http://scifiwire.com/2009/01/fox-eyes-keanu-reeves-to-star-in-a-cowboy-bebop-movie.php

I don't know whether to be happy or sad.

The correct answer is sad, any anime made into a live action movie by hollywood is doomed.

Any movie where Keanu Reeves is given a role that involves at least one line of dialogue (especially as a character as cool as Spike Spiegel) is doomed.

Neo died in the last Matrix movie; Follywood really should stop trying to bring him back.

What Jeff said. Not even AstroBoy is a valid excuse (even though it's full cgi). Hollywood should stay the fuck away from anime classics, they're only going to break them. I swear, if they make a Mononokehime live action movie, I'll become a 1337 h4XX0r and crash their industry. And empty their bank accounts.

Okay, rant mode is on.

I mean, what ARE they thinking? That they can emulate japanese anime look&feel by putting oh-so-loveable real-life characters on the silver screen? Just because the anime/manga phenomenon has finally reached their ivory towers in sunny CA? Srsly?
I wonder if they would be as amused if shown, hmm, I don't know, a juujin eroguro doujinshi of Saving Private Ryan (there, I named it, now it has to exist). I know that's not exactly the same, but it's along the same lines.

Or I'll buy a satellite that can shoot l4z0r beams to melt the media on which their films reside. I hear the russians have nice shiny tech for low-low prices.

It's not enough that they make a Dragon Ball movie, no. I couldn't really care less about DB, having grown out of that about 10 years ago. But when they're starting to mangle Cowboy Bebop, Death Note, Speed Racer, Ghost in the Shell...

What the greasy poop? They already re-made GitS (yes, there's a 2.0), there's no way to improve on it any further. The only place where the combination worked was Oni, and that was a video game, and a (fairly) original one at that.

Argh.

/rant

Edit: Corrected minor grammar mistakes and added more detailed information.

Hollywood, like most of the mainstream U.S., considers animation of almost any kind as "cartoons" and for children. Which cable station plays the most anime in the U.S.? The Cartoon Network (though on Adult Swim which is obviously not for children). They see the cultural and marketing appeal of anime intellectual property and want to capitalize on it but feel like they have to "legitimize" and "elevate" it to appeal to the U.S. media consumer by creating live-action versions.

Japan and Europe have a healthy (or at least healthier) appreciation for graphic storytelling with graphic novels, manga, and anime as legitimate artforms in their own right. Here in the U.S., if it's animated, it gets marketed to kids; otherwise it goes live-action for the "adults". The reasons for this difference in perception is a quite fascinating journey into U.S. pop culture of the Twentieth Century but I digress.

Now I'm sad and must listen to Yoko Kanno.

Regardless of whether Hollywood understands their anime and respects it enough to give it a faithful adaptation, I don't think any animation at all adapts well to live action as well as live action adapts to animation. Part of the problem, I think, is that it's easier to get used to an artistic stylized version of a character you're familiar with from film than to lose something in taking away the artistic style. I'm no anime enthusiast, but to illustrate my point anime characters tend to have wild hair that just doesn't look right as part of a costume, but the characters wouldn't be themselves if they just had ordinary hair. Maybe this is a tired rambling that doesn't make sense, but I tend not to ever be excited about live action versions of cartoons.

Speaking of Adult Swim, I really hope they never make the live action version of The Venture Bros. they've been considering. Also, Venture Bros. is almost the best cartoon ever.

Keanu Reeves as Spike? I...I don't really know how to feel about that. It's almost a good fit. If he can transform his wooden acting into the admitted very similar disinterest usually displayed by Spike, it might work. Whether or not he will, is another question. And my expectations are very, very low for the rest of it.

Actually, there are great adaptations from live action movies and series to anime. Arguably, Heidi could be seen as an adaptation of the movie, and not of the book. Metropolis is another example, as well as the World Masterpiece Theater adaptations of various movies. There are also examples of comics adapting well to movies, the recent Batman movies being a prime example (granted, not originally animated works).

My point is, Daare has a point in listening to Yoko Kanno. I'll do the same now. Mmm Koukaku Kidoutai. Never was there a more compelling anime series, in my, admittedly biased, opinion.

I want Mugen's input on this. Heh.

But, seriously, they'll ruin this. Especially with Keanu Reeves. Ugh. They will take the look & feel of Bebop and utterly, utterly destroy it. I have to echo toshiro on this.

I think this is a Hollywood/Italian mafia plot for getting revenge. What for, you might ask? Why, because of a "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" adaptation Japan did. They removed Y chromosomes and most clothing. I think a few live-action movies is just payback for making me picture Angel Eyes in a thong.

...then again, Japan has live action adaptations of several of the bigger names in anime already that are just, well, special. I think it's a full-on bad movie war from here on out. What will be seen, will never be unseen.

IRS: They adapted The Good, The Bad and The Ugly? How so, and what movie is it? That movie is awesome, from the script down to the music, but any animated adaptation won't have Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach or whatever his name is, and they are what made that movie work so well. "When you have to shoot, shoot! Don't talk!"

toshiro: I think you got me backward: Live action to animation works well; animation to live action usually fails. I think it's because it works better to add artistic style to something than to take it away, and what you can do stylistically in animation looks stupid if you try to exactly duplicate it in live action. So a live action version of a cartoon usually looks either stupid or empty. There, that was conciser and clearer than how I said it before.

Ah, that's my bad, then Chaos, I'm sorry. I should read more closely. That line is my favourite one, too, though.

However, I'm fairly certain there is no anime or japanese live action adaptation of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The only work coming close would be Trigun, and that's... not so close I'd consider it an adaptation. I'd really like to know what you are referring to, IRS.

And yes, Japanese live-action adaptation of anime *are* special. In their own special way. I prefer animated.

Not a problem, my post was rambling and incoherent.

"I have a system very much like yours; except I don't shoot the rope, I shoot the legs off the stool. Adios!"

I probably should have mentioned that it wasn't a film adaptation, but a graphic novel game, named "Tsuzuki Satsuriku No Jango ~ Jigoku No Shoukin Kubi". It only took about five minutes worth of googling to find the gold.

As for film to animation vs animation to film, I'd extend it out to a general principle: Moving something farther from reality might improve it, but doing the reverse generally won't. Animated adaptations of books have an annoying tendency to not work well, and film adaptations are even worse (I'm looking at you, 2001). Conversely, I've found book adaptations to be surprisingly good (I stumbled across Robotech novels at Barnes & Nobel. Awesome.jpg).

Still, I've found improvement to be the exception, not the rule. I suppose it's because no matter what medium changes to which, it's still a departure from the original creation. In order to even have a chance at being good, you need the adapter to be as skilled in their medium as the original artist was in theirs. Even then, it may not be possible. How could a filmmaker possibly hope to put on film what Asimov did at the climax of Nightfall?

I'll admit I can't name a book I've read that's based on a movie, but I theorize that going from movie to book allows for the characters' inner thoughts and motivations to be put in greater relief. Book to movie is trickier, because it will almost always be an abridgment, and you have to give visual and audio clues to what the characters are thinking, and make that tough decision to have a narrator or not (usually a bad idea in a movie, sometimes it works amazingly well).

Sometimes they get it right; I remember going to the library when I was younger to find Jumanji, only to find out it was really a children's book, not young adult fiction or something like that. Jumanji and Zathura are incredible adaptations. My favorite would have to be Fight Club, though. Watching the movie is like watching the book, reading the book is like reading the movie; it should be the textbook example of how to do it right. In fact, the movie is better, not just because you couldn't ask for a better cast, but because the script actually flows better than the book, and even though the visual effects people got carried away at the end the movie's ending was better than the books (less Twilight-Zone-ish).

They (read: Cameron) are also making an adaptation of Battle Angel Alita.

May Osamu have mercy on us all.