably be similar to the Pacific Rim films to those that have no clue what Gundam is and that did poorly.

 

[Steyin]

G was my favorite just because of all the suit designs; it's like the Hunger Games but with mechs in a way. 2nd fav is Wing. I could never get into any other series, though I tried. None of them grabbed me in any way.

 

[Binker]

Thinking about this, I'm....not excited anymore. I kept thinking of Ghost in the Shell and Dragonball, and the thing is, going beyond quality, average American audiences aren't interested in anime. Pacific Rim is based on mecha anime, but given the two films, I don't know how the average person thinks about that; plus, Godzilla works, and I think its because its a universal concept. But then again, you could see GitS as one too. In Godzilla's case, is the answer to how an anime to film adaption is suppose to succeed in by making it truly American? Aren't we suppose to be a multi-cultural society, this world? Wouldn't that degrade the property?

 

[2kt09]

Thinking about this, I'm....not excited anymore. I kept thinking of Ghost in the Shell and Dragonball, and the thing is, going beyond quality, average American audiences aren't interested in anime. Pacific Rim is based on mecha anime, but given the two films, I don't know how the average person thinks about that; plus, Godzilla works, and I think its because its a universal concept. But then again, you could see GitS as one too. In Godzilla's case, is the answer to how an anime to film adaption is suppose to succeed in by making it truly American? Aren't we suppose to be a multi-cultural society, this world? Wouldn't that degrade the property?

Godzilla wasn't anime to begin with. The concept of monsters terrorizing something is universal.

The concept of armies building megazords to fight each other in war is certainly a farcry from Real Steel.

 

[TheVileOne]

The Pacific Rim films didn't land in the US, they only did decent business overseas.

 

[Binker]

Godzilla wasn't anime to begin with. The concept of monsters terrorizing something is universal.

The concept of armies building megazords to fight each other in war is certainly a farcry from Real Steel.

So what do you do to make a Gundam movie successful to an audience that into nor care for anime?

 

[TheVileOne]

So what do you do to make a Gundam movie successful to an audience that into nor care for anime?

IMHO As a big budget movie, you can't. At least it can't be a faithful version. It would have to be something closer to G-Gundam .

The plots are really dense. Characters are very shades of grey. The bad guys sometimes act like good guys. And the good guys **** up a lot or sometimes make amoral or troublesome choices.

A mainstream audience wouldn't really accept the ending of something like Char's Counterattack. It's very abstract and abrupt.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Char's Counterattack comes way later, and isn't something you make a major motion picture out of. Making a Mobile Suit Gundam film really isn't that hard. There is a every man quality to Amuro, who we realize is something more. But the story of a young man, living a basic life who is swept up into a war that has suddenly invade his world seems pretty standard.

 

[Binker]

How about not focus on the fact that its an anime?


The best way that I've always felt about doing a Gundam film based on the original series is not by looking at the show, or its movie replacement, but by its grounded and adult executed novel.


How about just that?

 

[2kt09]

How about not focus on the fact that its an anime?

The best way that I've always felt about doing a Gundam film based on the original series is not by looking at the show, or its movie replacement, but by its grounded and adult executed novel.

How about just that?

But it is a long-running Japanese cartoon going through every tone & motif imaginable (forget which one was just dancing & riding horses inside a cockpit)

Adapt the already adapted Thunderbolt
You could even cast Ryan Gosling from La La Land looking like his character from Place Beyond the Pines

 

[DACrowe]

Is there a concensus best series.

No but Wing is the dope one, because I grew up wit hit.

 

[Grand Padawan]

Like the sw tone for gundam. But I'll add make the suits really fast and fluid. Dont explain the tech. Just focus on characters, plot and the environment also get a really good composer.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

 

[Schlosser85]

If well-done (and that's a big "if"), this could be something.

I hope they follow the original storyline instead of just making up new crap, there's no shortage of narrative material already.

 

[Inhuman117]

Gundam looks fricking Epic in Ready Player One so in case CGI i have no daubt

 

[Boy Scout]

Who knows? Maybe anime adaptations will be the new CBMs in fifteen years.

 

[Fading]

Just subscribing for the news. I started liking Gundam with Wing back on Toonami growing up. But the I went back, and watched the original, and Zeta. Then on to G Gundam, and Turn A.

Lol, either way, easy to say I'm a fan of the franchise. So many anime properties are mishandled. Plus Gundam can be a confusing franchise. Some can lean more into Star Trek, while others are like popcorn action flicks. So I'm not holding my breath for it being as good as it could/should be. Dragon Ball Evolution, and Netflix's Death note set the anime adaptation bar very low.

My advice, either be faithful, and please the fans. Or ditch the tech talk of Minovsky particles, ect. Stick to a base story of the original. A young man gets sucked into a war that sees his father's death, and the destruction of his colony. He has a talent for using the Gundam, but doesn't want to be a soldier. Humans colonizing space wanting freedom from oppressive Earth policies go overboard, and commit atrocities in retaliation. Make it action packed to draw in the crowds, but don't forget the story that brought it to the table.

Gundam could be huge in the west. It hits the right notes on paper. Giant mechs, action, drama, romance, sci-fi. It just needs to not fall in the same pit 90% of the other anime films do. No director who knows nothing about the original, and wants to make "his/her" version. No overly meddling studio. Ect.

 

[Binker]

Just do Tomino's MSG novels. There you go.

 

[TheVileOne]

Char's Counterattack comes way later, and isn't something you make a major motion picture out of. Making a Mobile Suit Gundam film really isn't that hard. There is a every man quality to Amuro, who we realize is something more. But the story of a young man, living a basic life who is swept up into a war that has suddenly invade his world seems pretty standard.

Except it's an unending conflict where there are no real good guys and bad guys. The villains are often justified in their actions, and the good guys often do messed up crap. Both sides, Zeon and Federation, both commit unforgivable atrocities. Mainstream audiences aren't into that. They want Avengers.
They want Lord of the Rings.

Warcraft didn't work.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Except it's an unending conflict where there are no real good guys and bad guys. The villains are often justified in their actions, and the good guys often do messed up crap. Both sides, Zeon and Federation, both commit unforgivable atrocities. Mainstream audiences aren't into that. They want Avengers.
They want Lord of the Rings.

Warcraft didn't work.

Warcraft didn't work, because it sucked. Harry Potter wasn't black and white, and people seemed to like that well enough. You setup Amuro as the Luke Skywalker, so that whatever happens around him, he is the guiding compass.

 

[TheVileOne]

Warcraft didn't work, because it sucked. Harry Potter wasn't black and white, and people seemed to like that well enough. You setup Amuro as the Luke Skywalker, so that whatever happens around him, he is the guiding compass.

You don't get much darker than black than Voldemort who is pretty much evil incarnate. Not to mention the Death Eaters. There are no villains like that in Gundam. Yeah, Snape was a complex character, but Snape was also secretly playing for the good guys the entire time. In Gundam, there's no evil overlord for Amuro to vanquish. There's no Emperor Palpatine.

Spoiler

There's also the fact that Amuro kills Lala. Audiences aren't going to go for that.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

You don't get much darker than black than Voldemort who is pretty much evil incarnate. Not to mention the Death Eaters. There are no villains like that in Gundam. Yeah, Snape was a complex character, but Snape was also secretly playing for the good guys the entire time. In Gundam, there's no evil overlord for Amuro to vanquish. There's no Emperor Palpatine.

Spoiler

There's also the fact that Amuro kills Lala. Audiences aren't going to go for that.

Snape is a perfect example of what people will accept. He spent years purposely torturing Harry. It was no plan to do it, he did it because he hated him, and yet he was still the triple agent that people loved.

That doesn't have to happen in a movie adaptation. More over, you act as if creating characters for a film adaptation is possible. Char's a trash enough already anyways.