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NEWS: NTV's ZIP! Show Airs 1st Look at Live-Action Attack on Titan Films

...The only explanation I can come up with is that they were scared of not being able to find an actor the general public would approve of or something like that.

But yeah, I'm not exactly excited for this, but I still want to have actually seen it before deciding if it's good or bad.

Because I've seen other Asian films (ie: South Korea, and Mainland China) having CGI and visual that can match with Hollywood. I remember reading that Hollywood was amazed by South Korea's CG. Also another issue is that Japan couldn't up the budget to get Hollywood cast when South Korea's Snowpiercer and the Mainland Chinese film, Dragon Blade was able to get Hollywood cast like Adrien Brody and John Cusack is in that film.

Aside from the occasional entry in the Best Foreign Language Oscars, Japanese cinema isn't exactly....subtle.
Film and anime-feature directors try too hard in showing that they're not doing commercial TV fare, their taste for humor can be a bit goofy (but we know that ), and their taste for drama has a 600-year history of being melodramatic.
And that's leaving the budget and SFX issues aside.

We accept it in anime, since the "real world" problems aren't as glaring (although non-Ghibli has a problem with the mainstream, since features are so determined to be "art"), but with live-action, seems to be only the period features where we buy the earnestness and humorlessness of the acting, since we just naturally assume they were all like that back then.

The way that films are made in Japan may be to blame.

Most commercial films are produced by TV networks and other media companies in a system of “production committees” (or seisaku iinkai) in which partners share investment, PR and other chores in return for a share of the profits. Six or eight partners, ranging from video distributors to radio broadcasters and advertising agencies, is common. And 12 partners is not uncommon.

“A lot of these so-called producers (on the production committee) are not film people and don’t know how to read a script,” adds Inoue. “In a film you can say a lot without words, but these guys don’t get that. And when they say ‘I don’t understand,’ someone has to add explanations to the script. The film becomes longer — and more boring.”

Another reason for the bloat in Japanese commercial films, says Inoue, is their origin in material from other media, including door-stopper bestsellers and long-running comics. “The publishers have too much power,” he explains. “They demand faithfulness (to the original material) and no one tries to fight them.” It didn’t always used to be this way, he adds. “Directors used to have fierce battles with creators (of original material), but that’s no longer the case. Everyone is just trying to get along.”

Japanese audiences, typically a patient group, will show up for long-winded, defanged pics, but foreign audiences are less tolerant. “These self-censored films have never been accepted by the overseas market,” says Takamatsu. “The free creativity seen in films by Miike, Kitano, Sono and others has produced better results overseas.”

While some argue that with such a big domestic market, the Japanese biz can afford to regard foreign sales as simply the mint after the banquet, Takashi Nishimura, who as managing director of UniJapan is responsible for promoting Japanese film abroad thinks differently.

“(The Japanese film industry feels) a sense of crisis that the domestic market is no longer enough,” Nishimura said last year at the Intl. Film Festival of India in Goa. “But Japanese films are made only for Japanese.”

Eh, not sure if you're serious about this. The only one film with relatively small budget which was on par with Hollywood blockbusters in terms of CGI and visuals I ever saw is District 9 and it was produced by Peter Jackson. Plus, Brody and Cusack aren't A-list actors anymore, hell they could've easily get Nick Cage to play in this film.

I'm comparing Japanese current film production to their neighbors (ie: South Korea and Mainland China). I mean have you ever watch any of the film from South Korea and Mainland China, they made film (in term of production values, and special effect) that can hold candle to Hollywood standard.

Oh and District 9's budget was about $30 million the last time I checked, that's pretty much on par with any Hollywood film.

I have, even 80+ million dollars chinese flicks like The Monkey King can't hold a candle to Hollywood's output from 5-6 years ago. Snowpiercer has minimum CGI and it's (CGI) not that great. Same goes for Roaring Currents, Sector 7, Tidal Wave etc.

The Monkey King is an exception and a big mess. But I've seen Chinese film that looks way better like Drug War and Red Cliff. Try watching Ode to my father, that one is also very good on par with Roaring Currents. Also try watching the Suspect, to be honest when I see both Korean and Chinese films coming out, there's no way Japanese film industry can hold up to it.

I was referring to quality of visual effects, not quality of films themselves. Also, sorry if I sounded like an ass with the weed part, that was a joke. I saw Red Cliff and Drug War. Usually people don't talk about VFX in historical dramas and crime thrillers. Japanese cinema still has Koreeda, Miike, Kitano, Iwai and even Sono (I hate 99% of his films, but he have a small cult dedicated to his work in the West).

Lord Dcast wrote:

Dear whoever is making this movie. Please hurry up and release this now.

Big-time second that!

It also doesn't bother me that the characters will be played by Japanese actors--considering this is a Japanese-made movie, what does anyone expect?

As I mention, a lot of Japanese films don't come out in the west (as in I can find a few recent Japanese films on Hulu, Dramafever has none at all so far beside some J-drama catalog) so I can't compare how good they are in term of production value and standard.

We may have the director you mention but I don't think the Japanese film industry has enough to come up with innovative, and more higher budget films from Japan.

I think some of you are getting a bit too off topic with the debates on Chinese, Korean and Japanese live action movies. This thread is for the discussion of the live action AOT movie. So how about we all get back on topic here please. Thank you.