The Movie Thread Reloaded

[HappyDaze]

The Netflix Cowboy Bebop is a good example of how something can be reasonably faithful, and clearly expensive to make, and still fail hard.

They go to great lengths to replicate the costuming, mecha designs, and atmosphere of the original, and they keep the soundtrack, which is one of the all-time great anime soundtracks.

But the costumes look like cosplay, the lighting makes everything look cheap, the depth of field effects and color balance of the CGI makes it look like model shots and not match the live action bits, and the sound mix is off, so the soundtrack sounds muted and tinny instead of kicking things up to 11 like it does in the anime.

Also Spike is suddenly Asian, and Faye suddenly isn't. Also, Faye is basically Girl Spike now, when she was her own character in the anime.

Pro Tip: if you haven't watched the original anime, you need to. Even if you don't like anime, you will probably like this. It has a great English dub, arguably as good or better than the Japanese, so you won't have to read subtitles. Great music, great animation, and just a whole lot of fun.

How many of your criticisms would matter to someone that never watched the original anime? Costuming, lighting, and CGI still would, but "suddenly Asian/not-Asian" probably makes no difference whatsoever. Soundtrack probably matters to most, but I personally don't care (soundtracks are not something I care for/about).

I haven't seen it, and haven't been paying any real attention. But the costumes in the pic above look really goofy, so goofy it would be hard to take the show seriously. It feels like something that might appeal to kids into the Power Rangers, but it's going to a major clash for a show like Cowboy Bepop that's heavily focused on existential ennui.

I watched most of the first episode before turning it off. I doubt I'd have cared for the anime any more than the live action though.

[Omega]

The Netflix Cowboy Bebop is a good example of how something can be reasonably faithful, and clearly expensive to make, and still fail hard.

They go to great lengths to replicate the costuming, mecha designs, and atmosphere of the original, and they keep the soundtrack, which is one of the all-time great anime soundtracks.

But the costumes look like cosplay, the lighting makes everything look cheap, the depth of field effects and color balance of the CGI makes it look like model shots and not match the live action bits, and the sound mix is off, so the soundtrack sounds muted and tinny instead of kicking things up to 11 like it does in the anime.

Also Spike is suddenly Asian, and Faye suddenly isn't. Also, Faye is basically Girl Spike now, when she was her own character in the anime.

Pro Tip: if you haven't watched the original anime, you need to. Even if you don't like anime, you will probably like this. It has a great English dub, arguably as good or better than the Japanese, so you won't have to read subtitles. Great music, great animation, and just a whole lot of fun.

How many of your criticisms would matter to someone that never watched the original anime? Costuming, lighting, and CGI still would, but "suddenly Asian/not-Asian" probably makes no difference whatsoever. Soundtrack probably matters to most, but I personally don't care (soundtracks are not something I care for/about).

I haven't seen it, and haven't been paying any real attention. But the costumes in the pic above look really goofy, so goofy it would be hard to take the show seriously. It feels like something that might appeal to kids into the Power Rangers, but it's going to a major clash for a show like Cowboy Bepop that's heavily focused on existential ennui.

Not sure what you mean by the colours other than they are NOT the usual hyper washed out tones movies have been using for the last 20 years. Its rather nice to see something that is fucking drab blacks and greys. Or fuzzy blue.

[Omega]

The Bebop series just never interested me. Sorry. Some nice music though and the art is good and from what I saw its a fairly dynamic anime.

[Ratman_tf]

Womp womp.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/cowboy-bebop-canceled-netflix-1235060256/

[Ghostmaker]

Womp womp.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/cowboy-bebop-canceled-netflix-1235060256/

Damn. That was quick. The numbers must've been shit-awful.

[BoxCrayonTales]

I live in a non-english speaking country so I didn't have to read 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' in highschool. And I never played Pendragon nor Lion & Dragon.
But I like Dev Patel, so I watched Green Knight in the theatre yesterday. Let's just say I was not the target audience for this movie; maybe you all will get more out of it. Or not.

Beautiful imagery of the Irish/Scottish landscape, which you'll have ample time to admire as there isn't anything else happening in most of the movie. I did some search on Wikipedia after watchin the movie and I think they did a bit of a Hobbit on this one as well, adding characters and storylines to pad the original poem into a +2hrs art-house experiment.

So if you like Arthurian legends and people travelling and talking a bit between long minutes of silence, then this may be something for you.
But if you expect an action packed fantasy movie or a fun night at the cinema, another Excalibur or First Knight or A Knight's Tale or even Holly Grail, then this is not it.
Beautiful but boring.

I know I'm super late for this discussion, but I wanted to give my two cents on Gawain's casting.

I don't want to be a racist who disallows ethnically British people (and gifted/skilled actors) from appearing in ethnically British stories just because their race is historically inaccurate (whether that even makes sense for an ahistorical fantasy mythos). The pre-modern Arthurian mythos does feature ethnically/racially Moorish characters, including mixed-race characters like Feirefiz (who has been retroactively diagnosed with vitiligo too). So it wouldn't be completely absurd that some Romani or some hero out of the Ramayana made their way all the way to Camelot and got themselves ingratiated with the nobility. Camelot never actually existed, so where it fits in a real world timeline isn't important. It could be in the distant future for all that it matters (which is the premise of at least two Arthurian adaptations I know of, one an 80s cartoon and the other a 90s RPG).

The part that maybe doesn't fit is racebending Gawain and Morgan le Fay specifically as opposed to inserting a new British Indian knight without pre-existing baggage. I know the Arthurian mythos doesn't have a canon, but this implies a big difference in who Morgan and Arthur's parents were compared any of the known versions. Of course, I'm probably overthinking something that the production team never considered because it just wasn't relevant to the story they were trying to tell. Arthurian stories have that issue where they contradict each other because the author was trying to make a point rather than create a shared universe.

The story is about Gawain and the Green Knight. Who his grandparents were and how they met is irrelevant. It's hardly the first time his family has been changed.

But if SJWs complain that other adaptations depict Gawain and Morgan as lily-white when they "should" be Indian...

[Omega]

One of my players got the movie "Boss Level" with the actor from Captain America who played Crossbones as the main character. A former soldier caught up in a time loop and trying to figure out why hes being attacked by a hoard of assassins.

The movie was surprisingly good and had quite a few funny moments as he gets killed in various ways and figures out creative ways to avoid getting killed.

[Godfather Punk]

Gonna save you all some money: don't go watch the Matrix 4.
Or more importantly, save you all some time you'll never get back.
Or do, so I can say 'told ya so'.

[Thornhammer]

Gonna save you all some money: don't go watch the Matrix 4.
Or more importantly, save you all some time you'll never get back.
Or do, so I can say 'told ya so'.

Elaborate, please. What was terrible about it?

[Godfather Punk]

I should not be bored during a Matrix movie. The action should be groundbreaking,  setting the standards for the next decade. Not a lesser copy of the original. At least Neo should do more than wince and airbend, like maybe throw the odd punch, or maybe try that gun-fu stuff the kids are into. I shouldn't be preached at for 120 minutes in self referential deconstructing bullshit, like I was taken hostage by the Architect.

I don't mind the odd subversion, a callback now and then, or characters having logically changed over time. But this was all the movie was, turned up to 11 and not in a good way.

There are folks on YouTube who can explain better, but for me, I never thought I would leave the theatre more disappointed than after Marvel Eternals.

Ugh..

[Ratman_tf]

https://www.screengeek.net/2021/12/23/the-matrix-resurrections-red-pill-political-right/

I'm tempted to watch it just to point and laugh. But really, beneath the crying fit over the "right" stealing their kewl catchphrase idea, I can't imagine anything interesting Ressurections could add to the franchise.

[Shrieking Banshee]

But really, beneath the crying fit over the "right" stealing their kewl catchphrase idea, I can't imagine anything interesting Ressurections could add to the franchise.

The only thing that can snatch anything from another group is corporate advertising. Make a red-pill add about coke and have it go viral.

[Ghostmaker]

I suppose Keanu needed to get some dinero to pass the time till John Wick 4 releases next year.

[HappyDaze]

Saw Matrix Resurrections on HBOMax. I'm glad it didn't cost me anything more than the usual monthly cost of the servoce, because it was not very entertaining. They should have started the film with a voiceover (Neo or Trinity or Morphius, doesn't matter) saying "We've seen this all happen before..." just so it's clear that you're not really getting anything new.

[Godfather Punk]

They actually said "Why would you use old code to write something new?" at the beginning.