Live Action StarBlazers.

[Advocate]

Star Blazers was one of my favorite television shows growing up as a kid. I watched it religiously, every day, until the show's 3 season completion. It was also one of the first cartoons where you had to watch it in order, or you might get lost. I think I've seen the series in it's entirety, a total of 3 times. I LOVED how cool the space battleship Yamato was and the firing of the wave motion gun was amazing to see as it obliterated everything in its path.

There have been Japanese live-action movies based off of Space Battleship Yamato before, and Disney has tried to get a live action version off the ground for Star Blazers, but so far that hasn't happened. Thank God for the Japanese and their love of all things robots, space and geek because a teaser trailer for their brand new Space Battleship Yamato movie hit YouTube and it looks awesome.

According to Wikipedia:
Takashi Yamazaki, the director best known for Returner, Always: Sunset on Third Street, and this year's Ballad, will helm the project for a planned December 2010 release. The Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) production company has been planning the live action movie for the last five years.

The Space Battleship Yamato live-action film will use computer graphics and is budgeted at over 2,2 billion yen (US$22 million). The Daily Sports newspaper reported that 80% of the scenes will incorporate the latest CGI technology to recreate the space battles from the TV series. Filming began on October 12, 2009 and will end within this year. Computer graphics, editing, and other elements of post-production will take over nine months before TOHO opens the film in December of 2010 in Japan.

Check out the teaser trailer below. Can't wait to watch this!

[Error]

oh man. i'm all over this. now i have a reason to wait for december of 2010.

[Dolemite]

It'll probably be horrible.

[mollipen]

Hopefully, unlike nearly every other film Japan produces, it'll have special effects that don't look completely embarrassing.

[Shine]

Hopefully, unlike nearly every other film Japan produces, it'll have special effects that don't look completely embarrassing.

20th Century Boys is looking pretty good so far. So we might luck into some decent looking FX. But yeah, Dole's right, it'll probably be an abortion.

[Seik]

What's the deal with Japanese films having such piss poor special effects? And I'm not just talking "bad" special effects, like what the Flash Gordon movie in the 80s had or even what the Godzilla movies had. I mean, I rented Onechanbara and Machine Girl the other day and watched them with my buddies and, while they were both fine films and I enjoyed them, the special effects just looked like some stock After Effects/Final Cut bullshit. What the hell?? I'm fine with "bad" special effects. I liked Godzilla's effects, they were charming and they had their own sort of art associated with them. Nowadays though, every Japanese live action film I see has lazy special effects, and I don't understand that. C'mon Japan! Get your shit together! Somebody loan Japan the Weta Studio Workshop!

EDIT: And to stay on topic, this movie looks to continue that trend.

[Dolemite]

That's why I said it will probably be horrible. It's hard to get into a movie when I've seen American-made fan films on Youtube with better effects than the dogshit Japan churns out from their very best studios.

Makes no sense when they make such pretty videogames.

[Advocate]

I hope Bbobb comes in the thread and is able to explain why.

Funny side note: While everyone here says this movie and typically Japanese movies look horrible SFX wise ... at least they stick to the mythology, unlike American made game to live action ... see: Chun Li, KOF, DOA, DragonBall, etc.

Also: It looks better than Transformers.

And Dragon Ball Evolution.

[bbobb]

This is too far into the future for me to remember.

Also, as for why the effects look like shit, that's easy. Look at the budgets. This movie is a huge deal for having a giant budget. And what is that budget? 22 million dollars. About as much as a cheap hollywood film.

[Timber]

at least they stick to the mythology, unlike American made game to live action ... see: Chun Li, KOF, DOA, DragonBall, etc.

How could they have done DOA better? I will never understand the hate that movie receives. Other than the girls not having Q-cup tits it couldn't have been more faithful.