After seeing the Japanese live action production of Space Battleship Yamato, based on the 1974 anime TV series marketed in the west under the title Star Blazers, I hope to never again see a Hollywood remake of any anime show. I know there are a few either in the works or rumored. The previous efforts by Hollywood to turn anime into big screen western entertainment, such as Dragonball Evolution were dismal failures on so many levels. Recent Japanese efforts, though, have more than proven that they have the technology to do their own projects as live action, and do them very well.

lthough I just watched the new Space Battleship Yamato, which brought this topic to mind, it was not the first film I saw from Japan to get me thinking in this direction. I believe that film was Casshern. That film proved to me that CG technology had finally leveled the playing field and made it possible for Japanese studios to turn their popular anime into live action properties, and not only do so with great quality, but without the whitewashing and westernization that is bound to crop up in a Hollywood version.

Other films that showed me the potential in Japan were the live action Death Note films and the two Gantz live action movies. The latter in particular really blew me away since I am huge fan of the manga and continue to follow it to this day. Certain sequences in the manga I though could not be brought to the screen without the kind of huge budgets only Hollywood is known to spend on a film. I was wrong. While Death Note is not nearly as VFX heavy, the fact that they were able to put in the "Shinigami" characters, without feeling the need to redesign them for the big screen as I am sure would have been done in Hollywood, made it clear to me that a new era for Japanese film was here.

I just watched the Space Battleship Yamato film earlier today. This film is of great importance to me because I was really sucked into the original 1974 series, though I saw the heavily edited english dubbed version Star Blazers. It wasn't until many years later, around university time that I saw the second animated film. You can imagine what it was like to see the sequence of the Yamato launching from the water, while that original theme song played, after not having seen the show in over a decade. Now, still many years later, I see this live action version, and again hear that amazing theme song and watch a realistic, live action Yamato launch from the scorched earth and fire the wave motion gun. It felt like I was a kid again!

Some things just shouldn't be transferred into live action. The Last Airbender live action movie proved that. Those things which can be transferred should be done by people who know and understand the material. I saw what Katsuhiro Otomo did with a live action Mushishi, and I loved that film. I hate to imagine what Hollywood will do with his magnum opus Akira, when they turn it into a westernized production, likely taking place in a future New York with mostly white characters. I equally fear for the live action Cowboy Bebop. I think I am relieved that the live action Ninja Scroll never got off the ground. I mean, how could Hollywood do it? Would they have an American or European hero wash up on the Japanese shore to take part in the story?

I woke up this morning, in a small quiet town in the south of China, far from the big city race of Shanghai, with an idea about what I really wanted to make. I began to ask if there is even a market for it. It is written that one would not go to the heart of the desert and expect to do successful business. It is also written that an ice cream parlor would do better in a warm climate than in Greenland. This makes sense, right? Hollywood continues to make very similar, formulaic movies in order to reach the widest possible audience. It gives the impression that this is the path you must follow if you want to achieve success, right? Well, just how big is this market?

If you consider the domestic box office of a very successful movie, and also take into account the price of a movie ticket these days, even the movies which gross hundreds of millions of dollars are, in fact, viewed by less than 10% of the population. Some of those tickets sold are likely to people who view popular movies multiple times also. I can also imagine that when it comes to the huge, FX driven films now common in Hollywood, it is very likely the same 10% that is watching these films. What, then, are the other 90% of people watching?

Let's take a look at the HBO series Game of Thrones. This fantasy is definitely not Harry Potter or Dungeons&Dragons. The show contains a lot of gore, plenty of nudity, graphic sex and is very slow paced. In the entire first season there are only two or three monster appearances and only one CG creature. This show is heavy on the drama and characters. It is also hugely successful, having picked up for a second season after just one showing of the first episode. I am willing to bet that, while there is some audience crossover, this caters to a very different crowd than the typical Hollywood summer movie.

In the world of games, Nintendo began to find entirely new audiences with products like Nintendogs and that cooking game. Suddenly, housewives and the elderly were playing video games. Facebook has a number of very popular games among people who don't consider themselves gamers, and they are nothing like what is generally considered popular in the mainstream market. The mobile market, especially the IOS market has opened up entirely new avenues to reach entirely new players.

There is no reason to believe that you have to make what they are making in order to be a success. You don't have to follow Hollywood formulas or feel that you need to make a Disney or Pixar clone for your animated movie, just because everyone else is doing so. Deviating from this doesn't mean you are attempting to make an ice cream parlor in the cold north. We have the internet at our disposal. It may take you bit longer to build up, but the people who would most love to watch what you want to make will eventually find you.

I have written before about how the world of animation, both 2D and 3D really, tends towards monotony. In contrast, a film like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is considered a colossal failure, and as such, people apparently don't like this kind of animation and there is no place for it in the market. This, however, is simply not true. The fact of the matter is there is no place for it in the market at that cost. To illustrate this, I will provide a simple example.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within grossed just over $30 million at the domestic box office. That is a lot of money when you think about it. Most people would be overjoyed to see that kind of gross on their film project. The problem, however, is that Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within cost over $130 million to produce, and probably an equivalent amount to market. This makes for an incredible loss of money for those involved. As a note of contrast, The original A Nightmare on Elm Street films of the 1980s, starring Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger, also grossed around $30 million at the domestic box office. These films, however, cost from $2 million to $4million to produce, making them amazing successes. That same box office take, in this case, means people love this kind of movie and it spawns 5 or 6 sequels.

This brings us to the question, then, if 2 films can gross the same $30 million at the box office, and this box office take means that people love one of them and that there is a big enough market for it, how can the other be a failure? We already know, of course, it is because the other film cost entirely too much to produce. The matter then turns to whether or not the the film considered a failure could be produced for the same cost as the one considered a success. This can certainly be done, though with a few caveats.

Such a production will likely never happen in the U.S. through Hollywood. It is also not likely to come out of the bloated studio system of any country. In the world of independents, though, it becomes a real possibility. This, however, will even require said independents to think differently and abandon prejudices often imposed by the mainstream industry. Just to give an example, from a recent thread on CGTalk, there still seems to be a heavy prejudice against certain software applications, such as Poser, Daz Studio, Vue, Bryce and a few others. While it may be true that there is a vast amount of low quality images associated with these particular tools, it is by no means the fault of the tools. Also these prejudices are years old, and often those who tout them are unaware of the major strides these tools have made since their opinions formed.

Just a quick look around the Daz3D gallery and I see examples that show that quality approaching FInal Fantasy: The Spirits Within can certainly be achieved using these tools, if in the right hands. From what I read there, it seems these tools are constantly improving, offering cloth simulation, better rigging and a host of other features commonly associated with more professional CG applications. Their latest character models are some of the best I have seen, and they beat many original character models built from scratch that I have seen recently. The key is to get in your mind the question of what is important to you. Do you want to make your movie, or do you feel the need to say you did every little thing in it?

If you truly care about getting your movie done, then you will use the tools that remove as many barriers to entry as possible. If your movie must be done in Maya, with Zbrush sculpted characters and every single element built from scratch, you will likely find there is no place in the market for it, if it should ever be finished at all. This movie will require immense man power, like any other, and the budget will inflate to a point where it is no longer viable. The people who think like this never start, because they need millions of dollars to even consider doing so. The people who really want to get it done, however, will use whatever tools make this possible at the highest level of quality in the shortest amount of time. They will find a place in the market, because their films will cost little and be enticing to buyers.

If, like me, you like realistic characters and dark, mature stories in your animation, there is no reason to look around at the funny, family friendly mainstream films and conclude that there is no place in the market for what you like. Those films have to be funny and family friendly because when you spend $100 million or more to make it, you have no choice but to appeal to as many people as possible. The answer is simple. Don't spend that much. Keep your movie, and budget, small and do it quickly. You may be surprised at the niche markets out there just waiting for exactly what you want to make!

I was on a forum where I came across a discussion of the new Spider-Man reboot project. They had posted pictures of the new Peter Parker and the new Spider-Man costume. There was a link to the trailer, but I am currently at the office, where the internet is too slow to watch any video. I will try to check it out when I get home. That's not the focus of this post anyway. It's about why they felt the need to do this reboot, and a pattern that we are seeing in Hollywood, despite the fact that this pattern met with repeated failure.

For the sake of simplicity, I'll call this pattern The Twilight Bandwagon. I will grant that the Twilight films were far from the originator of this pattern, but they may be the best known example of it, so I think it a fitting name. Since Twilight was a huge success, it can't really be said to be part of the problem, but more of a great reveal of the lack of creativity currently in Hollywood.

The absolute best example of the industry jumping this bandwagon would be the film Red Riding Hood. This film had Twilight written all over it. It hit all the plot points, filled every cute, young character spot, and even had a huge werewolf. What more could the audience ask for? Well, apparently, the audience wanted something different because the movie failed at the box office.

I would have thought the movie version of I Am Number Four would have been a shoe in for success on the Twilight Bandwagon. I loved the book. It had all the elements, including the characters actually being in high school, which seems to be a necessary part of the equation. Shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Smallville and Teen Wolf show that TV is not exempt either.
Still, I am Number Four failed at the box office.

So now we have a new Spider-Man being put back into high school. I don't expect this one to fail, certainly not on the level of other attempts to cash in on this trend, and I suspect that unlike the first Spider-Man film series, he will never get out of high school this time. The question was asked, in that forum, why couldn't this same story be done with the original cast? Well, the original cast are now too old for the Twilight audience. Movies have been skewing younger for ages now. I read somewhere that even The Expendables sequel will be adding fresh young faces to the team, which seems to go against what that movie was about. I guess they'll be adding tough, ass kicking women to the group now too.

The more I write this post, the more I start to wonder why I even waste my time looking at what Hollywood does. It's always about lowest common denominator. The reason is simple. When you spend that much money on a film, you have no choice but to try and draw the largest possible audience. This is why you won't see a Bogey style mystery in the cinema anytime soon, or an Alfred Hitchcock type film either. I suppose I should focus on the world of animation, but do I even want to get started on where the anime industry has gone?