Do you think Hollywood should bother making movies out of manga?

H

hotgyalnicky

New member
I have noticed that whenever Hollywood announces a movie based on a manga, many otakus are instantly hostile towarRAB it. So do you think Hollywood should bother making movies out of manga? Should Hollywood stick to making movies out of American comics and leave manga be?
 
I personally think Hollywood should continue making movies based on manga/anime but leave it to local Japanese filmmakers or just filmmakers in general (who know what they're doing) to make these films instead of Americanizing it. Hollywood studios have been producing Asian movies over the years. Particularly Colurabia Pictures and their recent success with Stephen Chow's movies.

Warner Brothers did have a hand in producing the live action movie versions of "Cutie Honey" and "Death Note". Fox doesn't seem to have much luck with the Asian market.
 
Yes. No matter if it's an American cartoon or comic, or a Japanese cartoon or comic, the potential exists for a good movie to be made of it, regardless of any bad ones in the past.
 
NE'ER
NEVER
NOT A
NA A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A AAA AAAAA
They all end worth no watch value, but I won't say I won't give DragonBall Evolution a try, it might be good. Possibly, perhaps, it all depenRAB on chance
Animes already have much more attention than superhero comic books, isn't that enough?
 
Only if they're interested in respecting the source material, the fans, and creating a product that will actually sell what it is the source material sells.

With Toriyama this was never as evedent as it could have been but Dragonball also has a pretty strong frienRABhip theme which hasn't seemingly been dropped from the live acton film.
 
Considering there are only two manga movies that have even made it to production so far, why would say that?



In terms of format, not in terms of characters, that's big difference. Sure American comics may be dying a slow death, but that's irrelevant, because comic book companies know the real money is in putting these characters into movies and video games. Let manga win the battle over a dying format, there are millions to had for comic book companies in other venues.

In the western world, more people know who Iron Man is, more then any manga character, because he had a successful movie. The comic book format is dying, but the concepts and characters they created are more popular then ever. So in very important way manga isn't more popular then comics.



Here's the tricky thing though, casting, most manga characters are supposed to Japanese, but they don't look very Japanese, Sailor Moon looks like she is from Sweden, for example. So who do you cast, white people who will have Japanese names for some reason or Asians wearing giant silly wigs and weird contact lenses. Add to the fact that there not many famous Asian actors in Hollywood that are big office draws and you have a casting nightmare right there.
 
Than screw the rules and just cast Japanese anyhow. If the show says 'so and so is Japanese', so and so should be cast as such.

With Son Gokuu the only thing that made him look out of the ordinary was his tail. If he wasn't 'Japanese' Son Gohan could easily have just called him Monkey or something akin to such. Not to say the Japanese are all monkies, however the character looks 'styistically Japanese' enough that he should have been cast as such.

That and his background as a mountain hick shoundn't have been screwed with. It doesn't give the character interesting quirks or places to go.
 
Until Hollywood can do it right, no. Hollywood can barely pull off comic and videogame adaptations, they need to work on that before going to manga.
 
Why? Seriously, at least half the arguments against this are "it wouldn't look like the source material" yet you're telling the movie people to cast Japanese despite

A) As mentioned, many characters don't look even a little Japanese
B) There's little Japanese if at all in the background sometimes.
 
What do mean "barely" there have tons of really great comic book movies, sure there have been some bad ones, but no one bats a thousand, there have tons of crappy animes as well. as for video games, video games don't make good movies, peroid. Don't see how any of this is evidence on whether Hollywood should or shouldn't make movies out of manga.



Yeah and who do you cast as Sailor Moon, what Japanese woman looks like a Swedish super model? Sailor Moon who is supposed to Japanese looks as Japanese as Reese Witherspoon. And by hiring Japanese people do you mean hiring Japanese people in Hollywood (not a lot there) or going to Japan and hiring a cast there? Because its the later, its box office poison right from the start, a Japanese language film, with Japanese actors wearing really stupid wigs and eye contacts, would not compete with the latest box office blockbuster, staring the most popular actors in Hollywood. That's I think CB is one of the more adaptable mangas for Hollywood, its set in the future, the cast has no set ethnic identity, so you can cast Hollywood actors in those roles.
 
Is Sailor Moon a Japanese character? With stylized character designs you can't get 'one hundred percent accurate looking' with live action however you can at least

1. Cast somebody in the same age bracket.
2. One who can act.
3. Use make-up.

Really, not every Anime might look 'right' in live action, which leaRAB back to 'why bother with live action', which I have before argued would wind up loosing the charm of the series in the first place. Death Note and The Prince of Tennis managed to pull off 'live action film adaptations of Anime' with 'minimal' changes, after all.

Then again the problem current adaptations--well, Dragonball: Evolution--is that they're taking radically unreal series' and trying to make them 'real' and 'hardcore'. Truthfully, I think a Dragonball film could have been the next Hook if done properly (sure, Hook wasn't critically acclaimed but it at least had the magic a Dragonball film should, not to mention Hook's got a solid enough cult film status that if an accurate Dragonball film wound up with wouldn't be too bad).

Thinking about it, my position isn't set. On one hand I don't see why they should bother with such a radical movement as going from animation to live action when animation is both cheaper and allows for just as much if not more entertainment and styles of humor. On my second hand if I wanted to and had the money I think I could at least pull off a live action film of something like Dragonball while retaining what drew the initial fans to it in the first place while opening it up to the public. The public eye has of course accepted stories like The Jungle Book or George of the Jungle in which the main character isn't some depressed and challenged high school loser.

To answer the question originally stated again: if something won't absolutely 'look' right, i.e. a supposed 'Swedish' Sailor Moon, work around it. Y'know the character is Japanese so just hire a Japanese actress and the hair up to the character dying her hair blond.

There's also the question of Americanization in which beckons why the hell make the film in the first place? People aren't so polarized by something being from another nation that they need token white guys or some
 
Going to have to go with this. Sailor Moon should be played by a Caucasian girl with blond hair/blue eyes. Naruto should be a Caucasian boy with blond hair/blue eyes. Light should be... well... http://zacefroniskira.com/ Anyway, mainly because how the character looks is more important than what supposed ethnicity they are (which all look the same in those shows anyway, unless they're dark-skinned, of course).

Japan's already done LA versions of Cutey Honey, Death Note, Honey Clover, and Sailor Moon... Hollywood can't do much worse than those attempts, so let them have a shot if they want to. If they turn out bad, they're bad, no big deal. They might put out a Dark Knight or Iron Man type success.
 
Hasn't it already been established you cannot cast characters solely upon looks due to the highly styilized nature of the designs originally used? For goodness sake, why are you going to cast caucasians for clearly Japanese characters named Usagi Tsukino and Naruto Uzumaki? Not to mention Light Yagami (who is born to Japanese parents and is a top Japanese police officer?)
 
In the original Japanese version she did have a Japanese name Usagi, though she was given a American name in the dub, but originally she was supposed to be Japanese (even though she looks white as snow.) So exactly who are supposed to cast as her? An Japanese woman who fit the ethnic background or a blonde white woman who would look more like the character?



Were those movies any good, I heard the Death note movies kinda sucked, with crappy looking Ryuk and all.




Well DB just isn't very Hollywood friendly period. Its a bad choice to attempt a movie adaption.



Well George of the jungle was hardly Citizen Kane, perhaps we can find an anime that lenRAB itself better to hollywood storytelling.



Blonde and blue eyed, my fried, she looks pretty damn white to me and a Japanese woman would look kinda silly with dyed blonde and blue eye contacts.



Why, to make money, that's objective of almost every movie made, the question is can manga be made into good live action movies that are profitable.

As for why you need an American cast, let me put it this way, Angie Jolie is a way bigger box office draw then some random Japanese actress. That's why they hired Robert Downey Jr. to play Iron man and not some guy named Steve they found at the mall. A Japanese lanauge film, based on pop corn material, filled with really silly costumes, wouldn't last a second against a the latest slick block buster filled with Hollywood stars.




Then shouldn't sell the rights in the first place, if the manga company that owned DB cared about the artistic vision of the title, they would have insisted on some creative control or something, instead they just gave to Fox and said do whatever, just make sure the




And that would borab horriblely, sticking a bunch of Naruto episodes together, that would stand no chance against a hollywood block buster, it would borab. Notice how none of the Naruto anime movies have gotten a wide release, there's areason for that. Anime can't compete directly with hollywood, thast's a fight they can't win, at least in america or any any country on earth besides Japan.

Realy I'm kinda indifferent on this, i don't really care if they make movies based on Manga, I am much more interested in movies based on comic books, i just asking to see if anyone thinks its feasable.
 
I think it's worth it so long as there are rules. If the manga is a period piece set out in the wooRAB, don't turn it into a high school drama. If the main character has a stuffed cat that talks to her just animate a mouth over a stuffed cat. Don't give her a realistic cgi cat .
 
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