GUNDAM: NETFLIX is working on a live-action Gundam movie

[Seto Kaiba]

12 hours ago, Keith said:

I agree, Speed Racer was amazing. Any hate is just the result of the usual senseless Wachowski hate.

Call me crazy if you like, but given that it was critically panned and was a box office flop... I have this sneaking suspicion that's objectively untrue.

 

8 hours ago, Biomaster said:

Very much not a fan of this, especially given it's Netflix doing it. The only excuseable variant would be to do a completely separate alternate universe because there simply is no way to adapt 0079 without losing something. And the constant pointless gender and race flips are hideous. Make your own female/black/Asian characters for goodness' sake, don't piggyback off established characters! 

TBH, I think that concern is valid for Gundam in general.

American producers and writers aren't big on subtle at the best of times, and Gundam's trademark character drama is likely to be lost completely between that and the temptation to go all-in on a giant robot property destruction extravaganza.  

That said, I'd argue that the "pointless gender and race flips" are a borderline nonevent for Gundam anyway.  Between the mukokuseki animation design and the fact that many of the franchise's spacefuture settings are frequently far enough removed from modern concepts of nationality and race that it's difficult if not impossible to assign an actual national origin and ethnicity to most of the characters, it hardly feels like it matters.  (So much so that this is an acknowledged issue for spacenoids, many of whom are two or more generations removed from any kind of Earth nationality and no longer identify in those terms.)

Edited June 20, 2021 by Seto Kaiba

[Biomaster]

22 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That said, I'd argue that the "pointless gender and race flips" are a borderline nonevent for Gundam anyway.  Between the mukokuseki animation design and the fact that many of the franchise's spacefuture settings are frequently far enough removed from modern concepts of nationality and race that it's difficult if not impossible to assign an actual national origin and ethnicity to most of the characters, it hardly feels like it matters.  (So much so that this is an acknowledged issue for spacenoids, many of whom are two or more generations removed from any kind of Earth nationality and no longer identify in those terms.)

I agree about the mukokuseki point, but I simply do not like the name of a pre-established character being attached to a character that was race or gender flipped. (Maybe if it was a small nod like having the same surname or nickname but otherwise being a different character - I'd be okay, but what Netflix does is a big no-no in my book.) This is particularly noticeable in the cases of "remakes". It simply hurts when you are attached to the original version of the character and then that happens. That's why I have always advocated for original characters rather than piggybacking off nostalgia and then stabbing the audience in the back. But alas, most of the present day writers are hacks and I do not think they will be able to come up with a competent story. 

Edited June 20, 2021 by Biomaster

[electric indigo]

Yeah, I still have to recover from the genderflip in RDM's Galactica – when they gave Apollo a male haircut...

[Biomaster]

4 minutes ago, electric indigo said:

Yeah, I still have to recover from the genderflip in RDM's Galactica – when they gave Apollo a male haircut...

lol. 

[Seto Kaiba]

21 minutes ago, Biomaster said:

I agree about the mukokuseki point, but I simply do not like the name of a pre-established character being attached to a character that was race or gender flipped. (Maybe if it is a small nod like having the same surname or nickname, I'd be okay, but what Netflix does is a big no-no in my book.)

When it comes to Gundam, how would you even tell if 90% of the cast were "race-flipped"?  The vast majority of the characters in most any Gundam show are of ambiguous or at best uncertain ancestry, and spacenoids in particular are variously implied or outright stated to be mixed.  Even names are no bloody help in the matter.  Kai Shiden, for instance, has a very conspicuously Japanese-sounding name... but his profile reveals his family hails from Puerto Rico.  He's far from the only one like that too just in the UC, never mind the AUs where you have conspicuously Japanese names and aliases taken on by people who are anywhere from Kurdish (00's Setsuna F. Seiei) to Russian (Wing's Heero Yuy).

Hell, we've already had a version of the OYW with a female lead... that was For the Barrel.

 

21 minutes ago, Biomaster said:

This is particularly noticeable in the cases of "remakes". It simply hurts when you are attached to the original version of the character and then that happens. That's why I have always advocated for original characters rather than piggybacking off nostalgia and then stabbing the audience in the back. But alas, most of the present day writers are hacks and I do not trust them to be able to come up with a competent story. 

I can honestly say I've never felt hurt by a different take on a character... 

I've certainly been annoyed when writers substitute shameless pandering based on a character's gender or ethnicity for actual character development, but that's about the limit of it unless the new take on the character is just pure hot garbage.

Gundam has already given us plenty of mutually contradictory alternate takes on the UC era, so I'm not going to be bothered if we end up with another alternate take where someone is a slightly different shade of brown or something.

What'll bother me is if the writers sh*t all over Gundam's setting and themes in the name of making another boring big stompy robot movie.

[Keith]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Call me crazy if you like, but given that it was critically panned and was a box office flop... I have this sneaking suspicion that's objectively untrue.

 

TBH, I think that concern is valid for Gundam in general.

American producers and writers aren't big on subtle at the best of times, and Gundam's trademark character drama is likely to be lost completely between that and the temptation to go all-in on a giant robot property destruction extravaganza.  

That said, I'd argue that the "pointless gender and race flips" are a borderline nonevent for Gundam anyway.  Between the mukokuseki animation design and the fact that many of the franchise's spacefuture settings are frequently far enough removed from modern concepts of nationality and race that it's difficult if not impossible to assign an actual national origin and ethnicity to most of the characters, it hardly feels like it matters.  (So much so that this is an acknowledged issue for spacenoids, many of whom are two or more generations removed from any kind of Earth nationality and no longer identify in those terms.)

Gonna have to agree to disagree there. Or more to to the point, the original Speed Racer was far from Shakespere, the live action movie did no worse than the original material,but maintained being "fun."

[pengbuzz]

23 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

What WASN'T wrong with Speed Racer?  

The Wachowskis produced, wrote, and directed an adaptation of a TV anime about professional car racing and made it about everything they could think of except the actual racing that was the source material's main draw.

 

If anything, the idea that the live action Gundam film is potentially in the hands of fans makes me more pessimistic about its prospects... not less.

Sme things are best jst left in the realm of anime.

[F-ZeroOne]

You know, I'd never really thought about it before, but a female Char would be kind of interesting.

[F-ZeroOne]

Something else thats sprung to mind for me, when reading this thread, is that my first contact with "Gundam" wasn't through the anime, or manga, or model kits. It was through a series of articles in "Anime UK" magazine, which although it had illustrations of some of the Mobile SUITs and occasionally the odd character portrait, by and large only had descriptions of the characters and for a long time this was my only source of information about the Gundam universe. This meant that my what would now be termed "head canon" characterisations were rather different to the actual anime ones. Char, for example, is much more of a bas - dastardly type in the actual series than he ever was in my head, for example, until I saw more of the various series.  

Edited June 22, 2021 by F-ZeroOne

[Big s]

Char definitely was an odd one. He was more of a schemer in the first series then had the redemption thing in zeta, with odd crazy moments. Then in the CCA movie it kinda threw out the redemption thing straight to the garbage and went full super villain with a weird pedo thing for no real reason.

 For all of that being awkward writing for just that one character, I can’t see how an American storyline could do any worse. There’s even an odd chance that this could be one of the better gundam films, especially if it’s in an original setting with no expectations.

 I honestly thought that the most recent uc related stuff were just mediocre or just plain bad. The robot battles usually are pretty, but with weird or just stupid stories. 

[Bolt]

Gundam Thunderbolt please

[tekering]

9 hours ago, Big s said:

Then in the CCA movie it kinda threw out the redemption thing straight to the garbage and went full super villain with a weird pedo thing for no real reason.

To be fair, that "weird pedo thing" had already been established with Lalah Sune in the original series...

[Big s]

Honestly, I never knew Lalah’s age or even Char’s in the original. I just knew he was quite a bit older in CCA, any it was pointed out a few times that he had some creep tendencies by other characters in that film

[Reni]

17 hours ago, Big s said:

Char definitely was an odd one. He was more of a schemer in the first series then had the redemption thing in zeta, with odd crazy moments. Then in the CCA movie it kinda threw out the redemption thing straight to the garbage and went full super villain with a weird pedo thing for no real reason.

 For all of that being awkward writing for just that one character, I can’t see how an American storyline could do any worse. There’s even an odd chance that this could be one of the better gundam films, especially if it’s in an original setting with no expectations.

 I honestly thought that the most recent uc related stuff were just mediocre or just plain bad. The robot battles usually are pretty, but with weird or just stupid stories. 

I also found the shift in Char's character from Zeta to CCA to be weird.  I remember a really old gundam site arguing that Char actually went insane between Zeta/CCA.  I know Char was supposed to be in ZZ originally before the CCA movie got approved and wonder if this shift had something to do with that.

[Seto Kaiba]

16 hours ago, Big s said:

Char definitely was an odd one. He was more of a schemer in the first series then had the redemption thing in zeta, with odd crazy moments. Then in the CCA movie it kinda threw out the redemption thing straight to the garbage and went full super villain with a weird pedo thing for no real reason.

One thing to remember about Char - which I'm dead certain the live action movie will screw up if he shows up - is that Casval AKA Char is a deeply damaged person.  It gets explored more readily in Gundam: the Origin, but even in the main UC timeline his father's assassination and being raised in virtual exile under the threat of being assassinated himself.  He's so fixated on his desire for revenge against the Zabis until the One Year War ended with almost all of them dead that afterwards he didn't really know what to do anymore now that his life's ambition had been fulfilled.  He didn't so much get a redemption arc in Zeta as align himself with the AEUG because their goals for the reformation of the Earth Federation government were broadly similar to his father's, and became disillusioned with the organization once its ideological leader was assassinated and decided to burn it all down and start over instead of trying to reform the government by the time of Char's Counterattack.  

The "weird pedo thing" is an overplayed meme... the only one of the lot Char ever shows any romantic interest in is Lalah, and they're only about 3 years apart in age.  Quess was just a useful idiot to him, since he could easily manipulate her through her obsession with powerful Newtypes.

 

 

16 hours ago, Big s said:

 For all of that being awkward writing for just that one character, I can’t see how an American storyline could do any worse. There’s even an odd chance that this could be one of the better gundam films, especially if it’s in an original setting with no expectations.

 I honestly thought that the most recent uc related stuff were just mediocre or just plain bad. The robot battles usually are pretty, but with weird or just stupid stories. 

The thing to fear from an American Gundam production - aside from a repeat of G-Saviour - is a complete lack of subtlety in favor of a Michael Bay-esque borderline plotless collection of junkyard vomit robots beating each other to back into scrap with none of the character drama Gundam is known for.

I would agree the recent UC stuff has been pretty weak... I would say that's mainly because it has devolved into little more than Continuity Porn for the ultra-hardcore fanbase as in Gundam Unicorn and Narrative.  The former might as well retitle itself MSV Roundup.  It's just not as accessible as it used to be, since the list of required watching to understand the plot of each new series keeps getting longer.

[F-ZeroOne]

I’ve watched the whole of “Unicorn”, and while it is indeed incredibly pretty, I still have little idea what it was actually about.

I think the Char-as-pedophile thing is mostly from his underlings comments in “CCA” (I forget the characters name), I can’t recall much other in-universe reference and his interest in Lalah was a combination of her being a useful tool but also a meeting of minds, at least to me.

[pengbuzz]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The thing to fear from an American Gundam production - aside from a repeat of G-Saviour - is a complete lack of subtlety in favor of a Michael Bay-esque borderline plotless collection of junkyard vomit robots beating each other to back into scrap with none of the character drama Gundam is known for.

I think (just my opinion anyways) that the difference is that in the original Japanese productions, they treated the mechs (in this case, the mobile suits ) as a means by which to tell the story. The characters were the primary point and the story was set in a war drama that happened to be one where mankind is using an advanced combat system that is robotic by nature. In 'Murican productions, they treat the mech as the whole point and the characters are secondary tack-on's. You just don't get the tension, heartache,  loss and pain that the original stories convey because Michael is too busy setting the fuse for the next 5 tons of TNT.

on the "junkyard vomit robots beating each other back into scrap"... that pretty much sums it up.

[Big s]

I’m definitely not a fan of Bayformers. They do look like junk, and it’s so bad that you can’t even tell what the robot transforms into, and even worse is when they punch each other you can barely tell which robots arm is hitting whose face.

 I have a bit of faith that the gundam film won’t be as bad design wise since they probably won’t transform. Ready Player One had a pretty decent og Gundam fight, although a bit overdone.

 

[Keith]

Don't forget about Haman Karn, Char breaking her heart in her formative years helped make her super dangerous. I'd wager that has more to do with why Char gets chided so much.

[Biomaster]

22 hours ago, Bolt said:

Gundam Thunderbolt please

Hopefully not. The Netflix movie needs to be a brand new universe period. No chance of ruining existing characters and they can still recycle ideas from previous Gundam universes. Hell, Sunrise does it all the time with their alternate universes. 

Edited June 22, 2021 by Biomaster

[F-ZeroOne]

Something I've just been reminded about today - changing the gender of characters between adaptations is not a new development. Its a minor one, but the original 1971 film version of "The Andromeda Strain" changed a character who was male in the book to female and probably for similar reasons to whats claimed today - to add diversity to the cast.

[electric indigo]

Dr. Leavitt was the coolest character in that movie!

I wonder if the Gundam writers will follow Tomino with killing off roughly 30% of the female cast...

[Big s]

If they follow Tomino, then no one is safe. The entire universe could be a casualty 

[Keith]

20 hours ago, Big s said:

If they follow Tomino, then no one is safe. The entire universe could be a casualty 

I also think Ideon is a prequel to Gundam.

[electric indigo]

We have concept art!

 

[Old_Nash]

OHMYGREATLUNA!

[no3Ljm]

Let's open the image a little bit. The beam sabers looks thick. 

[sqidd]

2 hours ago, no3Ljm said:

Let's open the image a little bit. The beam sabers looks thick. 

You know what they say about a Gundam with thick beam sabers?

Edited November 9, 2021 by sqidd

[Keith]

Looks like they kitbashed G-Savior & Strike, then immediately regretted their decision & doused it in Super Napalm.

Edited November 9, 2021 by Keith

[Sanity is Optional]

4 hours ago, sqidd said:

You know what they say about a Gundam with thick beam sabers?

It's got a teenager in the cockpit?

[Knight26]

Battle of Solomon?

[Keith]

11 hours ago, Knight26 said:

Battle of Solomon?

I'm thinking more of a SEED style "Gundam Jack" scenario. I don'r know why I'm getting SEED vibes from this, but nothing about that shot says OYW to me.

[no3Ljm]

3 hours ago, Keith said:

 I don'r know why I'm getting SEED vibes from this, but nothing about that shot says OYW to me.

Coz that scene reminds you of the ending of SEED episode 1.

[mikeszekely]

I mean, the concept art looks cool, and I want so desperately for this to be good.  But, y'know... G-Saviour.

[kajnrig]

15 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

I mean, the concept art looks cool, and I want so desperately for this to be good.  But, y'know... G-Saviour.

...was peak 90s/Syfy channel fun...? 😛