Help. I can’t take it anymore. I screamed everytime I hear a rumor that says the mighty Hollywood is going to make a film adaptation of my favorite anime. To date, there’s ZERO good adaptation of any anime and please prove me wrong.

And the latest rumor says that they’re making a live action movie of my favourite “Ghost in the Shell”… with the setting is in America. Oh, fuck…

It will fail. No matter how promising it looks like, let me remain as a skeptic. It will fail. It will fail miserably. It will fail horribly. Hollywood failed us many times with horrible adaptations of our anime. Heck, they destroyed my childhood by giving us non-evolutionary “Dragonball Evolution”.

PLEASE. Let’s me rant about this.

Anime, the new goldmine

Making a film adaptation of any anime ( or any Japanese media ) will generate a lot of hype in the east – bad hype or good hype, it’s still a hype. And believe me, directors loves this hype believing that it’s going to make a lot of money. They want attention because it gives them free publicity. They know that no matter how the movie’s going to turn out, they’re still going to make a lot of profit. It’s human nature, we’re curious over a lot of stuff… including how bad can a bad movie sucked.

I can’t helped it but to facepalm when they keep on saying “it’s something new and I’m pretty sure the fans would love it”. Great, these directors are living in their own world. Seems like the directors are having a hard time trying to understand that the fans want to see THE original stuff. I believe that Japanese medias are cool because they’re not the typical stuff that you get from the west but from what I see they’re making it typical hence loosing it’s coolness. I don’t wanna watch uncool stuff.

I want a faithful adaptation, not some butchered Americanized nonsense. As if anime adaptations of a lot of manga weren’t bad enough, Americans just have to prove themselves that they can do worse. Great.

The obvious mistakes

I don't care how BAD ASS you looked, you just not chinese

First, WRONG actors. The casting directors should be shot in the head, revived and be shot again.

For example, the name “Chun Li” clearly suggests that the character is Chinese, and the character background states that SHE IS CHINESE – now, isn’t it dumb to cast in an obvious Caucasian to pretend to be a Chinese? That’s just blatantly dumb. If they unable to cast a Chinese for Chun Li, then sad to say that they already fail from the start and shouldn’t even bother with a (horrible) storyline. With that, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li phailed miserably.

I’m not trying to be a racist here, but everybody has common sense. Everyone wants a Chinese actor for a Chinese character. If this doesn’t make any sense to the director than I’m afraid that the director is retarded and incapable of directing the movie.

WHAT!?

How about “The King of Fighters”? While they can’t even spell “Kyo Kusanagi” correctly, their “Kyo KASAnagi” is, again, some random American. The director feeling patriotic? No, it’s just plain idiotic and moronic. Oh, the storyline is going to be something about these random fighters being transported to some “other dimension” for some random “tournament”. With unimaginative lazy scriptwriting, this movie successfully entered my list of “movies that I should forget”.

When I watch that teaser, I just can’t stop facepalming and went O-M-G all the way, having a hard time trying to accept “what have they done”.

Second, yes the stupid script. This shouldn’t be a problem AT ALL. It’s an ADAPTATION : Use the fucking original media’s story. Why bother making up something new that most probably won’t interest ANYONE? No one is interested in watching something new because everybody is expecting the same animated stuff goes real. If they can’t do it as close as to the original, then don’t bother making one in the first place. But again, it’s all about making money than creating a masterpiece.

Dragonball Evolution had a stupid storyline. How do you expect me to react when I found out that “Goku goes to school” when my sweet childhood memories reading the manga that says “Goku KICKS ASS on some weird planet”. I mean, who came up with the idea of Goku going to school? It clearly sound silly but by some unknown cosmic powers convinced the directors that it’s going to work. While adding the word “evolution” to the movie makes it sound even more retarded, the word “devolution” itself can’t even describe this level of butchery. Hell, Mortal Kombat is billion times more entertaining than this ( the soundtrack was so awesome that has been used nearly in any occasions… including some random wedding ceremonies ).

If they manage to fix this mistake, I believe to would rake awards and trophies like nobody’s business as demonstrated by “Slumdog Millionaire”. “Slumdog Millionaire” features Indian actors, Indian language, sets in India… oh wait, it’s a British film, not Hollywood.

What should you do?

Simple. Just don’t go to the cinema to watch it. Please, by all means, please download it illegally and watch it illegally. The biggest problem right now is, no matter how sucky the movie is, crowd still go to the cinema just to find out how bad it turned out. There, you gave ‘em money for doing a shitty work.

For example, I have a lot of Dragon Ball fans back in my hometown and we talk about it all day long back in school. If “you’re not talking about it, you’re just not cool” – that’s how popular it was. The day when they announced that there’s going to be live action movie version of it, is the day where the fans RAGED. Still, knowing that the movie is going to suck badly, they still went to the cinema to find out how sucky the movie turns out to be. Yes, subconsciously they’re “donating” the directors.

So please. American adaptations? Download it illegally. Go support really really really good adaptations like “300″ or “Watchmen”. Those two movies are Godlike awesome by my standard but again, it’s not anime adaptations, but it’s good comic adaptations. Why can’t they come up something that those for anime? Sigh.

..and oh, blackmail that director too. Tell them that you’re going to kill him, that might work. At least you’re venting out your rage to the correct channel.

/facepalm

PS: I feel much better now after the rants…

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