MovieChat Forums > Kidô senshi Gandamu (1981) Discussion > Remade for American Audiences?

Remade for American Audiences?


I love this movie series, as well as the TV show it was based on and all of the U.C. Gundam series as well (War in a pocket, 08th MS team, Zeta Gundam, Stardust Memory, Char's Counterattack), and the show has a sizable following in the Anime community for those who have managed to be lucky enough to follow it from start to finish.

Watching the series makes me wonder if the movies were updated (reasonably, no total re-disigns like the BS they pulled with recent re-done movies that lose the feel of the originals totaly), done in total CG, and made for an American audience if it would be a possible hit. With the writers strike going on there will be a lack of new ideas flowing in for a while, and that might be a good thing considering some of the garbage we have been seeing coming out of California for the past few years, with just a few gems managing to get popped out between the streams of junk movies.

Of course there is always the possibility that if someone considered the idea, Yoshiyuki Tomino would not go along with it, or that some idiot producer or director would take the movie and use it as an excuse to exercise their 'artistic license', and by that I mean what Uwe Boll does to all of the movies he makes, turn them into mounds of you-know-what. But, make the movies too well and you have the problem of it going over audience's heads entirely, since the general public seems to enjoy simple pointless flicks like 'snakes on a plane'.

So what does everyone think?

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Although I love the Gundam UC material as is stands, and although I prefer traditional animation to CGI, I actually wouldn't mind a live-action or total CG Gundam movie or series. There are certainly a slew of Gundam spin-offs, including (but not limited to) the live-action English material shot for video games. So long as a new movie did not attempt to "re-tell" or "re-imagine" the Gundam story (ie. the series redone), and instead told a story within the Gundam UC universe, I'd be happy with it.

However, for me, the idea of it being "made for an American audience" is the WORST thing that could happen. The BS you mention is almost always precisely because we see so much these days "made for American audiences". Intelligent, thoughtful American Gundam fans no doubt enjoy the series precisely because it is NOT dumbed-down Hollywood rubbish. Gundam is almost anti-Hollywood in terms of it's anti-war message, high-concepts and wonderfully "grey" universe (where the "bad guys" are often nicer people than the "good guys").

Sadly, I think what would happen if an American studio (not even American fans) got hold of the property, is you'd get either an excess of "artistic license" (witness the awful ideas and re-imaginings that came up when there was talk of a Neon Genesis Evangelion movie!), or an "Hollywood" Gundam which reduced everything to Michael Bay-style big explosions and flashy effects, and pretty much lose what makes Gundam UC so unique among sci-fi, let alone anime.

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This is what an American version of Gundam would be like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8um1N78AhY

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Haha! Doozy Bots??! What the hell were they thinking?

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