The “Anti-mation” Crowd Comes For Bambi And Luffy

I never really got into One Piece. Pirates being good guys just doesn’t work with me, even if the Straw Hats don’t really act like pirates. Piracy is a terrible thing and still a part of the world we live in. Don’t bother telling me how good it is…considering how long the manga and anime have been producing new stories that’s a given. It’s just not for me. I know just enough to see that their Monkey D. Luffy seems a bit old (or maybe it’s the voice acting from what I have seen), the tone is slightly off, and the third thing we’ll get to later.

Could this be good? The creator, who has worked on the whole series, is involved and hopefully for fans will avoid the mistakes of Death Note and Cowboy BeBop…although both of those were Netflix live-action remakes as well…or rather re-imaginings. My question as always is “why do we need a live-action version”? The answer is the Hollywood mindset I’m going to start referring to as the “anti-mation crowd” (final name to be determined), that group of directors and actors that seem to outright hate cartoons, comics, and video games for not starring them. At this point I’m surprised they haven’t tried to bring back Full Motion Video despite that failing hard as a video game style, or trying to push photocomics despite it never looking quite right, but that’s an argument for another time.

Also of interest is Disney’s continued live-action de-makes. The Little Mermaid is doing poorly for various reasons, and now Disney has announced their live-action Moana is being delayed but still going through while in talks with a director for a live-action Bambi. This is actually worse than what Netflix is doing because Disney is doing it to themselves. It’s just the latest series of mistakes when it comes to animation’s haters in Hollywood.

We know why they’re doing it. The big name actors will do an animated movie for their kids (because heaven forbid they do an actual live-action movie their kids can watch) or the fun of doing it with no respect for the voice actors. There’s a thought in Hollywood that you need to see the actors, the same mindset that led to helmets that retract so the actors can show off their faces in the costume without holding a helmet…or caring that they’re exposing their secret identities to the universe. (Then again, Marvel as a whole is throwing out as many secret identities as they can get away with these days in comics AND the MCU. I’m surprised Spider-Man was allowed to remask.) They can’t just act with voice and body movements. It’s their emoting faces that they think are all fans want to see. Look, you know what you’re getting with certain actors but outside of Jackie Chan or Will Ferrell’s fanbase nobody is going to these movies for them, especially if they’re in an adaptation of an already beloved property.

Cartoons and other forms of animation (for you animation elitists out there who hate the word “cartoon” and try to claim Avatar: The Last Airbender as “anime” because you sound more sophisticated or some crap even though “anime” is short for “animation”) have fans, who already love the characters and care about the stories. When it comes to most anime adaptations in the West this is barely remembered. Ghost In The Shell felt like someone watched the trailers for the first two anime movies and built a script around them. “Hey, I remember this part” will just remind fans that they already saw the superior version. Cowboy BeBop may have (mostly) dressed the actors like the characters but the tone of the show, the relations of the cast and their own motivations, and anything else that made the original beloved are missing from the final product, making the actors look like cosplayers in an original story.

Yes, Japan does live action adaptations as well, but since they’re not hostile towards the source material, something America has been doing to Japan at least since The Ring from what I hear, and I know they’ve done it to varying levels of success to the UK. That tends to work better when inspired by other shows rather than remaking them. Three’s Company, Sandford & Son, and All In The Family were inspired by UK shows just as The Office was. The Office or Who’s Line Is It Anyway are rare exceptions while The Chase and The Weakest Link are game shows and just have to follow the same rules. On the other hand you get Red Dwarf and it turns out terrible because they don’t understand UK humour any more than they do Japanese storytelling styles.

So Rurouni Kenshin ends up being a proper adaptation because they actually reenact the story of the manga and anime while Netflix doesn’t. It’s not any better with US stories that try direct adaptations. Men In Black would be seen as propaganda for the organization in the original comics, who weren’t the good guys. At least the first movie and animated series were good, unlike Netflix’s various offerings. Somehow the more general adaptations like Superman and Batman were more faithful…at least until recently. Watchmen was one of those exceptions because Zack Snyder has the same rejection of superheroes Alan Moore seems to have in his book, and Snyder also did okay with 300 from what I’ve heard, but his take on the DC universe was tonally off and turned off the fans who made it popular enough to keep going all these years.

Meanwhile Disney, no strangers to bad adaptations, has even turned their back on their animation legacy. The movie studio whose creator told us to remember it all started with a (cartoon) mouse seems outright hostile to its own library. Walt Disney was an animator. He made cartoons for others, like Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, but decided to form his own animation studio, starting with Mickey Mouse. However, shorts weren’t enough. He ended up in a competition with Fleischer Studios to prove a full-length animated movie could be viable. The Fleischer Brothers came out with Gulliver’s Travels while Walt Disney broke out Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, both movies that pushed the medium further than it had previous and set the stage for animated movies.

Now modern Disney seems almost ashamed of it. Walt Disney Pictures made their share of live action productions but never felt the need to redo their animated classics in a real world. Disney today has already raided much of the “Disney Renaissance”, a resurgence of quality animation after being mediocre since Walt’s passing. Already The Lion King, Beauty & The Beast, and The Little Mermaid have suffered under this new direction, as they want their movies to have a shot at Best Picture after the anti-mation crowd forced animation into their own category to keep those silly cartoons that don’t feature our great acting skills in the forefront from ever getting nominated again like Shrek and the original Disney Beauty & The Beast.

The problem is you can’t do the same things in live-action. The Lion King used photorealistic animation, so it wasn’t even really live action, and I’m betting Bambi will be the same way. At that point you’d be better off doing a nature documentary than attempting to recreate the cartoon. And it will be the cartoon. If the movie was going to take the original book and do a proper adaptation that would be one thing. The Little Mermaid specifically adapted their original adaptation. For one thing, Ariel actually has a name, and it’s the name Disney used, not Marine like the Saban series, and the book version wasn’t even named as far as I’m aware.

Disney has also dropped hand-animated in favor of full CG when they do make cartoons. If you see a cartoon on their TV channels, especially done traditionally but with the computer instead of animation cels, it was made by a different studio, while the classic Disney characters are full CG (credit for finding a way to give us Mickey’s traditional side profile with the ears) only made for Disney Junior shows and promos. That is, unless you count those ugly attempts at “modernizing” the old rubber hose animation and just not being as visually pleasant…especially what they did to poor Goofy. Even if they hand animated with a computer instead of cels, which are expensive and I don’t even know if they still make them, would be fine, but it’s all rigged character models. I have nothing against full CG, but I do wish Disney would also try the classic style again. Some of their best work was done that way, even using a computer assist like The Rescuers Down Under.

Disney’s animated history, and the anime I mentioned earlier, all took strong advantage of the format they were in. One Piece eventually adds anthropomorphic animal characters, starting with Chopper. He’s a short reindeer who is a doctor and also the Incredible Hulk. Before the series’ upcoming end we have talking dog people, talking rabbit people, and that’s just the ones I know. Not to mention many of the powers given by the various Devil Fruits in the manga. I’m curious how they’re going to pull off Bucky the Clown splitting off his body parts like a ball jointed action figure to attack people, and you already saw how the Gum Gum Pistol move that’s one of Monkey D Luffy’s attacks looks. The Little Mermaid also took full advantage of being a cartoon, and viewers have complained about how strange the animals look in the live action version because they’re trying to make fake animals that are trying to make you think they’re real move like cartoon animals and it doesn’t work. Flounder has gotten the worst of the complaints.

As long as the war on animation continues in Hollywood we’re going to continue to see this trend, as the surface viewing of non-live works by the elitists and media snobs who make modern movies continues to toss out what was already working and beloved and replace it with their inferior versions. We need a generation of animators who will stand up for the cartoon or the animated production or the anime or whatever darn term you want to use, and will prove that it’s just as important as their live-action counterparts. In egoland Hollywood, that’s going to be a tough trip but it would be nice to see someone with the guts to make it.