What’s the worst movie adaptation you have ever had the misfortune of watching?
For me, it would probably be the live action adaptations of the popular Japanese manga series, Death Note. Despite adoring the actor who played Light (and who was also the lead guy in Battle Royale), I found the acting to be cringe worthy and laughable. It was just so…over the top. They’d tried too hard to emulate the manga and it just didn’t work. There are some scenes that cannot be recreated on a live action screen and consequently, Death Note should have been left as a manga (and anime) series.
Name and shame the worst adaptations you’ve seen. Go! 😉
Also, what book do you think should be adapted for movie or TV?
I swoon over fictional men... 
haha omg that death note adaptation was hilarious to watch. I generally find that anime/manga just does not adapt well into movies. The new live action ‘Attack on Titan’ proves my point. Also live action ‘Avatar the last airbender’ was hilariously awful.
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I’ve meaning to watch the ‘Attack on Titan’ adaptation but the horrendous reviews have been off putting 😛 There was so much hype about it before it was released! I agree with you. It’s not something that adapts well. I don’t think I can think of a single manga movie adaptation that has been good or successful haha
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yeah..well I think the nature of anime/manga is to be super overdramatic and borderline ridiculous, which works when it’s in cartoon form but obviously not on real people. I am very curious about the live action FMA adaptation that’s coming out in the near future though :p
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I know with the adaptation of DBZ they tried to downplay things like the ridiculously oversized muscles all the male characters have and the crazy clothes and hair colors…but again, it just didn’t work. It wasn’t faithful enough to the original and was a disaster. I guess it’s impossible to make a good adaptation either way 😛
Ooo an FMA adaptation? When’s that due for release? Should be interesting if nothing else 😛
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Yeah i agree, I think anime/manga is meant to be loud and outrageous and over the top, that’s what makes it great :p I think they said it was due winter 2017, so quite a long time yet, but it’s my all time fave so I’ll be interested to see what they do with it 🙂
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Are you a Ghibli fan at all? They released a live action Kiki’s Delivery Service a couple of years back and, to quote an online article, it’s “surprisingly not terrible” :O
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Okay, as I just said. Where do you find these live-action adaptations? I might have seen a blip on the radar for the live-action Kiki film. But, it vanished as quick. I haven’t sat through the whole animated version, yet. I have seen numerous other Studio Ghibli films, though, and they are a breath of fresh air from the Disney empire. I would wear a Ghibli badge with pride…or a pair of Totoro ears.
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Oh I absolutely love Studio Ghibli! I have two shirts featuring Totoro :p Thanks for the recommendation, will have to check that one out 🙂
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And, isn’t that the reason it IS in comic book form? Because real people cannot make the same exaggerated faces. The comics are caricatures. People rarely pull off caricatures of other people…much less characters on paper.
Where do you find these adaptations which I presume are direct to DVD? Anime shops?
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Yes definitely, that’s what makes it unique and special! No I just stream them online haha (apart from some exceptions: i.e the Avatar movie was widely released in British cinemas)
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So, if online, how are you alerted to their release? Do you get notifications from some site specific to anime?
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No not really, I follow a page on Facebook called ‘tokyo otaku mode’ that has a lot of updates on new releases etc.. but that’s about it
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Well, I guess, that’s the current, promoted, trendy thing to do.
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Oh my goodness! I could not even finish the live action adaptation of Death Note haha. I tried, but nope haha. It was horrible..
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I didn’t finish it either 😛 I ended up skipping through it all and watching the final scene on YouTube 😛 Oh and don’t even get me started on the CGI! For a country as high tech as Japan it was pretty awful haha
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I love anime and some of the horror, but the live action and drama doesn’t work for me very often, sadly.
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The reason Avatar failed as a movie was James Cameron stealing the title for his own sci-fi franchise. Talk about lousy timing. I’d say the last air-bender movie turned out better than many other adaptations.
I typically get upset with Michael Bay for what he has done to 80s’ franchises. But, those are not exactly adaptations that haven’t already been adapted in some way, particularly TMNT which has had so many incarnations.
And, being I’m not an avid read-the-book-see-the-movie person, I can only attest to one disaster of an adaptation: Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Ridiculous revision of the story which wouldn’t bother me as much if I didn’t previously read the book.
I’d like to work on some of these potential disasters before they become such and figure out why they go so terribly instead of working purely with the material the sources provide. Why is it mandatory to change so much? I swear fear is such a rampant disease; it should be the focus of world wars instead of fighting each other.
As a new endeavor, I think video games have potential in movies. [Though the fighting game movies of disasters past are not good examples/motivators.] I could fairly easily come up with movies for the Legend of Zelda and Metroid franchises. It would be harder to sell them as TV series. [Though, the Zelda cartoon series of the late 80s/early 90s wasn’t all bad; it was a highlight for me to watch.] But, as movies, I can see them working. With Metroid, think Guardians of the Galaxy meets Alien.
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