Copyright 1997 Guardian Newspapers Limited

The Guardian

April 14, 1997

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. T10

LENGTH: 2240 words

HEADLINE: ARTS: MANGA GOES TO HOLLYWOOD;


Once upon a time American film directors drew inspiration from Marvel, DC Thomson and 2000AD. Now they're turning to the doe-eyed, shoulder-padded heroes and heroines of Japanese comic books. David Hughes and Jonathan Clements report.


BYLINE: David Hughes And Jonathan Clements


BODY:

It would appear to be just another action film, unleashed upon a weary and overcrowded market. Yet Crying Freeman, the story of an undercover assassin's attempt to free himself from his Chinese mafia masters, may herald a new trend in American cinema. What separates it from other films of its ilk is that it is based on a Japanese manga comic, and it was made by westerners.

Hollywood has long plundered comic books for source material - Superman, Batman, Judge Dredd, Tank Girl, the forthcoming Spiderman, to name a few. The simple, heroic plotlines and easily identifiable characters slip well into the action movie genre and provide lucrative franchising and merchandising opportunities. Yet as the well-spring of western comics dries up, Hollywood action movies have become more technological, more darkly humorous, more violent - in short, more Japanese. And many directors are now turning to manga as a near-untapped source of ready -storyboarded scripts.

There are a number of manga-inspired western projects in the pipeline. Hollywood gossip links Richard Donner, the director of Lethal Weapon, with the movie version of the Japanese-inspired children's series Speed Racer, and both Francis Ford Coppola and Tim Burton have tried to get the go-ahead for film versions of Kazuo Koike's Mai The Psychic Girl, with Winona Ryder tipped to play the eponymous heroine. And after Terry Gilliam and Twister director Jan De Bont turned down the chance to remake Godzilla, the task went to Independence Day's director, Roland Emmerich.

But perhaps manga's best-known Hollywood exponent is James Cameron, director of the Terminator films. In 1996 it was revealed that he had optioned the rights to Hitoshi Iwaaki's Parasite, a manga unknown in the West but which had won a major award in Japan. The comic book, published in the late eighties, tells of a Japan invaded by vicious, bodysnatching aliens, and is notable for its shapeshifting assassins who turn their bodies into fluidic, metallic weapons - much as the assassin in 1991's Terminator 2 shapeshifted.

There is no question of plagiarism on Cameron's part regarding Parasite. Nevertheless, his purchasing of the rights is an astute buy. Hollywood lawyers talk of the problems of 'simultaneous creation', and Babylon 5 producer J Michael Straczynski has outlined the problem for aspiring writers, suggesting that originality is a difficult concept to define: 'The odds are that somebody out there has had the same idea, and you can only hope and pray that this person has never sent your studio an unsolicited manuscript or published his story in some little magazine somewhere, or you're going to be on the receiving end of a subpoena.' Cameron had already faced a successful plagiarism suit from the writer Harlan Ellison over coincidences of plotting in the first Terminator film, and it seems that buying up even remotely similar works is a far cheaper option than risking another legal battle.

Meanwhile, Disney's Buena Vista subsidiary has become the western distributor for Hayao Miyazaki, a leading manga creator whose animated films consistently out-perform Disney at the Japanese box -office. After some wrangling, Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli and Buena Vista struck a deal that was to everybody's liking: Asian distribution rights remained with the Japanese while Buena Vista assumed the responsibility of bringing Studio Ghibli's films to the rest of the world. The first release under the new agreement is Studio Ghibli's latest production, Mononoke Hime, which is to be dubbed into English and titled Princess Ghost.

Disney are being typically smart in pursuing the rights to such high quality products. In Japan, the third largest box-office territory in the world, video sales of Toy Story and Pocahontas were eclipsed by those of Evangelion, a home-grown, fervently anti-Christian tale of invading angels from outer space. But one Disney film has done rather well in Japan: The Lion King. This is perhaps because it has much in common with Osamu Tezuka's highly -regarded 1966 television series Jungle Emperor, screened in the US as Kimba The White Lion.

The Disney company has vehemently denied that The Lion King was influenced by Tezuka's story. Yet some of Disney's animators, and even Matthew Broderick (who provided the voice of Disney's Simba) said that they were aware of the original series from their own childhood. Helen McCarthy, editor of the British magazine Manga Mania, has noted a number of similarities between the two works, pointing out that '. . . both stories feature mandrill baboons as spiritual advisers to the king, hyena sidekicks to the usurper and poetic image sequences in which the image of a lion appears in the clouds'. The stampede sequence in The Lion King mirrors one in the Kimba series, in which Kimba also fails to stop the animals and attempts to throw off his kingly duties.

The Japanese reaction was considered. Tezuka Productions president Takayuki Matsutani issued a press release to the effect that his company ' . . . did not believe that lawsuits are an appropriate way of resolving disputes of this nature . . . We therefore have no intention at this time of filing a lawsuit against Disney'.

In spite of such legal wrangles, Hollywood's interest in Japanese material continues undaunted, and many directors remain keen to get involved in co-productions and adaptations. Christophe Gans, the French director of Crying Freeman, scripted his own adaptation of the manga by Kazoo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami. Like Japan, Gans's native country does not regard comics as a solely juvenile form, and it should come as no surprise that the first major live-action feature film based on a manga should have a French director.

Crying Freeman was filmed for $ 8 million, with finance from Asia, Europe and America and pre-sales to a number of other territories making it profitable before a single frame was even shot. In France, it became the year's most successful action film, despite running against big names such as Kurt Russell and Steven Seagal in Executive Decision, and Jean-Claude Van Damme in Sudden Death. 'We just crushed them,' says Gans, 'simply because it was a choice between Freeman and two post-Die Hard action films.' This success has allowed him to fully finance his next feature, after which he will adapt another best-selling manga, the futuristic police drama Patlabor.

But what is it that attracts directors such as Cameron and Gans to manga as potential source material? Crying Freeman, Gans argues, is a classical tale far beyond the literacy level of most American comics. 'The setting is contemporary, but the story is a period piece,' he says. 'The characters are not fighting for money or drugs; they are fighting for honour, pride and passion, just as you would imagine in the 15th century, in Japan or at the court of the Borgias.' And for Cameron, whose Digital Domain is a world leader in special effects, there are shots that can be achieved in animation that are as yet unimagined in what he describes as real-world photography. 'As the ability to create these effects increases,' he says, 'it becomes more important to create a style, and I think digital artists in the US are looking to animation to see what kind of style can be imposed upon it.' The Japanese themselves are instigating much of the international interest in their material, actively seeking foreign finance and talent. Marvin Gleicher, whose company Manga Entertainment brought the animated versions of Ghost In The Shell and Patlabor to the west, is currently co-financing a number of projects in Japan. 'The projects that we are doing are based on the strength of the Japanese market and community, but we're attempting to make them a bit more westernised, not with character designs, but maybe storyline and music.' The leading Japanese producer Taro Maki - who invited composer Christopher Franke to score Tenchi Muyo In Love, and asked actors Keifer Sutherland and Elizabeth Berkeley to voice roles in Armitage III - is among those who values such participation. 'Character designers and directors need to be Japanese for the sake of communication and style,' he says, 'but the Americans and the French have great talent in other areas.' This may explain why, following the success of his live-action Crying Freeman, Christophe Gans was approached by Japanese licensors with a selection of other properties. 'They said, 'What do you want to do?' and gave me a list of comics: Midnight Eye Goku by Buichi Terasawa; Yukito Kishiro's Battle Angel Alita, and Patlabor, which I am going to do.' Anyone interested in these titles can check the appeal for themselves, years ahead of any live-action release, as all the animated versions are already available in UK video shops.

Marvin Gleicher has a warning for Hollywood, though. He feels that the studios may come unstuck if they lose sight of what gave the material its initial appeal. 'The fact that some of these live-action films are based on manga will increase the awareness of Japanese culture in a positive sense. But some of the studios will fail if they attempt to westernise the films too much.'

Crying Freeman is released on May 9
.

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