_V_
Lorien
Apr 24 2010, 3:11pm
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Interview I made with Evangelion cast member, re; Weta's next big project
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The Devil's hands have been busy:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/press-release/2010-04-23/tiffany-grant-90-minute-video-interview
(only about 2 minutes is devoted to talking about live-action Evangelion, 30 minutes into it, and only to say that she hasn't heard anything new or at least, can't tell us anything new...what I'm more excited about is that I was able to interview one of the English voice actors who dubbed the original cartoon series)
"Evangelion" is a Japanese anime series; similar to how "Watchmen" was a deconstruction of the superhero genre, while really a psychological character study and social commentary...."Evangelion" was a deconstruction of the "Giant Robot" genre, while really a psychological character study and social commentary.
They've been trying to make a live-action film adaptation since 2003. Weta Workshop really wanted it to be "the big project we work on after Lord of the Rings", and spent about 6 months on pre-production concept art (before ROTK came out)...but then dream-project King Kong opened up, so they put it on hold. The live-action Halo came up, putting Evangelion on hold. Then the Writer's Guild of America Strike shut down Hollywood. However, the success of Transformers convinced Hollywood that "a movie about giant robots from Japan" can make a lot of money. So a bidding war started between rival studios that now actually wanted to make it. However, then the anime industry collapsed in 2008.
In short, we've had as many "Hollywood behind the scenes negotiation" problems as the Hobbit films have.
Nonetheless, word has leaked out that some studio (we don't know which) has WON that bidding war, so a studio and producer are now attached, and production is moving steadily forward.
Weta will probably be very happy: Richard Taylor and much of the Weta staff are personally fans of the series. As we understand it, "live-action Evangelion" was their idea, actually, because they were sitting around at the end of LOTR saying "okay, we need another big special effects movie franchise to sustain ourselves with....[Taylor looks at all of the Evangelion action figures displayed at his own desk]...hey, why not Evangelion?"
I sort of first heard of live-action Eva around 2003 when Weta would talk about it -- I've been a member of theonering.net since 2000, before FOTR came out -- and they seemed pretty enthusiastic about it:
Here's some videos where Richard Taylor professes his love of Evangelion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syDws-bNaH0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdnYPmd0lgs
I started out as just a fan who watched the series off of TV in 2005-2006, but starting in 2008 I started working my way up the local convention circuit, and by 2009 I was running Evangelion panels at national-level conventions like Anime Boston:
I devote a 20 minute chunk of one of my panels to explaining the long and complicated road of the live-action Eva project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oPF4qifKi4&feature=related
So people started watching my stuff at panels, the analysis videos I put up on youtube, and folks from the Adult Swim messageboards (the network that ran the series on TV here)
and eventually we decided we should make our *own* fansite, because we think the people "in charge" at the moment are...basically our version of the Lord of the Rings hippie-fans from the 1960's, who choose to interpret the story as they see fit, i.e. Tolkien stated, directly, "pipe-weed is tobacco, I just call it pipe-weed because I think tobacco would sound weird".....but those hippie-fans chose to believe what they wanted, in defiance of "the facts"
Eva fandom never really had a Tom Shippey or Karen Wynn Fonstad. There are no guidebooks. Everyone was more interested with...either badly interpreting it, or writing a LOT of pornographic fan-fiction (its an order of magnitude worse than the Frodo/Sam people)
So we decided that if anything is going to get done, we need to fight a "revolution" against the fanboys that run everything.
So on November the 5th, 2009, we made our fansite: "ReVolutionOfEvangelion.org"
we've finally got everything set up and news updates are running smoothly, our messageboards are actually active (everyone who had been following me on youtube and messageboards and at my panels came over) and we're even running *franchise* panels at conventions across the country, to spread the word about Evangelion (i.e. Seattle, Boston)
Because the fanboys are sort of like you crossed the worst elements of LOTR's 1960's hippie-fans, the slash fanfiction writers, and the "books only" super-elitists; a truly bizarre mix of elitism, yet lack of actual knowledge, personal misinterpretation, and a lot of porn fanart. (at least LOTR's book-only purists..."know things"; the Eva fanboys have this warped, unjustified elitism not based on really being "experts")
So we want to have a nice fandom run by "sane people", that actually supports the live-action Eva project, as well as the English-dub version of the TV series.
We've finally reached the point where we're even interviewing cast members.
I am openly surprised that I was able to reach this point, and that people were actually willing to help me out, but the other people that joined my fansite also realize that they don't like the way things have been going, and really want a change.
"Eva's in the theaters, all's right with the world"
ReVolution of Evangelion "Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name, but what's puzzling you, is the nature of my game"
Formerly known on TORN as "Draug the Unspeakably Violent"
(This post was edited by _V_ on Apr 24 2010, 3:12pm)
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