Live-action Robotech Movie

[jenius]

That's just art someone did imagining a live action film. 

[Seto Kaiba]

11 minutes ago, jenius said:

That's just art someone did imagining a live action film. 

Think I'd rather the people posting news about the proposed film used that than the seemingly ubiquitous Macross Pachinko Fever screenshots.

[sh9000]

18 minutes ago, jenius said:

That's just art someone did imagining a live action film. 

Yeah I know.  Here's another imagining.

[Lorindor]

4 hours ago, sh9000 said:

Yeah I know.  Here's another imagining.

I would honestly not mind that on the big screen.

[Dynaman]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Did anyone take the time to ask them awkward questions about the Robotech RPG Tactics KS?  I'd imagine that should still be a fairly hot topic, considering.

I only looked in the Robotech Production subforum, which come to think of it is VERY badly named. 

Edited July 21, 2017 by Dynaman
spelling

[Einherjar]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Did anyone take the time to ask them awkward questions about the Robotech RPG Tactics KS?  I'd imagine that should still be a fairly hot topic, considering.

After seeing recent updates on the Kickstarter page, can you really blame them for not bringing  it up, especially because of THAT thing?

Edited July 21, 2017 by Einherjar

[Marzan]

I go on holiday to a place without a decent internet connection (it's nice to be offline) and I return to hearing that HG claims this is on...again?! LOL. It's amazing how this can keep on reviving every couple of years or so.

Still think it never happens. One look at how live action anime adaptations fare and you'd know no sane Hollywood producer would touch this.

[Beltane70]

How many directors does this make now?

[jenius]

Oh man, head back a page for all the back and forth on director count. 

[Dynaman]

1 hour ago, Beltane70 said:

How many directors does this make now?

The best answer is a quote from "Gettysburg".  "If you keep track of them as they go by"

[Gerli]

They're running out of time...

http://io9.gizmodo.com/robotech-from-the-team-behind-it-just-got-a-new-write-1805058272

Quote

Director and producer siblings Andy and Barbara Muschietti are the talk of Hollywood at the moment after the massive opening for It. Up next, they’re going to make the It sequel—but after that, the hope is they’re going to bring the revered anime Robotech to the big screen. And, just to make sure that’s still on track, a new writer was just hired.

 

[JB0]

Revered? Surely they meant reviled there.

[Dynaman]

Funny how the RT:LAM is always, just, behind some other film on the director's plate...

[Convectuoso]

If there was really any interest on making a Live Action Robotech movie, it would have already happened.

[Mazinger]

And the laughs continue! It's all about execution Sony!

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, Gerli said:

They're running out of time...

http://io9.gizmodo.com/robotech-from-the-team-behind-it-just-got-a-new-write-1805058272

You really have to admire the effort they're putting into trying to convince people Robotech wasn't just a mediocre and quickly-forgotten unsuccessful attempt to ride Transformers' coattails.  I often wonder if the writers penning this trash are on the take, or just too lazy to check any source apart from the hilarious fiction in Harmony Gold's press packet.

Ten bucks says this guy is just the latest writer to submit a story treatment because he needed a quick bit of cash.  

 

2 hours ago, Dynaman said:

Funny how the RT:LAM is always, just, behind some other film on the director's plate...

Every alleged sign of progress on the supposed film so far has turned out to be a distortion or an outright lie, and everyone supposedly connected to it has inevitably found something better to do instead of Robotech... so that's just the status quo maintaining itself.

Everybody bloody knew It was planned as a duology, so I don't know why anyone thought that the Robotech movie wouldn't be immediately forgotten in the face of It's second half.
 

1 hour ago, Convectuoso said:

If there was really any interest on making a Live Action Robotech movie, it would have already happened.

Even if there was interest, it still wouldn't get made because it's a goddamn legal minefield.

No studio wants a piece of that mess, no matter how well-funded their legal team is... 

[slide]

Just now, Seto Kaiba said:

Even if there was interest, it still wouldn't get made because it's a goddamn legal minefield.

No studio wants a piece of that mess, no matter how well-funded their legal team is... 

they said, as the current iteration of the project seems to lurch and creak ever-forward...

[Einherjar]

 

[Marzan]

31 minutes ago, slide said:

they said, as the current iteration of the project seems to lurch and creak ever-forward...

The Deadline story says that they will "create the new Rototech from scratch"

I don't know if that's just a figure of speech, or it literally means that someone in Sony pictures worked out that they cannot use anything that looks or smells of Macross and hence they will just let themselves be loosely inspired by the concepts

[Seto Kaiba]

10 minutes ago, slide said:

they said, as the current iteration of the project seems to lurch and creak ever-forward...

You might want to look up the definition of "forward"... because this project is in exactly the same position it was in ten years ago right after it was first announced.  They've got an alleged director who's pursuing other, higher-profile projects instead and a writer who is working on another story treatment to try to work around the legal problems.

All we need is for Harmony Gold to re-release Shadow Chronicles on DVD and it'll be just like we've traveled back in time to 2007.  

[slide]

6 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

You might want to look up the definition of "forward"... because this project is in exactly the same position it was in ten years ago right after it was first announced.  They've got an alleged director who's pursuing other, higher-profile projects instead and a writer who is working on another story treatment to try to work around the legal problems.

All we need is for Harmony Gold to re-release Shadow Chronicles on DVD and it'll be just like we've traveled back in time to 2007.  

Granted: at this point it's only creaking and moaning like some long-rusted behemoth threatening to move, but dead it won't seem to stay.

 

and honestly, at this point, I'll take 2007!

[Seto Kaiba]

27 minutes ago, Marzan said:

The Deadline story says that they will "create the new Rototech from scratch"

I don't know if that's just a figure of speech, or it literally means that someone in Sony pictures worked out that they cannot use anything that looks or smells of Macross and hence they will just let themselves be loosely inspired by the concepts

If one takes Harmony Gold's public statements at face value - which is, I know, usually a bad idea - the plan of record for the live action movie proposal was always for a reimagining from the ground up.  They tactfully omitted that it was a legally necessary move, however.  

 

 

16 minutes ago, slide said:

Granted: at this point it's only creaking and moaning like some long-rusted behemoth threatening to move, but dead it won't seem to stay.

Nay, 'tis but the groaning of a corpse long-dead mistaken for signs of vitality by those employed in the savage beating of the late and largely unlamented ex-horse.  They seek to draw attention to a particularly noisome swarm of flies in the hopes that it will distract the gentle viewer from the foul smell of the brand's cadaver.

 

 

16 minutes ago, slide said:

and honestly, at this point, I'll take 2007!

... y'know, I probably would too, 'cept for the fact that we wouldn't have Macross Frontier yet.

[SuperSenpai]

1 hour ago, Marzan said:

The Deadline story says that they will "create the new Rototech from scratch"

I don't know if that's just a figure of speech, or it literally means that someone in Sony pictures worked out that they cannot use anything that looks or smells of Macross and hence they will just let themselves be loosely inspired by the concepts

 

Is there any way they can even be "loosely" inspired by the concepts and not invite a lawsuit?  There's some level of plausible deniability if the producers claimed they had no knowledge of Macross and ended up making something that sort of resembled those shows.  I always thought the re-booted Battlestar Galactica had some resemblance to Macross, but given its origins and development I never assumed that Macross was an influence, especially since the original BSG predated Macross.  But everyone knows that Robotech is adapted from the Japanese anime, and everyone knows that the core of what makes Robotech appealing was retained in the transition from Macross to Robotech.  Even the most basic premise of "alien ship crashes on Earth and humans reverse-engineer its technology to defend themselves from invaders", there's no way that they can argue that was an original concept that was not influenced by Macross. 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

13 minutes ago, SuperSenpai said:

Is there any way they can even be "loosely" inspired by the concepts and not invite a lawsuit? 

Yes, they just have to stick to the concepts that were unique to Robotech and  thus weren't present in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross and sufficiently generic concepts that can arguably not be connected directly and solely to Macross.

They could, for example, retain the Robotech version of "protoculture" and the whole business with Zor the inventor of all of the advanced alien technology sending his personal spaceship away and it crashing on Earth.  The idea that humanity obtained advanced technology from studying a wrecked alien starship is sufficiently generic that they could get away with it easily enough since that's been done to death by everyone from Star Trek to Independence Day and features prominently in pretty much every conspiracy theory about Area 51.

A lot of Macross's more iconic plot points would probably be too problematic and would need to be replaced outright with something else.  Making a generic non-infringing version of the Zentradi isn't likely to happen, and coming up with a VF design that won't get them sued will be a VERY tall order considering how prolific Kawamori has been.

[jenius]

I don't think it will prove difficult. Just replace Zenraedi elements with Invid ones. Basically, slam TNG and TMS together with the macguffins created in The Masters. Use a Legioss derivative transformation mechanism on an F22 parallel. BOOM.

[azrael]

Yeah, we've been hinting/mentioning/basically writing their plot for them so they should really pay us this since they announced they sold off the live-action rights. It's very easy for them to take a rough outline of the Macross-portion of the series, strip out all the stuff that made it Macross and you have your generic "spaceship lands on Earth and humans exploit it then the aliens come back to claim their property"-plot. We've been saying this for years. If they want RT to survive, they need write out the Macross-y stuff (and bare necessities of Southern Cross and Mospeada), take the bare bones and start from scratch with their own IP. This movie is their way out. It's always been.

[SuperSenpai]

I was thinking that one way they could go is to take the elements of the Robotech novelizations that were added onto the TV show.  Those were far out enough that it would be hard to argue they were lifted from Macross.  So stuff like Protoculture being more like the Force from Star Wars, Robotechnology being enabled by Protoculture giving machines a lifelike quality, the pilots controlling the mecha through brain interactive interfaces, or the biggest whopper of them all -- Minmei being the mother of Zor via time travel, and thus the focal point of the entire story.

[Seto Kaiba]

35 minutes ago, jenius said:

I don't think it will prove difficult. Just replace Zenraedi elements with Invid ones. Basically, slam TNG and TMS together with the macguffins created in The Masters. Use a Legioss derivative transformation mechanism on an F22 parallel. BOOM.

But that would just shift the legal problem to a company they haven't finished alienating yet... the goal of doing a reimagining of Robotech from the ground up would have to be to finally shed their brand's dependency on secondhand intellectual property that they could potentially lose access to, and create a new Robotech they can develop without all kinds of restrictions or fear of a copyright infringement lawsuit from Japan.

On a strictly theoretical level it's close to a best-case scenario for them.  In practical terms, it's very unlikely to actually work out given that the movie is still stuck dodging all of the Macross copyright obstacles and Robotech's fandom lives for the trope "They changed it, now it sucks".

 

5 minutes ago, SuperSenpai said:

I was thinking that one way they could go is to take the elements of the Robotech novelizations that were added onto the TV show.  Those were far out enough that it would be hard to argue they were lifted from Macross.  So stuff like Protoculture being more like the Force from Star Wars, Robotechnology being enabled by Protoculture giving machines a lifelike quality, the pilots controlling the mecha through brain interactive interfaces, or the biggest whopper of them all -- Minmei being the mother of Zor via time travel, and thus the focal point of the entire story.

... if they wanted to sweep the Golden Raspberry awards, sure.

Those books are like an itemized list of science fiction cardinal sins, and half of it would only get the movie accused of ripping off Star Wars instead.  (To this day, I maintain Luceno and Daley wrote the books by subjected rejected Star Wars novel drafts to a find-and-replace.)

[Einherjar]

Please stop treating BS news as real news.

[kajnrig]

29 minutes ago, SuperSenpai said:

1 - stuff like Protoculture being more like the Force from Star Wars

2 - Robotechnology being enabled by Protoculture giving machines a lifelike quality

3 - the pilots controlling the mecha through brain interactive interfaces

4 - the biggest whopper of them all -- Minmei being the mother of Zor via time travel, and thus the focal point of the entire story.

1 - I thought Protoculture was the fuel that the machines ran on? At least that was the case back during the "Macross Saga" books.

2 - Lifelike quality? What, like they would make metal "breathe" or something?

3 - This I remember, and it seems just as plausible now as it did then. At least as plausible as the advanced AI systems that Macross VFs used to supplement pilot controls.

4 - This is dumb. This is just really, really, self-fellatingly dumb.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

1 - I thought Protoculture was the fuel that the machines ran on? At least that was the case back during the "Macross Saga" books.

Initially, yeah... it all went a bit loopy in the Sentinels arc of the novels, where what we sarcastically call magic flower fuel started taking the "magic" part increasingly literally.  By the end of that arc, protoculture had graduated from being an exotic fuel to being somewhere between Dune's spice and Star Wars's midichlorians... it was self-aware, semi-mystical stuff that gave people exposed to it ESP and was somehow enacting a greater destiny by manipulating its users.  Where a Jedi or Sith might've said "the will of the Force", they would say "the shapings of the protoculture".

This very bad idea returned briefly for the failed Robotech 3000 series concept, in which the antagonist was protoculture itself having apparently gotten sick of humanity's sh*t in the nine hundred and fifty years or so since the Robotech TV series ended and turning robotechnology against its users.

 

 

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

2 - Lifelike quality? What, like they would make metal "breathe" or something?

There was an empathic link between the machine and pilot, which combined with the "thinking cap" helmets was what permitted the mecha to respond and maneuver with all of the fluid balance of an organic lifeform.  Essentially, the mecha in the novels were semi-living when they were actively drawing power.

 

 

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

3 - This I remember, and it seems just as plausible now as it did then. At least as plausible as the advanced AI systems that Macross VFs used to supplement pilot controls.

Robotech fans loathed the idea, to the extent that it was one of the most-often mocked parts of the novels.  Mostly, it was because it was a blatant contradiction of what was said and shown in the animated series. 

 

 

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

4 - This is dumb. This is just really, really, self-fellatingly dumb.

Yeah, the whole Sentinels arc, and particularly The End of the Circle, is probably the single most reviled Robotech title in the eyes of most of its fans.

End of the Circle made the whole Robotech story into an incredibly stupid stable causality loop in which the SDF-3 is responsible for the disappearance of the SDF-1's fold system, they end up getting sent back in time and settling on Tirol where their children became the first Robotech Masters, with Minmei's son Zor (re)inventing robotechnology, which the first-generation Masters would then become the basis for their oppressive interstellar empire, followed by Zor sending his personal ship with the last of their protoculture to Earth and starting the whole damned thing over.

[Gerli]

I thinks the "veritechs" in Robotech runs with telepatic helmets or something like that... 

Quote

Please stop treating BS news as real news.

Sorry, I tough it was a genuine news.

Edited September 14, 2017 by Gerli

[SuperSenpai]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

But that would just shift the legal problem to a company they haven't finished alienating yet... the goal of doing a reimagining of Robotech from the ground up would have to be to finally shed their brand's dependency on secondhand intellectual property that they could potentially lose access to, and create a new Robotech they can develop without all kinds of restrictions or fear of a copyright infringement lawsuit from Japan.

On a strictly theoretical level it's close to a best-case scenario for them.  In practical terms, it's very unlikely to actually work out given that the movie is still stuck dodging all of the Macross copyright obstacles and Robotech's fandom lives for the trope "They changed it, now it sucks".

 

... if they wanted to sweep the Golden Raspberry awards, sure.

Those books are like an itemized list of science fiction cardinal sins, and half of it would only get the movie accused of ripping off Star Wars instead.  (To this day, I maintain Luceno and Daley wrote the books by subjected rejected Star Wars novel drafts to a find-and-replace.)

 

5 hours ago, kajnrig said:

1 - I thought Protoculture was the fuel that the machines ran on? At least that was the case back during the "Macross Saga" books.

2 - Lifelike quality? What, like they would make metal "breathe" or something?

3 - This I remember, and it seems just as plausible now as it did then. At least as plausible as the advanced AI systems that Macross VFs used to supplement pilot controls.

4 - This is dumb. This is just really, really, self-fellatingly dumb.

 

Hey, I never said adopting the novel material would make for a *good* movie -- just that it provided them a plausible path to take if they were trying to use ideas that were not directly lifted from Macross! 

[kajnrig]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Robotech fans loathed the idea, to the extent that it was one of the most-often mocked parts of the novels.  Mostly, it was because it was a blatant contradiction of what was said and shown in the animated series. 

Why and how? From what I remember of the show, both the original SDFM and the Robotech version, the technology wasn't gone into all THAT much, definitely not enough that a brain-control/assist system couldn't plausibly be integrated as well...

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, the whole Sentinels arc, and particularly The End of the Circle, is probably the single most reviled Robotech title in the eyes of most of its fans.

Call me crazy, but it seems like Robotech fans hate a lot about Robotech...

1 hour ago, SuperSenpai said:

Hey, I never said adopting the novel material would make for a *good* movie -- just that it provided them a plausible path to take if they were trying to use ideas that were not directly lifted from Macross! 

I mean, it's not like they COULDN'T make something decent out of the franchise - you can get blood out of anything, even a stone! - but given what's been revealed above... I think any adaptation would have to be a very loose one.

Edited September 14, 2017 by kajnrig

[JB0]

5 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Why and how? From what I remember of the show, both the original SDFM and the Robotech version, the technology wasn't gone into all THAT much, definitely not enough that a brain-control/assist system couldn't plausibly be integrated as well...

The big thing is the books insisted the neural interface was in the helmet and you couldn't operate a veritech without on. Needless to say, that "rule" collapses rapidly in the animation.

Which is a shame, because it isn't a terrible idea(see Macross Plus). Certainly not as bad as all the flower of life/protoculture nonsense.

Edited September 14, 2017 by JB0