what if netflix did a live action evangelion series ...

[The18°angel]

considering how netflix made a live action adaptation of cowboy bebop and how it ended (I still need to see the series myself) how do you think it would be a evangelion series made by Netflix.

Would it be based on the anime, the manga or the rebuild?

the pilots would be older than their animated counterparts or would they still be 14 years old?

How would they handle the psychological aspect of the characters or would they try to change them a bit to make them more umm mainstream.

How would the battles between the Evas and the Angels be?

and how they would handle the characters outside of the eva pilots.

how many seasons would it have?

and what do you think the end of the series is.

I want to see what you people think about this

[Axx°N N.]

WARNING: Extreme cynicism.

A mish-mash of all three, like the Ghost in the Shell live-action.

They would be 25 year olds unconvincingly playing high-schoolers.

If it's there, overly reliant on exposition. If not, completely removed or replaced with something else, either wittingly or unwittingly antithetical to the original point.

CGI eyesores.

If not near-nonexistent, made way more important for some reason that detracts from their character far worse than when they were minor (or in the vernacular, "lacking dynamism").

As many as is profitable before it gets canceled. One.

Something vaguely supporting American values.

Bonus: They would try to "fix" any political incorrectness but in their attempt to render certain aspects less sexist, would somehow loop back around and unintentionally make it more sexist anyway.

[silvermoonlight]

I used to be behind this idea but after seeing The Live Action bebop Netflix really needs to do way better, and they're not ready for this franchise yet, they might be some years from now but not yet.

[EvaChero]

I'm also cynical about this....I think it would be homogenized and watered down to the point of being unrecognizable.... possibly
something akin to a show about "Rock'em Sock'em Robots, only with people in them instead of pressing the triggers on the outside.........

[::KL7::]

When I first found out about Evangelion (2013), I always thought the perfect trio for the Eva pilots were:

Short haired Ellen Page as Shinji.

Chloe Grace-Moretz as Asuka.

Isabelle Fuhrman as Rei.

Seeing as it’s now 2021/2022, there’s a good chance we’d get Idris Elba or the Rock as Gendo, add Ryan Reynolds in there as Kaji for comic relief, the kids from Stranger Things as the Eva pilots, and Gal Gadot or Megan Fox as Misato.

[Registration2]

I would literally prefer 3DCG Evangelion to a live action.

[FelipeFritschF]

Please, please no.

If it happens, Amazon is a more likely candidate, after Netflix's mishandling of the NGE license and their repeated live action adaptation failures. Anno's statements lead me to believe Khara sees Amazon as a more reliable international partner, and that might be only for distribution. Supposedly Netflix themselves have even lost the rights to NGE, and it'll all be moved to Amazon once it expires. Don't quote me on that though, just a rumor. There's also the fact that, although Evangelion is huge in Japan and though Shin was quite successful, Eva is no longer that much of a behemoth franchise compared to some other shounen IPs and other current rising stars like the, ahem, all-consuming Demon Slayer. Regardless, what really matters for a western made adaptation is popularity in the west. Eva is plenty popular, but even less significant compared to those mainstream properties. Even more relevant, Eva is only that big outside the Anglosphere. I have mentioned many times before how Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French markets et al gets tons of officially licensed Eva stuff, spin-offs and whatnot, but there's comparatively less material for the English-speaking one, even though it is bigger in absolute numbers. And Netflix and Amazon are both US-centric companies, for the most part.

Moreover, there's also the fact that Anno has a long-standing project for Evangelion to be one of the pillars for the anime industry and laterally the Japanese cultural industry, and he has been sponsoring several projects to this effect, including but not limited to the Evangelion franchise... if he ever allows a live action adaptation to happen, it'll probably be something done in Japan, by Japanese creators (maybe even one of his protégés). There's also the years-long drama regarding ADV's attempt to make what we call the "LAEM" happen. This would seem to indicate at the very least skepticism on Anno-tachi's part for a western adaptation of Eva. Then again, Tomino had, AFAIK, a similar attitude and yet Netflix is adapting Gundam right now. If it happens nonetheless, I'll give it a few years still, they have much higher priorities on the way...

As for the adaptation itself...

Bonus: They would try to "fix" any political incorrectness but in their attempt to render certain aspects less sexist, would somehow loop back around and unintentionally make it more sexist anyway.

This is what I really fear... when you look at some of the interviews with the people adapting Bebop, it is clear they felt they could, or even should improve the source material. On that note, I tried the new Foundation Apple series. Boy is it bad. Dropped it at the end of ep 4, they clearly tried to make some sort of GOT/westworld hybrid, which might have worked, but they threw in a lot of meh action and Star Wars-esqueness. Extremely drawn out. Worst problem is the writers clearly don't understand and/or despise the idels of the original work. It's just like the new Star Trek shows. At least Dune turned out great.

[BernardoCairo]

All I wanted was an Evangelion live action series that didn't revolve around EVAs, the main cast or anything else we've seen. I wanted something on the same vein as those live action sequences from EOE, but with new characters. That feels like Evangelion, even if it's unique. It has the NGE DNA.

[OutlawThirds]

Hear me out on this one: practical Eva effects as much as possible. Doug Jones could probably play an Eva.

[Natalie the Cat]

Hear me out on this one: practical Eva effects as much as possible. Doug Jones could probably play an Eva.

Oh my fuck yes. Doug Jones fighting another guy/gal/nonbinary pal in a Sachiel suit please. No mocap, literally people in suits.

Barring that, stop motion Evas. Amp up the stop motion eerieness. Evas should be freaky. Weird, offputting, unnerving.

[Thuktun Flishithy]

Full on agree. If Eva were ever to be live action, it'd need to be either Phil Tippet Mad God style stop motion that betrays just how fucking uncanny and creepy the Evas and Angels are, or go full Ultraman and do everything with suits and model cities, make Anno proud. I bet if big studios put the effort in they could make toku-style filmmaking look just as good, if not better, than the stuff we get nowadays.

Some of the best looking fantasy and sci fi use model sets and other practical effects enhanced by CGI, to make it feel as real as possible. Interstellar did it, Blade Runner 2049 did it, Dune did it. To paraphrase Jan Svankmejer, touch is the most loyal sense, hardest to trick with effects, and so even a slightly odd-looking real thing will be of higher fidelity than the most meticulous CGI.

[FelipeFritschF]

I used to be behind this idea but after seeing The Live Action bebop Netflix really needs to do way better, and they're not ready for this franchise yet, they might be some years from now but not yet.

By the way... you folks should probably keep in mind that for a company like Netflix, dozens or hundreds of shows failing... doesn't really matter. Netflix is the epitome of modern financial capitalism in the entertainment industry, which is why they can pump out so much stuff, most of it heartlessly designed by committee and (most of all) algorithms, which are so pervasive they do everything from (of course) giving you recommendations, making thumbnails, and deciding what sort of movies to make and what actors to use: the classic example is House of Cards, back when Kevin Spacey had dedicated fans. They basically launched the idea by realizing a market demand of Spacey+Fincher+political drama (of the 2012 flavour...). I'm not quite sure how much of a factor the original UK show was beyond apparenly it being a common taste for people who watched it already.

Big Data shenanigans aside, my point is, nowadays big investors are used to investing in hundreds, maybe a thousand companies, and the vast majority of these will fail and lose many million dollars, but if just one of these is successful, it'll easily recoup their investments and losses and then some, sometimes in the billions.

So for better or worse, I'm afraid CowBe's failure simply doesn't matter, because they have so many other franchises they can (and will) burn through, and they only need a handful to be successful and rake in millions of viewers. There are over 200 Korean shows on Netflix and they just needed Squid Game to blow up. Previously they had La Casa de Papel as another example of a cultural/national subgenre, if you will. I don't even know how many fantasy book/video game adaptations they have, but either way the second season of The Witcher premiered yesterday. Netflix could make 50 crappy anime adaptations, it doesn't matter. They only need one to be successful. I've expressed my doubts before, but Eva is absolutely within a Top 50, to say the least. So if you folks want that to happen, it's more of a matter of when, not if Netflix would try it. Though I would expect Amazon to do a better job and they're probably still likelier candidates, they do have a very similar philosophy as Netflix. Then again, Khara might not let them.

Anno says he turns to live action when he runs out of things to say with animation. “There are certain things that just can’t be done in animation - the characters are symbolic and can’t reach the same depth of emotion as, say, the actress in ritual,” he explains. But he adds quickly: “Only Japanese animation really explores our interior world and emotions. Japan is probably the only country that makes animation for adults as well as children.”

It’s the differences in approach to animation between Japan and the West that makes Anno reluctant to collaborate on international projects. Neither is he interested in live-action remakes of his work. “The mental structure is too different between Hollywood and Japan,” he says. “There may be some Japanese film-makers who can collaborate with Western creators, but I’m not one of them.”

https://www.screendaily.com/awards/hide ... 55.article

Maybe this rules out the dreaded future Netflix adaptation after all. Nonetheless, Anno, being the tsundere he is, might even come back himself at some point, though not necessarily as soon as he's done with the, ahem, other Shins.

[nerv bae]

I'm ready for a future where every 7-10 years a brilliant creative team gives us a new Eva, exploring new themes, tied back to existing canon using lore mechanisms (Impacts, the Book of Life, etc.). One of these new Evas could even be live action! But I have zero confidence in 2021's Netflix to form or find that team.

[Natalie the Cat]

I would enjoy that. A variety of creative takes exploring the many diverse ways that Eva could play out and the themes it could explore.

There is always a boy, and a fucking robot.

[UrsusArctos]

The trouble with turning the Evangelion franchise into another Gundam is that so much of Evangelion comes from Hideaki Anno himself, and Anno's influence as an auteur really shapes Eva to an extent that Tomino's doesn't with Gundam. Gundam is quite a bit simpler and more straightforward story-wise, and it isn't quite as anchored as Evangelion is to the Japanese psyche at a particular period of time (the mid 1990s, the depths of the lost decade) which made Eva resonate so powerfully with the Japanese audiences at the time. Gundam is freer to expand while still looking and feeling like Gundam, while Eva spinoffs and new creations (case in point - ANIMA) don't quite capture the distinct feeling of Evangelion.

Evangelion doesn't have to be nearly as huge as Demon Slayer to be Evangelion. The comparison with Star Wars is apt - Star Wars has a dedicated fanbase that still cares about the universe even after The Rise of Skywalker turned into a shambles. With Thrice Upon A Time, the NGE franchise's last major release was on a high note, and there's plenty more to come.

If that stuff comes out of Netflix, however, it's pretty much guaranteed to be bad. While Netflix can produce dozens of poorly-produced, poorly-written shows based on their own algorithm they are fairly deep in debt from what I've heard, and everybody wants to get their hands on whatever IP to get into the streaming game. Netflix needs to up its success-to-failure rate. They failed miserably with Bebop, and while Gundam is no Bebop, their track record doesn't have me looking forward to it. However, they might be desperate enough to learn from it.

So, to answer the thread topic, what of an Evangelion Live-Action Series (ELAS, pronounced "Alas")? Netflix seems to have blown it if Khara's willing to stick to Amazon as a partner, which means we're not likely to see them produce another abominable flop. What might Amazon produce? That's a good question, and I'm not nearly as familiar about Amazon's track record with anime to live action adaptations. The Evangelion universe has a vast richness of things that are hinted at and never full spelled out. Episode 13 and particularly Episode 21 hint at a lot going on behind the scenes. A Live-Action series covering the backstory of Evangelion, the "shady occult society" of Seele, and many other things in Evangelion's backstory without even involving the Children, or Third Impact and its mayhem would be absolutely fascinating, and there's more to mine in that than anything else.

[Axx°N N.]

The trouble with turning the Evangelion franchise into another Gundam is that so much of Evangelion comes from Hideaki Anno himself, and Anno's influence as an auteur really shapes Eva to an extent that Tomino's doesn't with Gundam. Gundam is quite a bit simpler and more straightforward story-wise, and it isn't quite as anchored as Evangelion is to the Japanese psyche at a particular period of time (the mid 1990s, the depths of the lost decade) which made Eva resonate so powerfully with the Japanese audiences at the time.

Not sure that I agree with this--there's definitely a difference between Tomino-led Gundam and other incarnations, and I feel a lot of it has to do with his presence in installing pathos--and I do think that pathos is related to certain timely sentiments. The ever-present meditations on children taking part in war, and the contrast between innocence and war and the promises of radical youth contrasted with oppressive adulthood, not to mention tribalism, doesn't make sense as anything but a response to recent real-life warfare and cultural, generational transition.

Gundam spinoffs do their best when they go their own way and use the strictly matter of fact aspects of the setting as a framework, but fail spectacularly when they try to capture the pathos Tomino breathed into it--Gundam Unicorn being an example, to me, of a regurgitation of theme and feeling but without the necessary understanding of the purpose and origin of that sentiment.

In that sense, I think an Eva adaptation would fail outright if it attempted to inhabit the spaces in the narrative carved out by Anno's psychology, because it would be the blind leading the blind through a maze.

But attempting to do backstory or side-story has its own catches. The bigger problem with Eva spinoffs is that there's redundancy with other media. It's a show built on prior shows, and the one defining characteristic was how any of its tropes served the unique personality at the drama's core. Cut off from that integral element, is there anything truly novel to explore? Gundam spinoffs can work because they're individual war stories, there's endless dramas you can explore; same with Star Wars. Some remote outpost, some battalion, the small-scale human drama of a minor skirmish that contributes to the greater, narratively endless and inexhaustible war period. Eva simply doesn't have that. Cut off from Shinji, exploring Seele is just a secret society tale. Exploring Nerv is a secret organization tale or scientific bureaucratic tale. If you protract the monster of the week premise, it's just Ultraman with Yamashita designs. Maybe what Anno realized when he attempted to do a Shinji-less Rebuild was that it was just another indistinguishable post-apocalyptic tale, war-front tale, etc.

The other problem is that while you can focus on characters, the characters of Eva are only really coherent when attached to the aforementioned integral element. The Asuka and Rei of the spinoff mangas are just stock characters when the central drama is swapped out with something lighter.

It made all the sense in the world to have read that interview where Anno characterizes Rebuild as "resisting" his attempts to tinker with the narrative, and voicing his surprise that the old narrative was so iron-clad in how everything dovetailed together that he struggled to differentiate anything until dropping the dual payload nuke of Mari and the time-skip. How that turned out is subjective, but to me NTE suffered the same fate I feel is inherent to any remake/adaptation/spinoff: a failure to justify redundancy, and lack of thesis.

I don't find myself intrigued at the prospect of exploring the backstory of any Eva organization or character (case in point, Kaji's manga backstory was neat but inessential), because it felt like anything only mattered (or, was compelling) insofar as it served atmosphere and character drama; certain things are only interesting because there's room to imagine, and some things serve their purpose servicing broader narrative needs but would be rendered inert if tasked with anything more.

I don't think these elements can be separated, or to put it a different way: the Eva narrative is an engine, and taking aspects apart and setting them aside on their own just means there's nothing functioning to move the car.

[UrsusArctos]

I find your argument to be self-contradictory. Evangelion has a secret society/conspiracy tale, a spy story, a science fiction story, a commentary on the state of Japanese society in the 1980s and 1990s and so on woven into it, and the backstory in the episodes I mentioned in the previous post hint at so much to explore. There's no reason why an adult character involved in any aspects of those tales couldn't be psychoanalyzed or enter the same kind of pyschological drama as Shinji, especially since Misato gets it full on in Episodes 25 and 26 alongside the pilot trio. How is any of this not possible? Anno has put his own tendency to criticizing Japanese society and bureaucracy in movies like Shin Godzilla, and he has shown that he can pull it off. If he decided to be involved in a show examining one of the other aspects of the Evangelion universe that he hinted at, I think he could do so.

Further, if Gundam and Star Wars can rehash many of the same tales in different configurations while still finding fresh material in varying amounts, why not Evangelion? Take the example of the Mandalorian. It takes a lot of old western tropes and elements of Lone Wolf and Cub, and places them in the Star Wars universe while telling a story that still feels mostly fresh, and remains cool and very watchable. Gundam is quite formulaic and I see where you're coming from about Tomino and his own ability to instill pathos - yes, this is why any future Evangelion production needs Anno's involvement. But why wouldn't an Evangelion show focusing on other elements of the universe not be able to achieve the same thing, going by your own logic? To use your analogy of a car engine, plenty of engines have been altered and modified over the years and have achieved excellent performance improvements, because they were fit with new parts that worked with the old and improved their function. Why not Eva? Yes, Kaji's backstory in the manga and some of the other additions weren't great, but elements like that were due to Sadamoto not handling the characters and the setting as well as Anno, and the Manga was solely Sadamoto's work (And don't even get me started on ANIMA...)

Don't get me wrong, I think a Netflix Evangelion show will fail given how likely it is for them to give it the same ham-handed treatment as Cowboy Bebop. Any Evangelion show or other creation that doesn't have Anno's own unique vision or involvement, or Evangelion TV's own rootedness in time and place is likely to fail or at least come off as distinctly inferior. I would be happy to be proven wrong on both points by a future Evangelion work, but I don't think it likely.

What Anno set out to achieve with Rebuild, or why he made the decisions that he did is a whole different story, but Rebuild is a story that exists in a world heavily defined by "old century" Evangelion, and Anno and the Khara staff completely know it. A new Evangelion franchise work, post-Rebuild, would have to stand on its own as a show without having to lean on the original work, and that's something the Mandalorian does quite well: I've seen people who aren't Star Wars fans enjoy it thoroughly. Even if Rebuild 3.0 dropped the idea of a narrative without Shinji, from what I heard the possibility of an "Evangelion 2.5" or something similar exploring the period between 2.0 and 3.0 hasn't been ruled out, and it's the sort of thing I would personally look forward to, with Anno's involvement.

[Axx°N N.]

I find your argument to be self-contradictory. Evangelion has a secret society/conspiracy tale, a spy story, a science fiction story, a commentary on the state of Japanese society in the 1980s and 1990s and so on woven into it, and the backstory in the episodes I mentioned in the previous post hint at so much to explore. There's no reason why an adult character involved in any aspects of those tales couldn't be psychoanalyzed or enter the same kind of pyschological drama as Shinji, especially since Misato gets it full on in Episodes 25 and 26 alongside the pilot trio. How is any of this not possible? Anno has put his own tendency to criticizing Japanese society and bureaucracy in movies like Shin Godzilla, and he has shown that he can pull it off. If he decided to be involved in a show examining one of the other aspects of the Evangelion universe that he hinted at, I think he could do so.

Because doing so would be repetition without motivation, other than the practical fact that recognizable characters are selling points. NGE veered off the rails and became totally dominated by its creator, and I say that as a positive--any attempt to do so again would be for the sake of doing it, and not a natural process whereby this swallowing up act occurs because it just happens as part of an organic creative process. Beginning from the start with the anticipation that it will subvert and surprise at the end has a certain paradoxical nature to it, because a descent into madness would seem normal and everyday under the expectations. The main surprise of NTE is that it ended on a positive note, but it wasn't a one-two-punch, because everyone was waiting for the shoe to drop in some sense and we were all prompted for it and following cues. It was surprising, but was it surprising that it was surprising?

Eva's narrative seems to be a result of a very specific circumstance and a very specific personality. I don't think you can look at it, analyze it and then attempt to resuscitate it again. To overextend the engine metaphor (quite to its breaking point), grafting new additions onto the engine would be more like a remaster or direct alteration of the original, right? Which already did occur and did improve it, imo; I can't imagine NGE without the DC or EoE. But to use the metaphor your way: at what point does an old engine severely augmented become distinguishable from a brand new engine, other than its arbitrary surface-level shape, if even that is maintained? Did the Mandalorian need to be a Star Wars tale? Could it have theoretically turned out better or had more creative liberties if it was an original IP? It makes me think of the guy who made Joker acknowledging that it might not have been made if it wasn't attached to the Batman IP, and more or less doesn't need to be about the DC comic character--that he used the IP in order to convince executives to make a gritty character study, the thing he actually wanted to do. I'm of the camp that think greater things could have come from Khara if they weren't financially obligated to keep pumping out Eva, and I'm weary of endless franchises in general.

In theory I'm sure it's possible to create quality new Eva tales, I'm open to being proven wrong. In practice I just don't see it, and theory and practice are two very different things.

[UrsusArctos]

Because doing so would be repetition without motivation, other than the practical fact that recognizable characters are selling points. NGE veered off the rails and became totally dominated by its creator, and I say that as a positive--any attempt to do so again would be for the sake of doing it, and not a natural process whereby this swallowing up act occurs because it just happens as part of an organic creative process. Beginning from the start with the anticipation that it will subvert and surprise at the end has a certain paradoxical nature to it, because a descent into madness would seem normal and everyday under the expectations. The main surprise of NTE is that it ended on a positive note, but it wasn't a one-two-punch, because everyone was waiting for the shoe to drop in some sense and we were all prompted for it and following cues. It was surprising, but was it surprising that it was surprising?

I fail to see how you think NGE veered off the rails and I don't understand where you think that an adaptation will subvert and surprise? You've lost me, I'm afraid.

Eva's narrative seems to be a result of a very specific circumstance and a very specific personality. I don't think you can look at it, analyze it and then attempt to resuscitate it again.

Which is precisely why nobody should try to resuscitate it again - it's been done, and it was a masterpiece. Your engine metaphor stretched a little too far - but regarding the Mandalorian, I think the show benefit from being a part of the Star Wars universe, both in taking from its backstory and in adding to it. It's perfectly possible to do so to either the Evangelion TV universe or the rather different Rebuild universe, but in practice I see it turning into something of a mess.

Also, Khara isn't financially obligated to keep pumping out Eva and they're involved with Shin Ultraman at the moment.

While I don't see any high-quality Eva tales happening as a practical matter (and I think you and I are in agreement here, if I understand you correctly), I'm not going against the potential for a high-quality Eva tale to be possible, just not in the Gundam manner due to Eva's complexity.

[Axx°N N.]

I fail to see how you think NGE veered off the rails and I don't understand where you think that an adaptation will subvert and surprise? You've lost me, I'm afraid.

The first thing I (and I'd wager others) think of when they think about Eva is its nosedive into psychological territory. An adaptation would thus face the choice of trying for what makes the series famous, or omit it and risk losing sense of identity--Bebop live-action tier accusations of "not understanding what the original was all about," even though it redid some scenes and rehashed some elements. Anno's own remake nosedives at the end; we were all expecting Instrumentality, and it sure enough happened at the same narrative point.

As for pumping out Eva, I meant moreso that the entirety of NTE's production cycle could have been original material, but that the monetary possibilities of Eva as a property were self-persuasive. I'm sure the success of Thrice has enabled them to tackle whatever projects they want for a good while.