It's such a shame that the general response to the Netflix live action adaption was so poor. On face value I thought it was quite a good show and would have loved to see it continue.
At face value I thought the costume design looked like low budget cosplay, and the direction gave the vibe of a student film. Everyone looked ridiculous and the choreography sucked. It was sorely missing the style and charm of the anime.
Watch the mariachi trilogy and think about what a good interpretation of bebop could have looked like.
The problem is that you can't put ridiculous characters in the real world since the world around them will still be 'normal'. This makes everything else that doesn't really make sense outside of a created world look bonkers.
Take the trope of ridiculous large swords that supposedly are just made of metal, and are heavy, but somehow the thin and slender wielder can swing about with ease for hours on end because 'they trained for it'. There is no scenario where you could adapt that to live action without it either being completely ridiculous or modified to an extent that the existing fanbase will hate it.
This is the problem with many plotholes and plot devices that are used inside non-live-action and non-scifi media where it simply breaks as soon as it is taken into live-action. Some of it stems from the never-ending use of serial/procedural series where the main characters need to remain the same for a long duration (and as such no real damage or change can be made), while other issues are mainly due to the huge gap between reality and unexplained differences.
It's one of the primary responsibilities of the movie to set up a universe that is compelling and believable. The fact that it's live action imposes some constraints, but they can be creatively worked around.
Just a few movies that do this well that come to mind:
They were trying to pull off Robert Rodriguez without actually having to pay Robert Rodriguez when they would've been better off paying Robert Rodriguez to Robert Rodriguez.
I think what threw people off most about the Netflix adaptation is that it had a very different vibe/atmosphere, which is a problem when a large chunk of what made the original a hit in the first place was its vibe/atmosphere.
I actually thought it really nailed the vibe, though I only watched the original once, several years ago. I was not a huge aficionado, but I experienced the same approximate emotional response that I recalled experiencing, which was what I enjoyed about the original, and why I enjoyed the adaptation.
I was surprised and impressed with just how well they managed to mimic the vibe despite being live action, but I guess everyone experiences these things differently.
What's wild is that the Japanese source is more related to Western cinema of the late 60s and 70s (French New Wave, New Hollywood) than the American adaptation. The showrunners completely missed the existential and noir motifs the show sourced from that era.
Yes, this really surprised me. I would’ve figured that Bebop would be uniquely suited for a stellar western adaptation because of how western it is, but somehow the western studio skipped or greatly minimized many of the original’s western cultural influences!
The live action version also doesn’t have the sense of ennui and has fewer quiet moments to just let things exist and breathe.
I have a lot off issues with the adaptation, but I was ready to put them aside and enjoy the show. However I felt that to much weight had been put on Vicious/Julia. AFAIR background story in the original had a slow build up. Something from the past looming in the darkness. With low budget it looked ridiculous.
It is hard. For example I'm not exactly Tarantino fan, but I recognize his stylistic approach and find it good. If someone would like to copy Tarantino they could easily arrive at a mediocre straight to DVD B movie. The difference is hard to describe. I feel it was the same with Cowboy Bebop.
It's a reinterpretation of the original story, not a shot-for-shot remake. That's what made it interesting IMHO and it's also fitting to the whole Jazz theme.
Well in the defense of everyone that hated it: the show was unequivocally awful in every way imaginable. The writing was bad. The acting was bad. The casting was bad. The costuming was bad. If they would have done a shot for shot, line for line live action remake, it would have done well, but the hubris of the people producing it would never let that happened.
I read it as an intense over-correction. One of the few valid criticisms (not to gush, but I’m a fan to be sure) of the original is that Vicious is a thinly written villain. They tried to fix this but failed. Also, CB is closer to a noir than an action/drama. This was overlooked repeatedly throughout the season. I’d send whoever worked on that show back to school before tasking them with adapting anything else.
> One of the few valid criticisms (not to gush, but I’m a fan to be sure) of the original is that Vicious is a thinly written villain.
This I don't agree with, not that Vicious is or isn't thinly written, but that it is valuable or an improvement that he is "fleshed out". Spike's narrative in the source is built on his memories and recollection of people, not who they are. The lack of dimensionality has a purpose. Jet has a similar issue and both of them are forced to confront the gap between their recollection of people and what those people actually thought/felt, and that's big because both of them have staked major parts of their personhood on the ghost of their nostalgia and self-centered sense of tragedy. Finding out the world is other people doing other things was the point and you can't recover the impact by removing the entire mystery.
As I said elsewhere, Bebop is more related to 70s New Hollywood than the American adaptation is, Coppola's The Conversation has a similar bent where someone is haunted by their past but misinterprets the present and future on behalf of their own guilt only to discover reality had nothing to do with a POV that was always their own misperception. If you actually followed all the side characters around the movie would be pointless.
I'm not familiar with the original. So I really enjoyed this a lot. Just a very quirky and cartoonish style of humor. Did not take itself too seriously either; which is always a good thing.
The western influences are definitely very heavy. I’m surprised that this article and others don’t mention Elliot Golde as Philip Marlowe in the Long Goodbye for Spike. Between the dialogue, melancholy but hopeful attitude with a tinge of offbeat goofiness, and disheveled appearance complete with cigarette it’s almost uncanny. The only thing missing is his Bruce Lee influences as noted.
