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jeriendhalHooo boy...
Good Points:
1. CGI Yamato with Wave Motion Gun. Nuff said.
2. Captain Okita is... Captain Okita. Really, what else can you say?
2. Yuki is no longer a bridge bunny/nurse but a kick ass pilot.
3. Dr. Sado/Sane is better as a slightly sloshed Crazy Cat Lady rather than a very sloshed male surgeon.
4. TWENTY FOOT TALL ANALYZER/IQ 9 WITH CHAIN GUNS!!!!!
Bad Points:
1. Dessler/Deslock is now a vague CGI cloud of... stuff...
2. There's a lovely speech about the WWII Yamato serving as a symbol of hope to an oppressed people under attack that must have been quite a revelation to the rest of the former Co-Prosperity Sphere members.
3. Related to Point 1, the Gammilons have been switched from a bunch of pseudo-Kaiser Era Germans to generic CGI monsters. Given length of the movie there was barely enough room for characterizations of the heroes, but still.
4. Oh yeah? Queen Starsha? Not there anymore. Instead we see Yuki get possessed by the "Spirit of Iskandar", which lives on the same homeworld as the Gammilons. Which is bifurcated like Batman's Two-Face in a way that would make a meteorologist weep.
5. The chances of a sequel are rather... dim... given the ending.
Good Points:
1. CGI Yamato with Wave Motion Gun. Nuff said.
2. Captain Okita is... Captain Okita. Really, what else can you say?
2. Yuki is no longer a bridge bunny/nurse but a kick ass pilot.
3. Dr. Sado/Sane is better as a slightly sloshed Crazy Cat Lady rather than a very sloshed male surgeon.
4. TWENTY FOOT TALL ANALYZER/IQ 9 WITH CHAIN GUNS!!!!!
Bad Points:
1. Dessler/Deslock is now a vague CGI cloud of... stuff...
2. There's a lovely speech about the WWII Yamato serving as a symbol of hope to an oppressed people under attack that must have been quite a revelation to the rest of the former Co-Prosperity Sphere members.
3. Related to Point 1, the Gammilons have been switched from a bunch of pseudo-Kaiser Era Germans to generic CGI monsters. Given length of the movie there was barely enough room for characterizations of the heroes, but still.
4. Oh yeah? Queen Starsha? Not there anymore. Instead we see Yuki get possessed by the "Spirit of Iskandar", which lives on the same homeworld as the Gammilons. Which is bifurcated like Batman's Two-Face in a way that would make a meteorologist weep.
5. The chances of a sequel are rather... dim... given the ending.
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no subject
Date: 2011-07-17 01:25 am (UTC)Good Points:
Yep, CGI was good, as was the casting. They switched a couple of male characters into females (not the only reason this movie felt like it was influenced by the Battlestar Galactica reboot, BTW) – it was a plot point, later on in the first series, that Yuki was the only female on board the Yamato. And I almost cheered aloud when Analyzer got his "old body" there at the end (I'll bet theater audiences in Japan did).
Bad Points:
Didn't really like that the Gamilas and Starsha were all assimilated by the Borg either, although they barely had time to characterize the humans – even had the Gamilas not been CGI drones, they still would have been a faceless (yet blue-faced) enemy for the most part. And Uchuu Senkan Yamato has always had Japanese nationalistic feel to it that was pretty much whitewashed out by Star Blazers… Earth (Japan) was beaten down by foreign enemies, but by embracing the spirit of her past can rise again to greatness. The planet bombing of Earth was supposed to be analogous to the atom bombs dropped by the USA at the end of WWII; although the fact that the bombings were a completely unprovoked attack out of nowhere against a peaceful victim would also come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about WWII.
As for the ending – given how popular the Yamato franchise is in Japan (and other parts of the world as well), to deliberately rewrite the ending to preclude the possibility of a sequel seems insane to me. Even if there were no plans (at the time) for a sequel, there was no reason to kill off Kodai and the Yamato in order to guarantee that one would never be made. After all, if the movie had hit big, why wouldn't the studio want to consider doing the Comet Empire and the Bolar Wars next? The fanboy (and young boy who grew up with Star Blazers) in me still enjoyed the film, but I couldn't help thinking about how much better it would have been as a trilogy…
no subject
Date: 2011-07-17 01:28 am (UTC)Yamato I: Leaving Mother Earth
This movie would cover the introduction of the (human) characters and the plot. It would give us some of the backstory of the characters and situation, the launching of the Yamato, and end with the Yamato leaving the solar system. It would have the first firing of the wave motion gun, the first space warp jumps, and skirmishes with the Gamilas forces in the solar system leading to a climactic battle as they escaped at the end into interstellar space. The Gamilas are not yet seen (the ships are, but not the people), although it could end with the voice of Dessler – either a voiceover for the audience where he mocks the Yamato for still having so far to go and having no chance, or a voice-only communication from Dessler to the Yamato, where he mockingly congratulates them for their victories so far, but tells them they have no chance of victory or survival against him.
Yamato II: We Must Be Strong And Brave
This movie covers the interstellar (and then intergalactic) travel time from Sol system to the twin planets of Gamilas and Iscandar. It would alternate between (a) the Yamato facing the attacks (physical, mental, emotional) from the Gamilas, (b) seeing things from the POV of the Gamilas (we finally see Dessler and the rest in their humanoid, blue-skinned, non-CGI forms), and (c) the character arcs of the human characters (the two main ones, of course, being Kodai vs. Okita and Kodai/Yuki). It would end with the arrival of the Yamato in the Gamilas/Iscandar system, and with Kodai accepting the role of acting captain.
Yamato III: Our Home We've Got To Save
More than half of this movie would take place in the Gamilas/Iscandar system, and more or less follow events from the first season of the TV series. The Gamilas traps, the meeting with Starsha, the final attack on and destruction of the planet Gamilas, etc.) There may or may not be time to include a subplot of male crewmembers stealing a woman to try to stay behind and repopulate the species; and Kodai finding his brother still alive on Iscandar should be dropped as too much of a deus ex machina – It lets Okita off the hook, in Kodai's mind, for "allowing his brother to die" rather than allowing Kodai to finish coming to grips with the tough realities of war and the necessities of command. Then, victory having been achieved, the Yamato returns to Earth; the crew celebrating the success of the mission while mourning the loss of their dead and the sacrifice of Starsha. Once they arrive back at Earth, they face the final "screw you, if we can't have Earth, you can't have it either" attack from the Gamilas, which they defeat without the loss of Koadi and the Yamato. The Earth is saved; the temptation would be to have the Earth magically brought back to life as though the Genesis Device from The Wrath of Khan had been deployed, but I think it would look better just to have the characters out on the surface as rain begins to fall, and maybe the final shot being a few green shoots coming out of the parched ground.
Assuming the movies were received well and made a tidy (Japanese and international) profit, the studio would then have the option of telling the Comet Empire story next – either as another trilogy of movies, or as a live-action spinoff television series. (As I'm sure you noticed, I cribbed from the Star Blazers theme song for the English translation movie titles. Obviously, in Japan, the original titles for the trilogy would have been cribbed from the original Uchuu Senkan Yamato theme song lyrics.)no subject
Date: 2011-07-17 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-18 07:37 pm (UTC)I just noticed this when I read your reply again. You mean you did the translation yourself? I thought you had bittorreted the DVD from somewhere!
no subject
Date: 2011-07-18 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-18 09:04 pm (UTC)