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Titanic Director to Make Battle Angel Movie 209

Posted by michael from the who-framed-battle-angel-alita dept.
thelizman writes "Director James Cameron, who gave us the Terminator movies (I, II, III) , Aliens, The Abyss, and brought Dark Angel to the small screen will give us a new treat. According to AP, Cameron will direct a live action + cgi movie based on the Battle Angel Alita (GUNNM) book series. Slated for release in 2005-06, the movie will be available in 3D as well as 2D versions. Cameron will be using 3D technology developed for IMAX films to deliver the 3D versions (and on IMAX maybe?). Another twist is that the lead character will be CG, while other roles will be filled by live actors." Update: 11/25 22:42 GMT by T : Sunny Dubey writes "Terminator 3 was *not* directed by James Cameron. It was directed by Jonathan Mostow."
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Titanic Director to Make Battle Angel Movie More

Titanic Director to Make Battle Angel Movie

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  • Worst Wikipedia Entry Ever! (Score:5, Informative)

    by mr.henry ( 618818 ) * on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:03PM (#10920483) Journal
    The Wikipedia entry is 4 paragraphs long but tells you NOTHING about the story. If you've have no clue what Battle Angel Alita is about, read more here [mit.edu].

    • Long story short... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by c0p0n ( 770852 )
      • Postnuclear/apocaliptic/hideus Earth future.
      • A technician finds the upper middle of a she-robot.
      • He repairs the robot (Alita) who is, btw, a good looking female.
      • Alita seems like getting into a fight'em up videogame: gets almost killed by a big bastard, repaired again, fucks up a bigger orc and, like that, to the end.
      • So what exactly is this story about that every other anime isn't, again?
        ;)
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The short description you linked looks nice and acurate.
      Do you want to include this text in Wikipedia's entry, if the author allows you to do it ?

      (And if so, try to do this, before the article gets write protected due to slashdot-related vandalism)

  • Abyss!; Battle Angel? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by lousyd ( 459028 )
    The Abyss was my favorite movie for a long time. I absolutely loved it. And the Aliens were visually stunning (if lacking in story). But, what is this Battle Angel? And is it worth the Cameron touch?

    • Re:Abyss!; Battle Angel? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tetromino ( 807969 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:21PM (#10920580)
      For a good overview of Battle Angel Alita, see Vaz's take on the main character [non-essential.com]. You have an ideal killing machine, a cyborg supersoldier discarded after an ancient interplanetary war, who is resurrected with her old skills but without old memories, who fundamentally cannot reconcile her bloodlust with her kindness, who is repeatedly used, abused, and thrown away by greater powers and who accepts it because she has nothing to live for, who repeatedly finds places that she could call home or people that understand her and then loses them immediately, who is forced to learn one-limbed fighting from frequent experience, and who ultimately sacrifices herself to save the people that hate her guts.

      Personally, I would be surprised if Cameron can do justice to the series.
    • You should ask if Cameron is worthy of Alita. Although by no means the best anime out there, it is a reasonable one. The Abyss, while beautiful to look at was lacking any depth, and Aliens, took the brilliant Alien franchise and dashed it's brains out on the rocks of gungho marine gun totting idiocy, losing *all* of the suspense and tension of the original. In the original, a single alient was all that was needed to hunt down and kill with incredible efficiency the entire crew. In the sequel they were blast
      • You, sir, are a buffoon! Firstly, there was no Alien franchise to ruin before Aliens - there was just a single movie. Secondly, unlike most sequels which try to recapture the success of the original by copying it, Cameron cannily made a completely different kind of film - action rather than horror - and made an excellent film of that type. Thirdly, you've missed the point of Aliens, which is that all those gung-ho Marines went in guns blazing and very nearly were wiped out, because they completely underesti
        • A baboon? They're the smelliest hairiest apes of all! (Homer) Ad hominem attacks in a debate are a sure sign you are on weak ground, especially when the topic centres on opinion based subjects where there is clearly no right or wrong...just opinion.

          In any case, none of what you say up there refutes my points on Aliens, if anything you are simply re-inforcing what I said about the film. Your first point about a franchise is also stupid, because as soon as you make a second film you have a franchise - easy en

          • Christ, mate, lighten up. The buffoon thing was meant as a joke; nobody has seriously used that line as an insult since about the 18th century. I clearly stated it's a matter for opinion; but rather than just stating my opinions, I gave my reasons for disagreeing with you, hoping to spark an intelligent discussion about two films I enjoy very much - instead all I get is assertion and "you just proved my point!!!" And finally, your point about it becoming a franchise is also stupid, because given that it onl

  • uh// (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    James Cameron didn't do T3, it was only based on characters he and gail Anne Herd had created.

  • First impressions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dswensen ( 252552 ) * on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:05PM (#10920499) Homepage
    Funny how not even the Wikipedia article mentions what this series is actually about. I'm getting the feeling, from the write-up, that the movie is going to be more technophilia a la Final Fantasy (which, coincidentally enough, is just a re-hash of Cameron's Aliens with some Gaia / New Age junk thrown in to add spice). Isn't there already a live-action Evangelion in the works? I like anime well enough, but does the world really need a spate of live-action adaptations? Have we learned nothing from Fist of the North Star and The Guyver?

    Also, speaking of CG -- I have nothing against CG in general, but the idea of a CG main character fills me with a vague boredom and distaste rather than excitement. As a gimmick, it already feels played out. Gosh, MORE distracting computer graphics in a movie, you say? More actors making wooden deliveries to green screens and teamsters waving flags for them to react to? Sign me up!

    I would rather see CG used in the environment where it really thrives -- animated films. I don't mean that CG should try to emulate reality as closely as possible -- you just end up with The Uncanny Valley [arclight.net], and the animation will displease people without them ever being able to put a finger on why (it will just look "bad").

    I think CG has tremendous potential to show us things that can't be emulated in real life -- and make it look better than it ever has before. I don't think re-hashing an anime title is really going to fit that particular bill. Instead, we see people attempting to make CG look as realistic as possible, which has the effect of making it both "unrealistic" (i.e. distinguishable from reality), and kind of banal. Why would I want to see an animated Jonny Quest jumping onto the back of a moving train, when I can see Jackie Chan do it for real?

    A lot of animated shows have added CG to the traditional forms of animation, and seen some tremendous success. I'd rather see the technology go in that direction.
    • Also, speaking of CG -- I have nothing against CG in general, but the idea of a CG main character fills me with a vague boredom and distaste rather than excitement.

      I suppose this can be an attempt to emphasize the main character even more... in addition, the Panzer Kunst technique that Gally (Alita) uses in the manga cannot possibly be rendered on screen without using CG IMHO.

      On the other hand, one of the greatest assets of the manga was to underline the deeper feelings of the character and put them in c

    • Re:First impressions (Score:2, Informative)

      by chendo ( 678767 )
      I think Appleseed 2004 would fit your bill. It's a combination of cel-shaded characters with beautifully rendered scenery. They actually tried to lip-sync with the words, so it'll much harder dubbing it to English.

      Just a little bit of info on the movie: I think it's a remake of the orignal Appleseed OVA made in 1988, which was based off the manga. It was created by Masamune Shirow, so all you Ghost in the Shell fans better check it out.

      AniDB entry here [anidb.ath.cx].

      There are trailers here [a-seed.jp].

      This is one movie I
    • Mori's Uncanny Valley is just a theory. People shouldn't take it as a gospel that an acceptable humanoid representation is impossible.

      Popular Science ran an article about an interesting guy that's working to beat the odds.
    • Well, Gunnm is a bit of a rare case, and this is definitely the way to do it. The anime adaption of the manga was badly done, mangling the story and the art, yet it was still fairly good because it was working off of something so well done.

      What makes Gunnm so strong is that it has outstanding combat without the combat being its strong point. That is, the emotions and the storyline are more important than the action, but the action is still excellent.

      Cameron is a great director and he might be able to do j
    • Also, speaking of CG -- I have nothing against CG in general, but the idea of a CG main character fills me with a vague boredom and distaste rather than excitement.

      That's probably why James Cameron is choosing this project. So far noone has been able to create a convincing CG human character. The last sincere effort at trying this was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) which was a flop at the box office. Many critics attribute the film's failure to the 'wooden' acting and 'doll-like' eyes of the
    • For a good example of where CGI has enhanced live/animated film check out Casshern (live film), Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, or Metropolis. For a bad example, see any recent star wars flick.
  • All I can say is I'm glad someone wrote the story arc for him :)

  • Cameron didn't do T3 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gary Destruction ( 683101 ) * on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:05PM (#10920503) Journal
    The Terminator franchise became property of C2 pictures and was directed by Johnathan Mostow.

    • Re:Cameron didn't do T3 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gary Destruction ( 683101 ) * on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:12PM (#10920538) Journal
      It is important to note that someone close to James Cameron has said he will be involved with T4 to some capacity. [moviehole.net]

      • Re:Cameron didn't do T3 (Score:5, Funny)

        by dswensen ( 252552 ) * on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:21PM (#10920583) Homepage
        Terminator 4? Wow! I wonder what they're going to call that one? Terminator 4: The End of All Credibility?

        I can just see the trailer now... animated words flying out at the screen:

        "This summer... continuity.... is... history!"
        • What's with the negativity? T4 should be the best one ever, assuming they ditch that whole stupid time-travel schtick and just show humans being slaughtered by robots for two and a half hours.
          • Well, that's what I was hoping "Rise of the Machines" would be -- instead we got Terminator With Tits.

            Believe me, if they made a movie that was essentially the first five minutes of T2 for an hour and a half, I'd be happy to eat my words.

            • "instead we got Terminator With Tits."

              Er, what's wrong with that?

              I bet if skynet made all the Terminators hot women, the war would of been over in a week.

              "Hey, it's a squad of hot chicks...with pizza and beer!"

          • From what I remember of T2 and T3 when the Governator talks about the future, wholesale human slaughter did not begin right away. It took a few years for Skynet to build enough Terminators to wage full scale war against humanity. I think T4 will cover the time between Judgment Day and the war. That would make the most sense. Of course, after T3, does it need to make sense? Apparently not, after Johnathan Mostow introduced a few paradoxes into the story line. Oh well. As long as it is violent it will sell.

            • Its amusing that you bring up paradoxes in a T3 thread, given that the entire thing is a paradox.
              Don't send back the terminator, Kyle Reese doesn't get sent back, JC isn't fathered, no saviour!

              And Dark Helmet said evil triumps because good is dumb .. bah!

          • Dude...that would rock!

            What I want to know is how the machines build anything. All Skynet has at this point are the flying robots and the battle robots. Neither of them can do anything along the lines of picking up a screwdriver.

    • Cameron practically denounced T3. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by reality-bytes ( 119275 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:36PM (#10920645) Homepage
      IIRC, Cameron said he didn't think T3 should be made (hence he refused to direct it). He believed that Terminator 2 completed the Terminator story as he wanted to tell it.

      Indeed, you can see in the wildly different styles of direction in T1/T2 vs T3 that James Cameron had no part in T3's production.

      Also of note is that Arnie was refusing to play the Terminator again in T3 unless Cameron was the director. Ultimately, Cameron told Arnie to do the film but make sure he got an extortionate ammount of money for doing so.
  • Cameron didn't give us Terminator 3. That was directed by Jonathan Mostow. Cameron didn't produce it either, just getting minor credits for character writing (i.e. he did the original ones so he is the guy that spawned the Terminator).

    I'd like to think that nomatter what you think of Cameron at least he was smart enough to not touch T3 with a 50 foot pole.
  • One thing, James cameron didn't make Terminator 3, though he gave his blessing.

    As far as the character being CG, that has been a bit vague. It's not like the whole part will be CG through out but they use an actress and use CG to enhance her/ digital double when needed.
    • The character is partly/mostly mechanical (depending on the body). She would probably have to be CG to take the beatings she gets in the stories.
      • I was thinking more along the lines of what ILM did on T3 (or in AI), where Arnie was covered with green prosthetics which were later replaced with digital prosthetics of the battle damage:

        The Machines Of Terminator 3 [popularmechanics.com]

        It would probably be all CG for the more extreme shots like what Imageworks did on Spider-Man 2.
    • though he gave his blessing.

      The quote I heard from him was along the lines of "at least they can't do to the Terminator franchise what Alien 3 did to the characters and story I created for Aliens." I guess that *might* be considered a blessing.

  • Oh gee, James Cameron (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    He hasn't done anything interesting in ten years, has he?

    I don't trust Hollywood anymore. Even if the director made some quality action movies in the 80s, I'm still expecting this butchered.

  • Who came up with this headline? (Score:5, Funny)

    by flsquirrel ( 115463 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:08PM (#10920521)
    This is a community of dorks and nerds. Who the heck thought "Director of Titanic" was going to get more attention than "Director of the Terminator movies." Hello! Titanic and is the kind of movie you go see with your girl friend and I don't think I need to discuss how few of us here have those.....
    • Well, apparently it got your attention. Are you turning in your dork / nerd license now? :p

      I think there's plenty of geek movies listed in the write-up. Terminator and Aliens are pretty dated as franchises, and Titanic is Cameron's last mainstream feature film. From a certain perspective, it makes sense to list it first. I guess they could have said "From the director of Expedition: Bismarck"...
    • Even if you don't like the Titanic story, the sinking of the ship was pretty damn cool. The underwater sequences were well done, too, even if his goal of using real footage didn't work out (most of the footage was recreated).
    • There are a few cool scenes in Titanic - watching the robot sift through the wreakage, the computer simulation of the sinking, and the shots of the engine room. and boilers. CG scenes of the ship hitting the iceberg, breaking up and sinking was interesting too.

      I find victorian era technology facinating - it would have been awesome to see and hear the ship's four story high reciprocating steam engine with their immense pistons chugging away at top speed.

      At the risk of being modded offtopic, a set of Titan
    • If you have a girlfriend who finds Titanic to be the ultimate love story, you've got one committed to cheating on you as soon as she finds someone new (specifically, someone interesting because they're new, and explaining that its "for love."

      Someone like that is more likely to be a Microsoft girl - nice looking user interfaces, but not very dependable. Go get another.

    • OK. Will get modded down to oblivion for this but I got karma to spare and besides what I'm about to say is the truth. I'm not trolling. The Cameron movie that to me MOST closely resembles Terminator is in fact Titanic. The similarities are striking. If you bother to go deeper than the robots killin stuff part you'll see what I mean. OK here's my list

      • Both profess a fear of technological monsters created out of arrogance
      • Both involve a brief whirlwind romance by a 'survivor' male who dies. But the female f
    • I find it weird that James Cameron was replaced by "Director of Titanic" at all. IMO you don't have to explain on /. who James Cameron is.
    • Huh?

      Wasn't the water in Titanic rendered on a Linux cluster? If so, well there ya go.

      Cheers
      Stor
    • Titanic is the sort of movie that sweeps the Academy Awards. In other words, big budget movies with leaden plots, mega-stars that can barely act, megalomaniac producers with their posse of sycophants assuring him he can do no wrong, producing a film that substitutes spectacle for story.
      Cameron is now an institution, and like all hide-bound big-money institutions, now he couldn't make a decent product if he tried. He is the symbol of what is wrong with Hollywood. He's totally lost it since he split with the
    • Idunno, but the article looks about the same as the one on K5 - either they're from a common poster or somebody saw somebody else's post.
  • Aren't they all these days? Or does this mean it'll be something like Sky Captain and The World Of Tomorrow [imdb.com], with all scenes shot in front of a blue screen?

  • James Cameron guest-editor of current Wired issue (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:23PM (#10920593) Journal
    I highly recommend picking up an issue of this month's Wired magazine, which hit the shelves the other day. It's guest-edited by James Cameron [wikipedia.org], and focuses on exploration, from undersea to subterranean to outer space. There's an interview with Burt Rutan, and also an interview with a renown cave explorer/inventor who's designing a submarine to search for life on Europa.

    Here's an excerpt from Cameron's intro piece [wired.com], which I found to be quite powerful:

    Space is a vacuum. There is, by definition, nothing there. When we talk about exploring space, we really mean exploring the objects careening around in space - planets, moons, the occasional comet. So space is a hurdle, an ocean that must be crossed to reach a destination. Unfortunately, for three-quarters of the space age it has been treated as a destination in and of itself.

    The last time humans crossed space to a destination was the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. In the 32 years since, no man has seen, with his own eyes, Earth as that beautiful, solitary blue sphere, and - reality check - no woman has ever seen it at all. We've been only to low Earth orbit since 1972, and from that altitude of 220 miles, looking at the 7,900-mile-diameter Earth is like peering at a basketball with your cheek pressed against it. Yes, you'll see curvature, but you're not seeing the whole thing. We've spent 32 years "exploring space" in low Earth orbit. Exploring nothing. To stay in orbit you have to go 17,000 mph, or Mach 25. So we've spent three decades going nowhere fast.

    It's taken people a long time to wake up to this fact, but we finally have. Now Exploration with a capital E is in the air again, in what will hopefully become some kind of renaissance. Eleven billion hits to NASA's Web site during the Spirit and Opportunity rovers' exploration of Mars is an astounding groundswell of support. NASA is still blinking in surprise, trying to figure out why people love the rovers yet care less about the construction of the International Space Station than a new interchange outside Cleveland. It is only now sinking in that one is exploration and the other is, well construction. ...
    If the next step is to send humans to Mars, then we must reexamine our culture of averting risk and assigning blame. We don't need any miracle breakthroughs in technology. The techniques are well understood. Sure, it takes money, but distributed over time it doesn't require any more than we're spending now. What is lacking is the will, the mandate, and the sense of purpose.

    Something interesting is happening right now as you're reading this. NASA is scrambling, under presidential orders, to prepare for a renewed vision of human exploration beyond Earth. They've generated a plan, and it's a good one. I've sat on the NASA Advisory Council for the past 18 months, which is surely the most interesting period since the Apollo days. NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe has fundamentally reorganized the agency. NASA is figuring out post-shuttle solutions to get people into orbit, how to do the heavy lifting to get big payloads (like interplanetary vehicles) up there, and all the other critical tasks to create human exploration space-systems architecture.

    The public understandably asks how this will be paid for. The answer comes with some good news and some bad. The bad news is that space shuttle operations and space station construction and operations (in other words, current human spaceflight) is sucking up about $8 billion of NASA's $15 billion annual budget. The good news is that when the shuttle is retired (2010) and the space station completes its mission (2014), $8 billion a year will be freed up without adding a dime to the NASA budget. Over time, one funding wedge tapers, and the other widens. From 2014 to 2024, you've got a cool $80 bil to send folks to Mars.

    The problem is that government projects are subject
  • Being an avid fan of the series, I'm both thrilled and worried about how this will turn out. The manga is a terrific story, but while quite good the anime pales in comparison, because it is too short. The story needs to take its time to gain the momentum and texture that IMO defines it. No character remains a simple stereotype, and even the scenes and settings have what border on personalities. And everything changes.

    It appears to me that the usual length of a movie won't be enough to do more than simply i

  • ...this is a dupe [slashdot.org].

  • I'll wait and see. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by erik_fredricks ( 446470 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:34PM (#10920638)
    This has been announced numerous times over the past, oh, four years or so. Cameron's wanted to do it for a long time, but each time it looks promising, it gets yanked away. I doubt he's even started a screenplay yet.

    As far as making a movie of it, I'd hope they were planning more than one, as there's no way you can tell the whole story arc in two hours.

    It deserves to be made into a movie, but it also deserves to be done right.

  • They need to find a better director! (Score:3, Funny)

    by MuscaDomestica ( 764805 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:53PM (#10920707)
    James Cameron isn't a good choice... we need a director that has worked with sci-fi movies involving cyborgs and dark futures, one that is known for using cutting edge CGI, and can do some emotional manipulation to draw in more non geek movie goers... wait a second....
  • To clarify (contradict ?) the headline, Cameron did not direct T3, he helped with some of the character writing though. This helps to explain, I believe, why T3 lacked the impact that T1 and T2 had.
  • It really was a pity that the anime got dropped after only two episodes. It'll be nice to see the rest of the story on screen.
  • Not the anime. The anime was utter crap. If you think that's the story for Gunnm (aka Battle Angel Alita) you're sorely mistaken. Get the Graphic Novels from Viz, you won't be dissapointed. And once you have those, get Gunnm: Last Order and enjoy the way it was meant to end (Written and drawn by Yukito Kishiro)

    At least, I _hope_ they use the manga as a basis. Although, it's going to be fairly hard to make a movie on something like 7 graphic novels and a rich storyline.
  • That project was in development a few years ago, but wasn't picked up. That would have been a fun movie. Like "Van Helsing", but with a female lead.

  • James Cameron is the perfect director (Score:4, Insightful)

    by merciless ( 165775 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @08:15PM (#10921328)
    Boy People Have Short Memories.

    Let's recap the movies he's done, shall we. So far he has directed:

    Piranha II (hey, everyone's gotta eat)
    Terminator
    Aliens
    The Abyss
    Terminator 2
    True Lies
    Titanic

    He also wrote the script for the movie "Strange Days"

    There are over-riding themes throughout all his films:

    -Strong Female Character
    -Use and misuse of technology
    -The strength of human spirit in adversity
    -Self sacrafice for the greater good
    -The struggle of technology subsuming humanity
    -The hubris of man who think (and usually a he) they have nature and technology under control

    For anyone who has read the manga and watch all the James Cameron movies (especially the director's cut), it would be immediately obvious why James Cameron picked this project. As a matter of fact when I was reading Battle Angel I was saying to people that it felt like a James Cameron movie done by a japanese manga writer.

    Battle Angel is not just another manga. Like Akira before it the books introduced many philosophical questions about humanity, and always asks many existensial questions. Those are the type of questions that were probed in James Cameron movies, even in Titanic. Rose was not just questioning her status as a woman in high society of early 20th century, she was questioning how she should live her life.

    I have full faith in James Cameron. He is no fly-by-night fanboy. He is meticulous in the planning of his movies. I am sure he will focus on just one of the story arcs of Battle Angel. He is known to produce sequels, and he has already mentioned that he wants to "break up" the whole arc of Battle Angel if the box office would let him. I think that he's doing the main character in CG so he can really spend time on this project. There's no other way to keep a 200 year old cyborg girl that looks like 20 looking like 20 for 3 movies if it takes him 3-4 years for each movie. The 3 movie part is just my speculation.

    For me, my vote goes to the Hugo story as the first arc because it's when the tone of the whole series begin to change and she starts to grow. But knowing what James Cameron has done he will probably do the Bounty Hunter story who was given the Imaginos Body by Dr. Nova that was wreaking havoc on the Scrap Yard. That story got all the elements of a good James Cameron movie.

    • There are over-riding themes throughout all his films:

      -Strong Female Character
      -Use and misuse of technology
      -The strength of human spirit in adversity
      -Self sacrafice for the greater good
      -The struggle of technology subsuming humanity
      -The hubris of man who think (and usually a he) they have nature and technology under control

      So basically Every Sci-Fi Movie Ever. Sounds more like a template than a resume. You could say the same thing about Lucas or Spielberg.

  • Does this mean the Battle Angel anime DVD will be released again some time in the future? I remember a few years ago that the DVD stopped being produced right about the time it was announced that James Cameron bought the rights. Naturally, I had been putting off buying the DVD for quite some time and when I finally wanted to pick it up, it was completely gone.
  • Attention to detail makes anime worth it. In comparison, with the number of people employed in Hollywood productions like the making of Titanic, who still produce made cretinous mistakes. I only had to see the trailer for the Titanic to spot the bleedingly obvious fact that a lot of the ship is higher than the kid on the bow. They could have saved time by having the ship go down wedged under the bridge, 80 metre high radio antenna and all.

    I wonder what stupid mistakes will get though on this one, despit

  • 2003 Cameron interview about Battle Angel (Score:4, Interesting)

    by payndz ( 589033 ) on Friday November 26, 2004 @05:12AM (#10923167)
    Hotdog magazine #36, May 2003. Interview by... well, me!

    "Battle Angel is a very real possibility and that's the film that I fully intend to direct, that I will direct - the issue is will it be the next film, or will it be the one after the next film? That's really all there is to it at this point. We've done a tremendous amount of design for the film, we're fine-tuning the script, it's just a matter of time."

    Guess the question about when he's going to make it has now been answered. Anyway...

    "What I like about it is that when we first meet Alita she's very young, she's sort of pre-pubescent in a way, and she actually matures throughout the story. I like that, that the development of her mind actually affects her physicality. There's a lot of really great things about it, and there's a lot of things - whether the artist really intended it or not - that I read into it, and so I think it'll be a good fusion of what Kashiro created and how I would do things."

    Will it be faithful to the original manga?

    "No, I don't really think that's possible. Not only is it not possible, it's not desirable. I think it's not possible because the manga is very discordant - it's not internally consistent, meaning sometimes she looks like one thing and has one set of abilities, and at the whim of Kashiro he'll go off on a different tangent. It needs to be fused and focused and given a centralised storyline. But the character will be very, very true to Alita as she is in the manga."

    Motorball?

    "Motorball might find its way into the second film - I definitely want to do more than one film. I want to create a world and a character that can go through at least one more film, possibly more. And that's not just for the usual financial reasons, it's just that I think there's a possibility for a real mythology here, so I feel that this is a good canvas to do something big that's got more scope."

  • Gunnm isn't the best story ever told but it does have something. Mostly it is a very very dark future where "good" people are hard to find.

    The opening isn't that original. Old man finds young girl who lost her memory but was once an ultimate weapon. Oh it adds the twist that she mostly has a robot body (I think it is closer to cyborg is I remember correctly) and is rather damaged when found.

    So he repairs her and the first "story" is her suspecting the old man of killing humans to supply some of her organi

  • I had to listen to it through reading the manga, but if Cameron's reading these posts, I feel that I should point it out.

    Muse makes some excellent music and would be exceedingly perfect for the soundtrack. Between Origin of Symmetry and Absolution, you pretty much have the entire soundtrack wrapped up right.

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