And that matters more to the studios.The protagonist of the 2014 film Kikaider REBOOT. But it takes a whole crew, actors, equipment, transportation, location and permits to shoot action scenes on a regular basis.Ĭoming up with a new story to work around existing footage may be difficult and constraining, but it's cheap in the end. After all, it only takes a half dozen people (or less) sitting in a room for hours a day to come up with new stories for the series. In fact, I think the benefits from being able to reuse footage in this manner outweight the freedom of coming up with your own original story. Which means they don't need to be concerned with the logistics (and costs) for shooting those scenes. All the action scenes involving suited up characters are essentially reused from the original series. Take for example, how Power Rangers is adapted from various Super Sentai series.
While it is true that you don't need adapt any specific characters or series, this also means you need to create your own characters and series entirely. The ability to "clean sheet" a Kamen Rider series is both a blessing and a curse.
Some of these advantages might be disadvantages, such as a lack of presence making it less likely to be seen as a moneymaker. That's just my assessment though - I'm hardly a studio executive. It would also really lend itself to a filmmaker who wants to put an emphasis on practical effects. You could do a really spectacular looking Kamen Rider film on twenty million dollars lol. Sure, it has fans all over the world, but it's liberating being able to approach a film when it has a relatively small fan following.įourthly, it could be cheap. Unlike Power Rangers, which has this dedicated following in the States and can generate a big cycle of expectation, Kamen Rider is relatively unknown. Saban's attempt to bring the series over as Masked Rider was a flop, and Kamen Rider Dragon Knight didn't take off (though it won an Emmy). Compared to Kikaider having a huge following in Hawaii or Ultraman being a big deal in South America, my understanding is that in general, Kamen Rider is relatively unknown in the US. Thirdly, you aren't dealing with a huge amount of nostalgia. You could easily borrow from the Showa era and set your premise as 'a secret organization forcibly converts a kidnapped person into a cyborg as part of a world domination plan, that person escapes and uses a powerful suit of armour to fight back' and that would be so readily accepted in a post-Iron Man world that I'm almost surprised it hasn't happened yet.
As the long running TV series goes to show, you can use that basic premise to generate really any story or form of drama that you like, but otherwise it's going to be readily understood by executives and audience alike.
I mean that in the sense that it has a clear, easily understood premise that fits neatly into the now well established superhero genre. There's no need to awkwardly navigate what amounts to a translation, which is part of what sunk GitS. While making use of the key identifiers of the character, you can essentially take any direction you want. You aren't bringing their specific story to film, you're bringing the idea of Kamen Rider. You aren't localizing Hongo Takeshi, or Tendou Souji, or whoever. What this means in practice is that you can bring the character to another country without having to adapt any specific characters. There are four key reasons why Kamen Rider makes for a good source material for adaptation.įirstly, Kamen Rider is a legacy franchise, introducing a new lead each year for practically the entire Heisei era. So with that in mind, I think that Hollywood should pursue a property that could easily avoid a lot of the previous sticking points we've seen in adaptations: Kamen Rider.
Considering the appearance of the RX-78 in the upcoming Ready Player One, I don't think it's unlikely that we might be looking at a Mobile Suit Gundam film project in the next five to ten years. Hollywood wants the next nine figure earner, and Japanese media companies want the big licence fees - big US film studios can put a lot of money in your back pocket. What will remain true is that Hollywood adaptations will continue to happen. Even the 'good one', Edge of Tomorrow, does not really capture the essence of the original novel I liked so much. I don't really have a lot of hope for any of them.
The prospect of an American adaptation of AKIRA in particularly fills me with a cold and prickling sensation that I'm pretty sure is primal dread. If you've seen me post in any thread about Hollywood adaptations of Japanese property, then you'd probably know I can be pretty skeptical about them.