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ROBOTECH


Werthead

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Apparently the Robotech live-action movie is finally happening. James Wan, director of Furious 7, creator of the Saw and Conjuring franchises and just about to start work on Aquaman, has committed to making this his next movie after Aquaman. Which unfortunately means we probably won't see it until 2020.

More encouragingly, Wan seems to want to make a movie based on the Macross Saga rather than anything else and, according to Forbes, Shoji Kawamori would be on board to work on the movie in whatever role was up for grabs. Kawamori's goodwill may even mean they can use the original Macross mecha designs, which have been tied up in legal issues for years (Kawamori famously loathes Harmony Gold and would be unlikely to work with them, but HG don't seem to be very involved in this new movie after selling the rights on).

This is still a long way off, but a director with clout ($1.5 billion for your last film will do that for you) is on board and it looks like they might be able to overcome some of the legal problems that have dogged the project for years.

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Wait, wait... [my heart] 

Does that mean it will have the Mospeada Cyclone?

Cause like... holy shit. That would make my wee sprat dreams come true. 'Cept for me piloting, but I'll take it.

 

edit: ah... boo

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  • 1 month later...
2 minutes ago, Myrddin said:

Fantastic news!

By the way, Amazon Prime (at least in the US) now has all of Robotech available to stream for free.

yes it does - I literally started a rewatch yesterday!

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You know, I thought about thisfor decades, literally.For some reason mostly about who would play Lisa Hayes.

In the 90's I thought Helen Hunt would be perfect, in the 2000's Leelee Sobnieski, right now Sophie Turner.

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Lisa Hayes is older than Rick Hunter, is she not?  Maybe not ten years, but enough to rise high in the ranks of the RDF.  I'd want to see someone who can carry the proper level of maturity, while not being too old.  I guess some like Riley Keough.

For Rick Hunter, someone young, maybe one of those guys who were almost cast as Spiderman but weren't.

For Roy Fokker....  Neil Patrick Harris.

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Rick was 19 and Lisa was 24. Claudia and Roy were both older (30, I think). The three young bridge crewmembers were all 18 or 19 (there was the whole thing that more experienced personnel couldn't adapt to robotechnology, whilst youngsters could). I remember there being an odd continuity issue where Roy remembered Rick being a great pilot in his dad's air circus, but Rick would have had to have been flying around at 7 or 8 years old, which seemed unlikely. Not a major issue though.

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  • 1 year later...
5 hours ago, Werthead said:

The Robotech movie project has now been restarted, with a new writer and new director attached. Both are a lot higher-profile than the last team, and apparently Muschietti will start work on the film after wrapping IT2 next year.

I don't mind redesigning the mecha, just as long as it's not visual noise like Bay's Transformers.

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7 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The Robotech movie project has now been restarted, with a new writer and new director attached. Both are a lot higher-profile than the last team, and apparently Muschietti will start work on the film after wrapping IT2 next year.

As much as I've come to love Macross and get that in the original anime things like protoculture makes more sense, I just have major love for how Harmony Gold  weaved together the 3 different animes into one (semi) coherent plot line. I can see the argument as how that's kind of a shitty thing to do to other people's work, but it captured us as kids. A big part was the foundation of the original anime unknowingly getting through to us, but the whole saga of the three generations, what HG gave us and what they inspired our imaginations to fill in, was also magical. I think originally as kids the plot came together as much filling the gaps in our heads as it did with how HG put it together.

"What happened to all the generation one characters?"

And Then:

"Ok, well, where's the new generation now?"

"New mech I understand, but where's the remnants of the old mech?"

"Why don't they show the SDF-2?"

"If the SDF-1, SDF-2, and Zentraedi warships are covered up in those mounds, shouldn't there be some wreckage when 15th ATAC go there?"

"Why does in Robotech universe Max's Blue + Miriya's green = yellow?"

"Why does Dana take so many showers?"

Watching it as kids, we all filled in the things we didn't understand with our imaginations, then we either left the show behind or got into the the (now non-canon) books and when we learned about how HG put it together and tracked down the original animes and understood it all in-story and behind the scenes all the better.

Having it be that way I think also makes it a lot more personal to each individual kid who watched it, which makes me dubious about a Robotech movie project trying to give us a new narrative to what we all ready had with the cartoon, books, and what we built in our heads. Just going and straight up doing Macross instead may have been the better move. Maybe they think "Robotech" is still the better name recognition in the western hemisphere (very debatable), or that's just how the rights of what they could get fell into place. Doubts aside though, I'm still very enthused by this project, but I was also really enthused for Transformers...

Looking forward to see how this progresses.

 

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Interesting. Harmony Gold lose all of their Macross distribution rights in July 2021. They can still release Robotech stuff, but at that point the Japanese creators can do WTF they want in releasing the shows on DVD, Blu-Ray and in streaming deals and Harmony Gold can't do anything about it.

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18 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Interesting. Harmony Gold lose all of their Macross distribution rights in July 2021. They can still release Robotech stuff, but at that point the Japanese creators can do WTF they want in releasing the shows on DVD, Blu-Ray and in streaming deals and Harmony Gold can't do anything about it.

That mean we can get good and complete releases of the subsequent Macross sequel series finally in the U.S.?

That would be awesome.

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I started watching Robotech: Southern Cross with my son a few weeks ago. It's the first time I've seen this part of the saga for 25+ years. It really is a mess. I remember being able to go with the flow when I was 12, but now knowing the history behind how they cobbled three separate series together, I'm looking past the dub and trying to figure out the original story too. I think they're both bad. :) 

That said, I'm excited to see the series re-booted in live action. The novelizations did a great job of smoothing over the narrative mess of the shows. Hopefully the new movies will rely on those more than the show.

As for losing mecha designs, yeah that sucks. Gen 1 Veritechs were always my favorite, over the Ajax and Alphas. But as SpaceChampion said above, as long as they don't got he Bayformers route of reimagining, it should be fine. /crosses fingers

 

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