[LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby camilopc1234 » Thu May 25, 2017 12:53 am

In other words the movie would fail, no matter how good and how original and at the same time how close to the source material the story is, it would be a big flop.
No studio would have the balls and interest on put so much money and doing it.
Even more sure once you know that LAEM has to be a trilogy or a tetralogy with high stakes like Lotr.
And dealing with the age of unknown kids that are suppose to be the main characters is going to be a problem.
Now I have it clear. :(

But I dunno... is there is other films that had problems like this and were a success?

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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Thu May 25, 2017 6:34 am

You'd have to find a way to make live-action Evangelion for under $10 Million. (And that's a good, generous, Fox Studio-greenlit, 1977 Star Wars budget.) And if you can convincingly create the spectacle of Eva for under $10 Million, plus cast, sets, crew, ect., PM me please. And even then, it would till be risky. Let's say that, by some supernatural intervention, you successfully created a live-action Evangelion that looks as good as LotR for less than $10 Million. (Seriously, PM me if you can do that.) The biggest hurdle beyond actually making the movie is distributing the movie. You can make whatever you want if you have the money and don't break the law. (13-year-olds in skin-tight suits isn't illegal. Just think of the pilot scenes as extended bathing-suit scenes, with cockpits instead of pool/beaches.) But no studio in their right mind will release even a fully completed, independently-produced, totally faithful LAEM to the public because it will result in public backlash. The plug suits themselves aren't the real issue, is the leering camera that's essential to the story of sexual frustrations that would be the real issue. Dakota Fanning can be in a tight swimsuit for the swimming scenes in Man on Fire, but the filmmakers knew better than to show that same scene from the POV of the kidnappers, which could potentially lend itself to leering and uncomfortable camera angles.

Also, even if Eva had nothing to do with sexual frustrations of puberty, I don't realistically see 13-year-olds piloting Evas, causing collateral damage, and saving the world. You can do that with Harry Potter because glow stick-looking wands and fantastical castles are too far removed from reality. Same thing is true for Narnia, which is probably the only major film in recent memory to have kids in a real, adult, battle situation, and even then it still side-lines its young female cast from most of the battle scenes. (Though, that was done to parallel the women at Christ's tomb in the Gospels, not because it was actively making excuses for females not being in battle.) But Tokyo-3 isn't far enough removed from reality to have that situation play out convincingly. I have a feeling that even most Japanese audiences would reject kids in realistic adult battle situations if it's seriously, un-fantastically presented in a medium other than animation. It's just too weird looking. You would at least need to bump up the ages to 16 or something.

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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby zlink64 » Thu May 25, 2017 10:00 am

I think it could be done but they'd have to be very willing to change things, a lot of things. Like the way chirstopher nolan took liberties with batman mythos someone can do that with eva. A super faithful adaption I think would be a waste because it'd probably fail and Eva seems like it so personal and specific to Anno style that whatever attempt to copy it would just not work. Like I'd be okay with a director just taking a risk and making their own version of Eva. Also we have three versions of eva, don't think we need someone trying to copy them. That being said if a director thinks they could do faithful adaptation that is awesome then power to them.

That being said based off ghost in the shell I'm not even confident a good adaptation on it's own would be enough....we probably need like a great marketing team and movies like godzill 2 and Pacific 2 rim doing really well before a bunch of normal none fans are even willing to go see some thing like eva at the movies.
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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Sun May 28, 2017 7:45 am

^ Generally speaking, American adaptations of Japanese material do seem to work best when they're treated like comic-book adaptation. What the best films in the examples for both genres do is they adapt characters, concepts, and some basic world building. They generally don't adapt entire storylines. (300 and Watchmen tried to do that, and they're not that great at all. The only one that I think really works as a more complete film adaptation is Sin City, and I can't bring myself to watch that more than once.) Captain America 3: Civil War is the closest thing we got to a film adaptation of a comic book while also being a film that didn't rely on the comic book's presence in order to fill in the details of the overall themes and backgrounds of the narrative and all of the characters, and even then it was really "Civil War" in name and function only. The context (and therefore the theming) is entirely different and based in its own overall MCU themes.

Godzilla is a good example of an American adaptation of a Japanese film that functions like film adaptations of comic books. It's Godzilla. We're in it for the monster, so all we really need is the monster. We don't need Japanese culture, we don't need the original thematic elements or contexts, we don't need any of that stuff. Just like Sam Raimi did with Spider-Man, just put Godzilla in a city, flesh out his story is the same basic direction, following all of the genre tropes in a way that feels earnest and honest, and you'll have a hit. I believe GitS could have been adapted in a similar fashion, maybe in a way that more closely resembles Inception's relationship with Paprika. (Nolan had to buy rights from Paprika in order for his Inception for there not to be any feasible lawsuits dealing with international copyright laws.) But instead they went the whole "adapting the narrative completely" road with an unfit cast before chickening out in the last 10 minutes of the movie.

Evangelion might have be Americanized in the same fashion Paprika did: In spirit only. And, while not as close of a comparison as Paprika and Inception, Pacific Rim gets it close enough to Eva to count.

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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby Tumbling Down » Wed Jul 12, 2017 1:05 am

How about.. an American Evangelion animated movie? :shifty:

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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby El Squibbonator » Wed Jul 12, 2017 5:52 pm

It would probably be some sort of god-awful scatological comedy in the vein of Sausage Party.
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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby Chuckman » Wed Jul 12, 2017 6:13 pm

The only way to make LAEM work is by making all the monster fights stop motion animation.
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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby Tumbling Down » Wed Jul 12, 2017 9:06 pm

View Original PostChuckman wrote:The only way to make LAEM work is by making all the monster fights stop motion animation.

Assuming you're not joking, I said in another thread that I'd want them to be men in suits. I love the idea of practical effects, but the frame rate on stop-motion is low for a film with live-action components. Another option is to use puppets that are filmed in real-time.

View Original PostEl Squibbonator wrote:It would probably be some sort of god-awful scatological comedy in the vein of Sausage Party.

I'd actually like an American Evangelion movie to have comedic elements, but good comedic elements. Not even the Japanese version could manage that.

Like

View Original PostApolloIVtv wrote:I would attribute the LAEM problem with what happened with the Zack Snyder's Watchmen. Not only the idea that things would have to be rearranged or heavily condensed for time purposes and to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, its also that one of the reason why Eva works so well is because it works best primarily in the medium and cultural context it is in, and that's anime and Japan.

Same thing with Watchmen. Alan Moore designed the story purposefully so that it would only work (or at least work best) as a comic and have accentuate what makes the medium unique to other artforms. So the very idea of turning it into a movie goes against the entire purpose of the creator and the story.

Not that a live action adaption should be shunned of course, but I don't think we can expect a live action eva movie to really ever capture what made original so special no matter who works on it.


I'm not going to tell Apollo his view is wrong, but I don't really agree with it. I loved the Watchmen movie, and I thought the way it injected humor without ruining the characters and story was great. To my recollection, they didn't even add any jokes in the actual dialogue. It was stuff like soundtrack, costume designs, etc. The "Hallelujah" scene in particular was wonderful.

View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:You'd have to find a way to make live-action Evangelion for under $10 Million. (And that's a good, generous, Fox Studio-greenlit, 1977 Star Wars budget.) And if you can convincingly create the spectacle of Eva for under $10 Million, plus cast, sets, crew, ect., PM me please. And even then, it would till be risky. Let's say that, by some supernatural intervention, you successfully created a live-action Evangelion that looks as good as LotR for less than $10 Million.


I'm not someone who thinks sets/props/etc need to be realistic to be entertaining. All that matters to me is that the actors make us believe that they believe whatever they're facing is real. Then, I care about their pain. I guess I'm not representative of the typical audience. I do, think, though, that Evangelion is already niche enough that adding further niches on top of it wouldn't be that big a deal.

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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Thu Jul 13, 2017 5:28 pm

^ Well, I never said it had to be realistic. It just needs to be convincing. And $10 Million is too little for Hollywood to do anything with these days.

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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby Chuckman » Thu Jul 13, 2017 5:50 pm

I'm not joking. Stop motion puppetry can be wonderful and strange.
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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby El Squibbonator » Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:18 pm

You say that's how much Star Wars cost in 1977. But how much would it be in today's money?
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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby Chuckman » Thu Jul 13, 2017 10:17 pm

About forty million adjusted for inflation, but I would expect it to actually be higher. Blockbuster movie making is more expensive now and the kind of location shooting, etc. on the first Star Wars would be very costly today.
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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby El Squibbonator » Fri Jul 14, 2017 8:53 am

So, maybe $100 million, give or take?
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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby silvermoonlight » Fri Jul 14, 2017 9:14 am

View Original PostChuckman wrote:I'm not joking. Stop motion puppetry can be wonderful and strange.


Its a shame Ray Harryhausen has passed away because him doing the Angels and Evangelions would be so awesome. :eva01_roar:
Last edited by silvermoonlight on Thu Jul 27, 2017 3:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Fri Jul 14, 2017 11:14 am

Yeah, $100 Million at the very least.

View Original Postsilvermoonlight wrote:Its a shame Ray Harryhausen has passed away because him doing the Angels and Evangelion would be so awesome. :eva01_roar:

Hire Phil Tippett with his Go-Motion techniques and make everyone happy.

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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby Tumbling Down » Sat Jul 15, 2017 1:04 am

I agree, Tippett is the way. Loved his work on Jurassic Park. ..that was him, right?

View Original PostChuckman wrote:About forty million adjusted for inflation, but I would expect it to actually be higher. Blockbuster movie making is more expensive now and the kind of location shooting, etc. on the first Star Wars would be very costly today.

Why is it more expensive to shoot on location today? Is it filming permits? Can I blame the government?

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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby Cybermat47 » Sat Jul 15, 2017 2:47 am

Hideaki Anno's Shin Godzilla was made on a budget of $15 million USD, and looks amazing, despite most of the budget being used on an unused puppet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M89VLZgo1Vg

I think a US studio could make a LAEM on a similar budget, but I doubt that a US studio would be willing to risk making a movie with naked a comatose 14 year-old being masturbated to by their 14 year-old friend, while a grown man sticks his hand inside the belly of another naked 14 year old, before the comatose 14 year old is horrifically torn apart, and the masturbating 14 year old sees that the 14 year old with a hand in her belly is now a giant naked 14 year old.

The only way a studio could get away with that is if Danny DeVito played all the characters.
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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby Chuckman » Sun Jul 16, 2017 1:21 pm

That's why I think it should be done with stop motion instead of rubber suits. Making the Evas and Angels physical objects that move unnaturally would be perfect. The hyperrealism of CGI would be inappropriate.
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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby Tumbling Down » Tue Jul 18, 2017 7:03 am

View Original PostCybermat47 wrote:Hideaki Anno's Shin Godzilla was made on a budget of $15 million USD, and looks amazing

Are you sure that isn't just because it's cheaper to make things in Japan? I know their animators are paid peanuts.

View Original PostCybermat47 wrote:despite most of the budget being used on an unused puppet.

Wait, really?

View Original PostCybermat47 wrote:I doubt that a US studio would be willing to risk making a movie with naked a comatose 14 year-old being masturbated to by their 14 year-old friend, while a grown man sticks his hand inside the belly of another naked 14 year old, before the comatose 14 year old is horrifically torn apart, and the masturbating 14 year old sees that the 14 year old with a hand in her belly is now a giant naked 14 year old.

You can stay true to the themes of the original work without copying the exact events. Rebuild is attempting to do that.

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Re: [LAEM] Would an american Evangelion live-action movie have ever worked if it had been done right?

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Postby Alaska Slim » Tue Jul 18, 2017 9:30 am

View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote: But Tokyo-3 isn't far enough removed from reality to have that situation play out convincingly. I have a feeling that even most Japanese audiences would reject kids in realistic adult battle situations

... Battle Royale? :devil:

Game of Thrones seems to love tossing kids into **** situations, and I think a series, or even a mini-series, may prove a better format for Evangelion.
Considering we're in a Golden age of television, with all sorts of small IP being adapted (while Hollywood failed to adapt GiTs well), it may even be preferable.
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