'Space Battleship Yamato' Tops Japan Box Office
The latest "Harry Potter" film drops down to the second spot.
TOKYO -- The new live-action Space Battleship Yamato has cruised to the top of the box office, sinking Harry Potter down to the No. 2 spot with a take of almost 1 billion yen ($12 million) in the first five days since its Dec. 1 release.
The big screen version of the classic 1974 anime stars Takuya Kimura and has already been sold to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, France and Germany, with negotiations in progress for a U.S. release.
New vid at the bottom
Released in Japan the other day.
17 comments:
Seeing another Yamato clip the other day on a work thread made me ask a question I've been pondering for a while... Why hasn't there been another great space opera to capture the public imagination as Star Wars and Star Trek have? Why is there not any other Space based film or TV show that have reached anything even approaching the popularity of these 2 big franchises? Star Wars is 30 years old and still popular, for crying out load, so there is an appetite for the genre. Thoughts?
That's because Hollywood is too chicken shit to INVEST/RISK money on an UNKNOWN commodity. They would RATHER cash in on beating a 30+ year old horse to death than let NEW and fresh ideas in. How many studios PASSED on Star Wars back in the day. Well we know the story on that and the fools are still kicking themselves for that. I mean how MANY REMAKES and RE-IMAGINING are we going to have to sit through before they are willing to chance it on something new??? I have no hope as the path to easy money rules the corporate decisions. Thats why we get lots of crap. Even superhero flick are dumbed down to the lowest common denominator of the viewing public. Just look at something like the Fantastic Four and how LAME that was.
They had the cast on a cooking show? Looks like a good show. Watched the rest of Appleseed-2004 movie tonight. That was very well done. Nice action cutting. Great tech.
Avatar?
Yeah Krayonzilla. Avatar?
Notice I made these small enough not to be cropped. I made them 320 by 240. There might be a slightly larger size that takes advantage of all the publishable real estate. I'll look into it. If you want it big, you go to youtube.
Avatar DON'T COUNT. Nothing don't COUNT when the URBER Directors, WHO were the piss ant directors of yesterday make a SMALL UNHEARD OF movie that GROSSES MILLIONS++++, Then the SUIT & TIES think they can DO NO WRONG and give them BLANK checks over and over again SO they CAN PROFIT. Thats how that works. Suits follow the money. In the OLD days it was easier for guys like Cameron to get that little break.
Just like Zemeckis with Back to the Future. No ONE bought into cuz Zemeckis never had a real hit up to that point. If it wasn't for Spielberg's influence it may never gotten made. After it MADE $$$$$ then Zemeckis was on the A list. It's nothing but the suits chasing MONEY like the parasites they are.
And Cameron is OVERATED these days just like Avatar. His best work is so far behind him.
Well, I was trying to be specific about longing for space operas... shows or movies about spaceships, other planets and aliens on an intergalactic scale. Avatar has aliens, but it wasn't really a space opera in the sense that I think of them as.
It seems to me that there would be tons of money to be made if someone did it right.. or even attempted it. I don't think it needs to be terribly original, just good enough... I think there is an audience out there longing for this sort of storytelling who's needs aren't getting met.
I think it all got quickly devalued as a big screen attraction by the ubiquity of serialized space opera on TV. Most of which I avoided. Most...actually all. The only one I discovered I should have given a chance was Firefly.
I also loved Firefly. I've never watched the new Battlestar Galactica but I've heard nothing but good things about it.
Rick, I think I understand your longing for Space Operas in the Star Trek and Star Wars sense. But perhaps it's that Star Wars and Star Trek ARE still meeting that audience's needs, that few people want to compete with them in the market.
Now, I actually do think of Avatar as a space opera along the same lines. During the last battle scene, can't you just hear "Ride of the Valkyrie" as the military planes and copters try to wipe out the natives?
Maybe what's missing as far as being a franchise goes is that there's currently only the one film out, and it's a story about a very specific time and place. In other words it doesn't emphasize that there's a whole universe out there that's being affected by the "Avatar Technology".
Part of the Star Trek premise is that the Warp Drive opened up a whole universe of possibilities. The idea of the Jedi and the Force suggest the same thing. It fires the imagination as to the possiblities beyond just the one film.
Perhaps if Cameron does succesive films with recurring characters and themes, it will seem more like what you think of as a classic space opera.
Reimagined or not, Battlestar Galactica, at least the first 2 years, plus Razor, met Rick's criteria.
Interesting that no one mentioned my favorite space opera:
Babylon 5.
Well, Firefly didn't really take off did it? Personally, I saw the first 2 episodes and didn't really connect with it.
I've seen more BSG and thought it was pretty good, but I haven't seen the whole thing.
I haven't heard of Razor, but I'd be willing to give it a try.
B5 peaked too early, but I would have to admit that it comes closer to what I'm thinking of than most. Production wise, though, it doesn't hold up very well and didn't survive long after it's original run.
Still, none have come close to entering the public imagination as SW and ST have.
What I've been enjoying lately is the New Doctor Who show. The show has a lot of the original show's quirkiness, aliens, monsters, time travel and the like, but the charmingly shoestring productions of the original show have been replaced by a much more polished product and snappy writing. Oh, and both David Tennant and Matt Smith are extremely engaging actors who where the mantle of the Doctor well.
Now that I think of it, both ST an SW where things that, although not totally original in their own right, where fresh and new to the mediums that spawned them. Everything else that has come since lives in their shadows and suffer from being compared to them... as I've been doing throughout this thread.
And the source material of science fiction books has so many vibes that could be explored. Maybe a big budget John Carter of Mars will show one of the seminal adventure vibes that has been ignored. I think people would respond in a big way to Adam Strange using the Zeta Ray to get to his adventures. Of course that's basically lifting John Carter's thing in comic book form.
I waited to long to check out your most recent link. Youtube killed the guy's account over it.
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