Death of a Bebop

Aramsolari

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I understand that art is in the eye of the beholder, and sometimes people have taken the time to explain to me what they saw and why they appreciated it, and other times these same critics have keyed in on things that explained why an enjoyed show was enjoyable. But other times try as I might I still can't see why it's praised (like Prince purple rain) and I wonder if in the end its some sort of emperor's new clothes and they are more about patting each other on the back for some message/artistic element/talent and not so much what is enjoyable.
Films are art and you hit the nail on the head there. It truly is a matter of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. I've watched my fair share of films that I think were great despite the general consensus and vice versa.

I acknowledge that critics can be subject to peer pressure and outside influence. Just like politicians who are harassed by lobbyists, successful critics face the pressure of being wined and dined by studios and networks. The Weinsteins were notorious for tactics like that especially during Awards season.

My view that Critical Drinker isn't a critic stands. He's a shock jock who fixates on certain issues for almost every film/show he reviews. I've watched a couple of his videos since yesterday and today and I notice he veers off to rant on his pet subjects within minutes. Like I said, I'm perfectly fine with that...free speech and all. I do believe that everyone has the right to a platform (no matter how obnoxious) as long as they're not advocating hate and/or violence. That said, I also believe that his abrasive style and antics make it difficult for people inside and outside of the industry to take him seriously. No producer will look at his videos and say "This guy knows his shit". There's a reason why he's limited to self shot YouTube videos and self published works. He actually reminds me of smug former film students I know who are now working in non-film related jobs or whatever. Again...with all due respect, I don't begrudge the guy for his success and his fanbase. He certainly hustles hard with all the merchandising lol.

Meanwhile someone like Chris Struckmann is an accredited member of the CCA (Critics Choice Association) and is currently in pre-production to direct a horror film that's backed by an actual production company.

Again this is all my personal opinion based on my personal views and my 12 years working in the industry (albeit as an onset film technician).
 
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NaffNaffBobFace

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Your reviewer noted there was a stir and then failed to say what it was. It was this. The changes to Faye that the fans abhored they abhored specifically because they recognized them as woke complaints about what the Left calls "misogeny". The fans then voted with their lack of attendance.

You sound like you want to argue about all this, and that if only We The People knew what the reviewers at Tomatoes did, the show would be on the air. It is however NOT ON THE AIR for these reasons, and your reviewer got all of that WRONG! Critical Drinker got it RIGHT. The fans hated what was done to Faye and voted by leaving. End of story. Go woke, go broke.

It's important people get this. People don't watch Star Trek because of all the politisizing, and if there comes along a woke Flash Gordon people aren't going to watch that either.

IMHO, this was a great adaptation and it got cancelled because the design of the thing reflected the needs of the woke instead of the needs of the fans. After the first episode aired they could have fixed this with a quick promo of Faye's actress wearing the yellow costume, but the studio didn't bother. That killed this.

View attachment 22213
"IMHO, this was a great adaptation and it got cancelled because the design of the thing reflected the needs of the woke instead of the needs of the fans. After the first episode aired they could have fixed this with a quick promo of Faye's actress wearing the yellow costume, but the studio didn't bother. That killed this."

The reason that I can't accept that this is the primary cause (it may have been a cause for a minority), is because of the elephant in the room.

The huge, overbearing elephant which if the above is true, is true as well.

If the fans were so outraged that Human Fay didn't look enough like the Cartoon Fay that they left in such numbers that the show collapsed... then the same stands for the visual differences of Jet Black.

Jet Black the Cartoon:
1640334028289.png


Jet Black the Human:
1640333992501.png


I'm sure I don't have to point out that the main difference is in ethnicity.

I have not followed any Drama bout this show. I have not even watched it yet but I intend to. Tell me, while you were following the noise about Fay, was there anything, anything at all about the character differences in Jet Black?
 
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Aramsolari

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"IMHO, this was a great adaptation and it got cancelled because the design of the thing reflected the needs of the woke instead of the needs of the fans. After the first episode aired they could have fixed this with a quick promo of Faye's actress wearing the yellow costume, but the studio didn't bother. That killed this."

The reason that I can't accept that this is the primary cause (it may have been a cause for a minority), is because of the elephant in the room.

The huge, overbearing elephant which if the above is true, is true as well.

If the fans were so outraged that Human Fay didn't look enough like the Cartoon Fay that they left in such numbers that the show collapsed... then the true stands for the visual differences of of Jet Black.

Jet Black the Cartoon:
View attachment 22216

Jet Black the Human:
View attachment 22215

I'm sure I don't have to point out that the main difference is in ethnicity.

I have not followed any Drama bout this show. I have not even watched it yet but I intend to. Tell me, while you were following the noise about Fay, was there anything, anything at all all about the character differences in Jet Black?
Yeah the whole thing is rather ridiculous isn't it? The double standard.

I mean..if you don't meet the high standards of a bunch of neckbeard Weaboos, you're in trouble. Better come back when you're a 6' tall lingerie model with a 20" waist size and 34DDs. Don't worry about your ability to act, memorize a script, or hit your marks. Whether you get along with cast/crew is irrelevant as well. Yeah none of that stuff is important. Oh and you better be comfortable wearing a ridiculous bright yellow 2 piece because that's all you'll be wearing all day!

Good thing there's no plans to do a Netflix live adaptation of Sailor Moon. You'll need to have Doug Jones in Drag to pull off Usagi/Serena's physique.
 
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Shadow Reaper

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Someone like this Critical Drinker guy fixates on one or two topics and just goes off. He's (again in my opinion), not a critic. He's more akin to an Op Ed, Talking Head type.
That may be true, but you'd need to watch a lot of his vids to say. I've watched a couple dozen and think yes, he does have a small handful of issues he thumps, and doesn't always look at a film in enough detail. The Tomatoes reviewer you posted did a better job doing detailed criticism. However, he ignored the fans and what they were saying, despite he alluded to he was aware of the controversy. I have to agree with him that the bile was way too much, and the infighting between fans was crazy, but he didn't look at the cause and the cause was certainly this new ethical system that calls everything bad as good and everything good as bad. The fighting we saw is and was caused by rival value systems. Pushing one at the expense of the source material was foolish.
Meanwhile all this talk about 'Cancel Culture', did it not occur to you that you're doing exactly the same? Patting yourself on the back because you believe you've done your part in helping cancel the show and defend us all from evil woke culture?

Are you talking about McCarthy and the Red Scare? Yeah we're not quite there yet lol. Again 'people pushing back'? What people? Are you so bold as to make the claim that your views are mainstream and representative of the majority?
I'm not happy to see the show go. As I said, I agreed with virtually everything the reviewer you posted up had to say. I think it is shameful to dishonor the original based upon trendy notions of misogyny, but certainly that's not enough to cancel good work, and I think this was good work.

Lets be clear. In the anime, Faye is wearing a shiny (latex?) bikini/suit, a red sweat jacket she is constantly wrestling with, and stockings that only make it half way up her thighs. She is presented as in a constant state of undressing without ever getting undressed. Count the scenes she's wrestling with the jacket to no avail. Her curves are intended to elicit the male labedo and form part of her personal power to manipulate men. All of that is gone from this rendition. Literally half Faye's personal power has been shorn from her by the woke mob. In the anime it was fun to watch Spike and Jet gulp back their obvious reactions to Faye and all of that is gone. There's some serious complaint in this. For some reason it is okay to present people fucking in Game of Thrones for no reason, but it is not okay to present a seductress manipulating her crewmates. How did that happen? It happened because the woke mob can't admit seduction as a personal power to be reckoned with. They consider this misogynist. Clearly it is not. It is simply one more aspect of a dystopian future where the way people present themselves knows no bounds. Bear in mind this was written for a Japanese audience that greatly values bounds and uniformity. All their school kids wear uniforms as do their businessmen. Breaking these boundaries presents as dystopian and contrasts against Spike who is in uniform.

Why didn't Chris Struckmann note ANY of this when it was THE CENTRAL ISSUE of all the complaints? Because he is terrified of the woke mob.

CD hit the nail on the head here. It is wokism that caused the stir, the changes from source material and the cancellation. I should note if you don't think we are at the point we were with the Red Scare, you should consider comedians like Dave Chappelle who the woke mob tried to cancel, and Bill Maher, who though certainly a member of the Left, has been at war with wokism for over a year. Other actors and comedians have begun speaking out (John Cleese, Bill Burr, Jerry Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais) and truthfully, it is at the level it was in the 50's. Even Captains of Industry like Elon Musk have been complaining. Note how Kathleen Kennedy strangled the Star Wars trilogy and how Gina Carano was fired, only to be rehired because of fan backlash. Chappelle is really funny and if as a society we cannot accept him, we're back where we were in the 50's.

People don't realize this is a 2,600 year old debate. Since that time in antiquity, values have swung back and forth between individualist and collectivist, between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome, between freedom and social planning. If you want the latter in each of these categories you are free to go to China. People who don't value individual liberty, don't value private property ownership, don't value all the vast legacy of Western Civilization are free to leave and try somewhere else. If you have sympathises with "math is racist" and "science is a tool of the white patriarchy" why not go where others are doing it differently? Instead what they're doing is cancelling Chappelle, Carano, and rewriting Faye.

It's key here to note that the US is the longest running democracy in human history. Democracy is a fragile thing, even in its Republic form. In the past when those who value equality over freedom--meaning the equality of outcome folks, the intersectional folks, the complaint department folks--whenever they win the debate their government falls. We are indeed close to that point. All that's needed for the end is USG prints $5T past what they collect and so dilute the dollar through inflation, that the average working class guy will be out in the street swinging at whomever. That's exactly how nations end.

BTW, the Red Scare was a deliberate backlash to Soviet psy-ops in the late 40's and early 50's. That was collectivism creeping into the individualist nations and the backlash was the Scare.

View: https://youtu.be/qwEEdH-pmSc
 
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NaffNaffBobFace

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Aloha fair TESTies, I was sat here with insomnia at 2am and finally got around to watching episode one of the Live Action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop.

Spoilers ahead, if you don't want to see them or don't care, stop reading, but to be fair it has been a year - if you have not watched it yet you're not going to so:

I've seen the first episode in full, moving on to the second episode but here's my first impressions from the first episode.

Before my impressions, I want to state this: I don't think it's awful. It's not terrible. It's a bit fun and a it interesting but it's also not what the animated series is.

1) It's definitely an adaptation. It's not the original series made flesh, and in this regard it doesn't retain the same spirit either. If I'd watched this back when it was released I'd have been bitterly disappointed it isn't the animated series because that's where my expectations had been set. These are two separate entities which, really, one is based off of the other. The live action adaptation has references, elements of and some snatched moments of brilliance of, but the animated Cowboy Bebop it is not. You can tell the people who made this adaptation knew the original, maybe loved it, with the references to episodes like Spikes stroll through the town looking for Asimov mirroring the stroll Jet made through old Earth looking for Radical Edward... But the references are random, drawn without rhyme or reason... or at least none I could make from it but I'm only on the first episode... And introducing Vicious at the end of the first episode... An adaptation, I have to keep reminding myself, an adaptation drawing from, based on, but not, the original...

B) The relation between the characters we know, love and respect is sort of... buddy-buddy. Which is alien. It's more like a cop partner mini-series with a little bit of gumeshoe schlock for the funz than the Jazz-Jam-Session inspired cool of the original (who's episodes were even called Sessions). There is defiantly fission there, it's a bit fun at times and yes outright funny at times, it's a different set of relationships than those in the original. Again, an adaptation which takes the property in a different direction. So here it's disservice to both versions to even compare them. It's different.

Sea) The episode lengths are longer. A lot longer Over double. Animated series was 24 minutes long and you were always left wanting more but also feeling like you'd just watched a feature-films worth of story, live action had me checking the time stamp at around the 30 minute mark only to find 20 more minutes to go without having gone much distance. If I was in to mini-series, this pacing may not have felt off, but I'm not a regular watcher of mini-series. There are elements of the original core episode of the red-eye story running through but it is taken round the houses and arrives at a similar, but different, destination.

Four) The original series had a pacing I can't really describe which doesn't seem to be present live action adaptation. Perhaps it was the limited runtime or just the very nature of animation which meant every single frame needed to contribute to the story, paused moments perfectly accented action and progression of plot points even if they were not action oriented which made each 24 minute episode feel like you had just witnessed a feature film whereas in the live action there is a lot of chatty talky to try to explain things they have not been able to show, like what the Syndicate is. Again it's different.

5ive) We thought we knew them. We thought we were returning to be in the company of some great old friends we hadn't seen in a looong time. But just like meeting up with friends you haven't seen for 20 years, one now has a kid they're desperate to get the latest toy for... It's just extra character development, it provides a extra dimensions, other angles... an adaptation with wider considerations, but again as with the aforementioned references to the original, they just seem to pop up out of nowhere seemingly at random. In the animated series we didn't find out about Jets wife until the episode we were violently introduced to her. Different.

VI) What the hell is that Julia with Vicious?! And both of them intro'd in the first episode!? Yep... definitely different.

So first impression: Forget about the source material and don't associate to it at all, and you may enjoy if you like buddy cop style series shows.
 
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NaffNaffBobFace

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So, the insomnia has carried me through to the end of episode 6.

Some of the episodes were okay but number 6 I would say was fairly good, it had actual charicter development punch for two of our favourites even though the series to this point has been odd in pacing and structure. Using the basis of of the original Brain Scratch episode it totally abandons the twist ending for a vague MacGuffin but I'd day because of this apart from the Londes name it is it's own episode of it's own story in it's own right and it stands up on it's own without having to lean or lift too much from its esteemed source material, the outlines are there but this one gives it it's own flesh for the most part.

What I have noticed with the adaptation is some of the stories try to push the boundaries in regard to what may be considered taboo by general society just as the Jupiter Jazz episodes did with Gren in the originals (yes even in the enlightened late nineties Grens status on a screen was pushing the boundaries for something on general release). What surprises me considering the furore of the casting and wardrobe choices of Fay Valentine, is that the character development in this episode which could be considered boundary pushing didn't seem to be mentioned by anyone in the original set of audiance feedback as far as I saw, which is a shame as it seems it explored (while not terribly deeply it was only a few lines of dialogue) how coming to terms with waking up not knowing not just yourself but really anything about the world around you would lead to in terms of relearning things like kettles are hot and going through experiences again, or for the first time, and not knowing if you had or not.

I'm getting enjoyment from this series by viewing it as something of a "reimagining". The Bebop is the Bebop. The names are the same, their general style is similar but they are not the same characters. These are different and I need to get to know these versions of them.

Some of the episodes using the originals as departure points and having different destinations don't really fly that well. This ones ending, unlike the original version, has no twist as to who Londes is and it's still not got that feature-film of story in 24 minutes feel, but the journey through the story and the character development for both Fay and Spike in this episode are pretty good compared to many of the other episodes. Does it hold a candle to the originals? Nope, but it's different... but it might be the closest yet.

And if you haven't watched the other 5 episodes don't watch this one first. The characters and one of the main episode driving scenarios will be all out of context and you'll hate it.
 
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Richard Bong

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I watched the live version first. I didn't come in with any preconceptions.

I watched the anime version second.

If you come at it cold, it feels, even with the longer episode length, you are missing things without the anime version to fall back on as reference.

Comparatively the live action characters, to me, felt flater.

And the Valentine character in the live action version was just annoying and poorly acted. I just wanted her on the outside of an airlock. She didn't add to the show and they would have been fine just leaving her out. (Like they did with Edward).

In the Anime version she was annoying, but in a fun way. She added to the plot and was an integrated element to the story.
 

Ltmifune

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I would say it is a loss. Scifi shows are expensive to make and the second they see the numbers are low, they get canceled and replaced with cheaper shows that get more viewership, like Jersey Housewives Super Makeover Adventure or some shit.

Firefly. cough.
This show was just awful. A few of the actors ruined it with their poor acting and their need for attention on social media. Netflix needs to be stopped, they are ruining the Witcher and everything they touch.
 

Shadow Reaper

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I thought it was pretty close to the original, and liked lots about the whole thing. The single place where it departed quite deliberately was they miscast Faye, then dressed her less sexy, then her actress Daniella Pineda posted up a "fuck you all" vid and that was the end. 60% of the audience did not survive that stupidity.

And that's what happens when you say "fuck you all" to the audience.

I agree with Drinker. Had Pineda posted up any poor excuse to not follow the original intentions with Faye constantly creating sexual tension with her shipmates, the audience would have balked but stuck it out. Instead she insulted everyone with her snarky attitude and people voted with their feet.
 
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NaffNaffBobFace

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So I've watched to the end of the last and final episode.

My last impressions are pretty much my first ones - It was a mini series adaptation and as such was a mini series and had that feel, tempo and tenure about it which was alien to the Jazz-Session spirit of the original which, really, made the original quite so unique and rich as it is.

I'm not sure if had it been built separate and independent entity from Bebop I'm not sure if it would have got, or held, my attention but as said, I'm not in to mini-series but I am in to Sci-fi etc so maybe?

A few episodes had spark but it really felt like they were trying to pack the threads from the 26 original episodes in to the 10 longer ones to get them out of the way with setting the scene while adding elements they wanted to build up on going forward in to the future, with some original stories set in the Bebop universe for the next series... which never came...

Looking on IMDB the 10 episodes are rated between a 6 and a 7 and I'd say that's not far wrong. It wasn't a stinker but it didn't exactly reach orbital velocity either. Close, but note quite there.

I can't help but wonder where they would have gone with the foundations which were set and the liberty to take the property in directions away from the original story threads.

Hey-ho, there we go.
 
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Bambooza

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Good thing there's no plans to do a Netflix live adaptation of Sailor Moon. You'll need to have Doug Jones in Drag to pull off Usagi/Serena's physique.
now I want to see this.


@naffthank you for your review. I have not been able to watch the show but it is good that someone was brave enough. After attempting to watch the live adaptation of ghost in the shell I think I'll just not bother with them in general.
 
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