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Answerman - How Much Control Do Manga Artists Have Over Hollywood Adaptations?


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Morry



Joined: 26 Jun 2016
Posts: 756
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 11:41 am Reply with quote
I have a pretty negative opinion of Hollywood, so the less control they have over the decision-making, the better.
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brammerhammer23



Joined: 06 Jun 2013
Posts: 62
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 11:50 am Reply with quote
The live-action Akira now has lots of promise with Taika Waititi directing. He also recently said he is looking to cast Asian actors in the roles which would be a big deal.
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Watanabefan



Joined: 02 Oct 2017
Posts: 152
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 12:50 pm Reply with quote
Yeah, I'm not sure people get how unusual it is for a comic artist or writer to actually get input in a Hollywood production.

Also needs to be pointed out that creator input isn't necessarily a good thing. Read a really good piece recently on the failed 1950s movie of The Fountainhead, and how a lot of the production was sabotaged by the fact that the studio stupidly gave Ayn Rand complete control over the script, which ended up as a train wreck because she had no idea how to write for a movie vs. writing a novel (not that the source material was all that great to begin with...).

Or a better known example: Stephen King hated the movie adaptation of The Shining, even though most consider it an absolute classic. Years later, he was able to make a TV mini-series where he had more creative control and made sure it stuck closer to the book, and surprise of all surprises, it ended up vastly inferior to the movie.
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-SP-





PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 1:26 pm Reply with quote
brammerhammer23 wrote:
The live-action Akira now has lots of promise with Taika Waititi directing. He also recently said he is looking to cast Asian actors in the roles which would be a big deal.

Asian doesn't always equal Japanese. Unless they're using Japanese actors, the actors ethnicity/race doesn't really matter.
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TsubomiKoneko



Joined: 10 Aug 2004
Posts: 247
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 1:33 pm Reply with quote
-SP- wrote:
brammerhammer23 wrote:
The live-action Akira now has lots of promise with Taika Waititi directing. He also recently said he is looking to cast Asian actors in the roles which would be a big deal.

Asian doesn't always equal Japanese. Unless they're using Japanese actors, the actors ethnicity/race doesn't really matter.


I think a lot of people would still rather it be Asian actors, regardless if they're Japanese, than seeing it whitewashed.


Last edited by TsubomiKoneko on Wed Jun 05, 2019 1:33 pm; edited 1 time in total
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luisedgarf



Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 656
Location: Guadalajara, Mexico
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 1:33 pm Reply with quote
-SP- wrote:
brammerhammer23 wrote:
The live-action Akira now has lots of promise with Taika Waititi directing. He also recently said he is looking to cast Asian actors in the roles which would be a big deal.

Asian doesn't always equal Japanese. Unless they're using Japanese actors, the actors ethnicity/race doesn't really matter.


Neither Western equals American.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 1:42 pm Reply with quote
Still think it was extortion, because most American and Western adaptations at least attempt to resemble the source material-even Hellboy, which just bombed in its rebooted form. As for Alita, they were hoping for another Avatar, and Cameron still has yet to deliver on that. Anyway, will audiences, I hope there's no 'Terminator fatigue' over Dark Fate? Who knows, but it doesn’t help that it shares a similar title as a certain X-Men movie which I guess they’re too embarrassed to call X-Men. As for Bebop, Sunrise probably only wants in, because it’s not getting anywhere with that alleged sequel. [Or maybe Firefly and Serenity got to them. Who knows?] I think they signed off on that live-action Gundam with more confidence. Though is there enough demand for those things, after Pacific Rim 2 dudded?

Last edited by GATSU on Wed Jun 05, 2019 3:35 pm; edited 2 times in total
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#854626



Joined: 04 Apr 2016
Posts: 171
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 1:44 pm Reply with quote
i feel if these american producers would just read/watch the source material and do there best to understand its story, characters, and themes from start to finish. THEN start making the movies in the spirit of the original these live action movies could be alright, but it seems like the producers just have some other people give the creator a 15 minute summary then they just make a movie based off the premise...and fail.
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samuelp
Industry Insider


Joined: 25 Nov 2007
Posts: 2228
Location: San Antonio, USA
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 2:02 pm Reply with quote
Watanabefan wrote:

Or a better known example: Stephen King hated the movie adaptation of The Shining, even though most consider it an absolute classic. Years later, he was able to make a TV mini-series where he had more creative control and made sure it stuck closer to the book, and surprise of all surprises, it ended up vastly inferior to the movie.

You could do a whole phd thesis just on adaptations of Stephen King novels...
I love Kubrick's The Shining but I also liked the original novel and they are really so different I'm glad there's a more faithful adaptation too.
I think it's pretty impossible when you're being compared to such a classic, so I'm not sure we can really blame this on closer creative control alone.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 2:12 pm Reply with quote
My first immediate reaction at reading the header was, "About as much as WE had over those Japanese anime versions of Iron Man and Wolverine." Confused

Watanabefan wrote:
Or a better known example: Stephen King hated the movie adaptation of The Shining, even though most consider it an absolute classic. Years later, he was able to make a TV mini-series where he had more creative control and made sure it stuck closer to the book, and surprise of all surprises, it ended up vastly inferior to the movie.


And the only reason we got that Johnny Depp "Charlie & the Chocolate Factory" monstrosity was the product of old memos dating back to the legend of Roald Dahl hating the '71 Gene Wilder version, for a number of reasons too diva to mention here.
E.B. White had a number of valid complaints against the '75 animated "Charlotte's Web", but his own suggested fixes weren't improvements.

Aside from Stephen King's own screenplay adaptations (which weren't great), the most original-author control we've seen recently was when JK Rowling was allowed to script both Fantastic Beasts movies--and the entire would-be "American Wizardry Universe"--by herself. Oyyyy... Shocked
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CastMember1991



Joined: 06 Feb 2012
Posts: 857
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 2:47 pm Reply with quote
To me, casting Justin Chatwin as Goku wasn't Dragonball: Evolution's biggest problem. The story and the special effects made it more like a Power Rangers movie than anything, and it really just killed it. Had that movie been successful, maybe 20th Century Fox would still be one of the major studios today (Rupert Murdoch sold Fox to Disney for $71 billion). It's a real shame, because it had a lot of potential
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-SP-





PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 3:01 pm Reply with quote
luisedgarf wrote:
-SP- wrote:
brammerhammer23 wrote:
The live-action Akira now has lots of promise with Taika Waititi directing. He also recently said he is looking to cast Asian actors in the roles which would be a big deal.

Asian doesn't always equal Japanese. Unless they're using Japanese actors, the actors ethnicity/race doesn't really matter.


Neither Western equals American.

I never said it did.
TsubomiKoneko wrote:
-SP- wrote:
brammerhammer23 wrote:
The live-action Akira now has lots of promise with Taika Waititi directing. He also recently said he is looking to cast Asian actors in the roles which would be a big deal.

Asian doesn't always equal Japanese. Unless they're using Japanese actors, the actors ethnicity/race doesn't really matter.


I think a lot of people would still rather it be Asian actors, regardless if they're Japanese, than seeing it whitewashed.

I just find it funny how people think using a "white" actor to play a Japanese characters role, is racist. But these same people say that the characters should be played by an "Asian" actor. Is it not racist if a Chinese guy is playing the role of a Japanese character? Doesn't that feed the stereotype that all Asians look the same?
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ReifuTD



Joined: 19 Sep 2009
Posts: 171
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 3:10 pm Reply with quote
Yeah, well I don't think it would always be a good idea to give creators vetoing power in movie decisions, You shouldn't have to force people who are way more familiar with the franchise you are working on to pay money to consult. You can either choose to hire them on as a consultant or not specially when you have other companies behind it.

Example it probably would have been a good idea to allow the people at Toei to have a say in Dragonball Evolution. If Toei wanted to consult Akira Toriyama and his people on movie decisions that's on them.

Now a days Toei has Team Dragonball witch the team people that handles and consults with everything Dragonball, TV series, movies, manga, games, toys. If a Hollywood live action movie was done today, any studio that ignores such a resources would be stupid and bound to fail. Like Sonic the Hedgehog I'm familiar with how the comics are handled by Sega and how they would approved things. That live action movie I can tell Sega didn't have much say in stuff there. At least now it seem like the studio is now trying to consult people that actually worked with Sonic in other media after the fact.
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Commander Cluck



Joined: 02 May 2019
Posts: 123
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 3:26 pm Reply with quote
Watanabefan wrote:
Or a better known example: Stephen King hated the movie adaptation of The Shining, even though most consider it an absolute classic. Years later, he was able to make a TV mini-series where he had more creative control and made sure it stuck closer to the book, and surprise of all surprises, it ended up vastly inferior to the movie.


"vastly inferior" in what way? Looking at the Wikipedia page for it says it won a number of awards as well as got lots of positive reviews so it must have been some kind of success. Did you just personally not like it?

The Shining is considered a classic because of when it came out, and it's effect on pop culture at the time. No modern adaption, no matter how much better it may be than the original movie will ever replace it because you can't retroactively change that. That goes for pretty much any modern remake or adaption. Good luck getting people to admit the old Wizard of Oz or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movies were kind of not that great. That's stepping on people's childhoods right there, which never works out well.

Akira isn't lauded for it's story, plot, or characters. It was lauded because of it's animation which was amazing for the 1988s and a lot of westerners first exposure to Japanese animation, let alone animation with mature content. That's why any project which has come out since then that have surpassed it on a technical level won't ever be able to dethroned that achievement. It's also why a live-action adaption of Akira seems entirely pointless. It's removing the primary thing the movie is lauded for
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SilverTalon01



Joined: 02 Apr 2012
Posts: 2401
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 3:34 pm Reply with quote
TsubomiKoneko wrote:
I think a lot of people would still rather it be Asian actors, regardless if they're Japanese, than seeing it whitewashed.


Oh, I dunno... I remember Memoirs of a Geisha got a lot of crap for casting a Chinese actress. During the whole GITS movie white washing thing, some Japanese actresses were very vocal about how the movie should have used a Japanese actress (as in specifically Japanese and not just 'not white').

Really though, I think most people don't give a crap.
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