Oh boy ... I still love the guy's work but I really hope Yukihiko Tsutsumi has got a little something up his sleeve here because the proper theatrical trailer for his massive adaptation of popular manga 20th Century Boys has just arrived and for the amount of money he's spending I expect something that looks a whole lot better than this. Wherever all that money went it certainly didn't go on hiring a high end cinematographer and I just can't shake the feeling that there are shots in this trailer that just plain don't look done. Has he bitten off more than he can chew here? I hope not but time will tell. Based on a manga by Urasawa Naoki the film has a sprawling cast that follows a group of friends over the span of decades as they try to stop the arrival of Armageddon. The real life Aum death cult - the people behind the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway system - were apparently a major influence on the scenario.
You'll find the trailer in the Twitch Player below the break. Check it out and tell me if you think I'm wrong here - I really hope I am.
It's a massive three film monstrosity so there's probably a lot of footage that was shot by first, second, third and forth assistant directors. Same thing that makes Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy so uneven. Every once in a while you see a scene you know he directed himself but in between there's tons of poorly staged and uninspiring stuff that was shot by much less talented folks in order to get the thing in the can in less than 5 years. That's one more reason to love someone like Guillermo del Toro who insists to shoot every single frame of film himself.
What's his rational for maintaining the same shooting style for television and film? Especially in the case of 20th Century Boys which is meant to be a wide theatrical release.
Adopting stylistic norms used in television for use in a theatrical film makes the film look like every other Japanese TV dorama. It's ugly and generic. I hate the abundance of close ups and medium shots.
This of course says nothing about how well it will do in the box office. Considering how popular Urasawa is, it'll probably do very well.
Definitely hoarding it's money shots for the release.
I like that.
Have you watched any of his TV work? Or compared that to what every other TV show looks like? The difference is like night and day. Little tricks like putting the close ups off to the side of the screen, to more dramatically off-kilter angles - and a lot of what sets his work apart is editing, which is paced quite differently from most TV shows, with a lot more cuts.
When he talks about shooting TV and movies the same way he doesn't mean shooting them worse; he means achieving the look and feel of a movie on a TV budget, and he means shooting a movie as economically as a TV series.
I think Sword of Alexander, for all its flaws, was definitely an attempt to make a story of that scale quickly and cheaply and still have it come off well. This will obviously not look as cheap, but we are talking a manga that consists mainly of talking heads, so his experience making talking heads feel quite the opposite of staid may well turn out to make him the perfect man for the job.
...which seems to be the case for this specific trailer. Cause I still contend that it looks butt ugly!
Judging from the Japanese website the first film ends at the part of the story set in the year 2000.. That means the only money shots in the movie are a few explosions and then the giant plague-spreading spider robot at the end. The budget aspect has been totally overblown or something was lost in translation -- it's 56 million for 3 movies. Rumors of massive Hollywood-scale awesomeness have been perpetuated on various blogs because of a blurb on Tokyograph that said "possibly the biggest domestic production of this year," which, if you really think about it, isn't saying much at all.
ah, victims of our own hyperbole!