Postby Timstuff » Tue May 19, 2009 1:25 am
LAEM wouldn't be either a reboot or a remake though-- it'd be a live action adaptation of a Japanese animated TV series.
And @ Gendo'sPapa: you've made your point. You think that LAEM will be a bastardization of the show. Well, you are entitled to your own opinion, but there are people who still want to talk about the project and who are looking forward to it. If you're mad about the possibility that the popularity of LAEM could potentially overshadow the original series, look at it this way: If LAEM is popular, then Evangelion is going to be integrated into mainstream Western pop culture, which is something that has never happened before.
Just like any time a movie gets remade, rebooted, or adapted, the you'll be able to walk into the local mega store and find the walls well stocked with copies of the original, and do you know why? When people get caught up by the hype for a new movie, they are more likely to pick up and buy the source material if they see it on a store shelf. It's fairly simple economics, which is why stores always do it. A new movie in an existing franchise does generate interest in the original, which is why every time a new James Bond movie comes out they put out some new ridiculous collection of all the movies. If retail smells a big movie coming out, they tend to stock their shelves with whatever related material they can, because the commercials for the new movie are basically free advertising for the source material. It's not like people will go and watch the Eva anime en masse if the movie is a big hit, but any renewed interest in it would certainly be good.
I guess my problem is that I'm just not picky enough. I mean, I liked Transformers even though the fashionable thing to do is bash it, so clearly something is wrong with me. Either that, or maybe I'm just plain not picky, and I enjoy movies based on their own merits rather than grilling them over every deviation they make from the source material.
There's one last example I'd like to pull out of my bag, for those of you who are into gaming: the Fallout series. Fans of the Fallout series all got pissed when they found out that Fallout 3 would be a first person action RPG with FPS-like combat, and they also complained that the new developer (Bethesda) wouldn't "get" the franchise. They whined that in order to bring Fallout to a bigger audience, Bethesda was robbing the franchise of what made it special in the first place. But you know what? The reviewers all loved the game, it won multiple game of the year awards, and it went on to become the best selling Fallout game ever, expanding the fanbase dramatically. It may have been different, but it was still Fallout, and it was a fallout that a great many more people were able to enjoy than ever before.
I know you could say that comparing a video game to a TV show / movie is like apples and oranges, but when it comes to fanboys/fangirls, there's a lot less variety than you might think. People will always complain when something is "n00b friendly," because they're stuck on this idea that the people making the stuff owe them something for making the property popular. That's just plain not how the world works, and when you get beyond fanboyism, the world suddenly is a more enjoyable place to live in.
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