New Feature-Length Live-Action Gundam Movie Incoming

[Deathzealot]

Actually. That isn't really true. What has delayed such movies in the technology of accurately portraying the mobile suits and gundams outside of animation. Hence. With both Pacific Rim movies finished and the RX-78 getting a small cameo in Ready Player One I think it is about time that a Gundam movie is now in the works. Now I just want a Battletech/Mechwarrior live-action movie and everything will be great....

[pirx]

Well technology for making such a movie is there, but main thing is to write a compelling story which will appeal to many viewers. I am not sure that classic Gundam story will work outside anime community.

[False Prophet]

Actually. That isn't really true. What has delayed such movies in the technology of accurately portraying the mobile suits and gundams outside of animation. Hence. With both Pacific Rim movies finished and the RX-78 getting a small cameo in Ready Player One I think it is about time that a Gundam movie is now in the works. Now I just want a Battletech/Mechwarrior live-action movie and everything will be great....

I really don't know about that. The new Battletech game is great, but it doesn't seem to make a big "splash" with the entire community. Low brand recognition for a movie, I say.

[BrentD15]

My biggest concern about this movie is the pacing for the story.

How are they gonna flesh this out, between the protagonist fighting out the brand-spanking new prototype mecha they've devised to fight the not-Space Nazis, romantic interests, rivalry, and conclusion. For animes and OVAs, it works because the characters can be better fleshed out in a multi-part series.

In films, the time constraints in story development are tighter.

[*] A "nobody" kid from the space boonies falls into the cockpit of a Gundam and is inexplicably revealed to be a natural mobile suit pilot who, despite having no formal training, is able to brutally beat down seasoned pros who've trained for YEARS... partly thanks to innate psychic powers they didn't know they had.

Not exactly true, because the main protagonists usually have some engineering background behind them, if not were directly involved with mobile suit development.
Amuro had his father being the head of the Federation's MS development program, Kamille designing the Gundam Mk.II, etc.

[Deathzealot]

Amuro also happened to be a Whiz-Kid at engineering and, yes, his dad was the developer of the RX-78 Gundam which, depending on the version of the story, he managed to find out about from his Father's Work Computer. As for Kamille he too was a Whiz-Kid at engineering and actually had some piloting experience in Petite Mobile Suits. He also helped in the development of the Zeta Gundam, not Mark-II that was his parents.

[Seto Kaiba]

[*] A "nobody" kid from the space boonies falls into the cockpit of a Gundam and is inexplicably revealed to be a natural mobile suit pilot who, despite having no formal training, is able to brutally beat down seasoned pros who've trained for YEARS... partly thanks to innate psychic powers they didn't know they had.

Not exactly true, because the main protagonists usually have some engineering background behind them, if not were directly involved with mobile suit development.
Amuro had his father being the head of the Federation's MS development program, Kamille designing the Gundam Mk.II, etc.

This only superficially looks like a sound argument. It's functionally equivalent to arguing that knowing all of the mechanical principles behind a Formula One car's engine and transmission is a substitute for the training and experience that you'd need to win a Formula One Driver's Championship.

(As someone who's actually seen something like this attempted - someone who understands the operational mechanical theory but has no experience operating a vehicle - all I can say is the idea that theory is enough to safely operate, let alone outperform a skilled and experienced operator, is patently absurd.)

As for Kamille he too was a Whiz-Kid at engineering and actually had some piloting experience in Petite Mobile Suits.

Likewise, having a modest amount of experience driving something like a golf cart isn't going to translate to applicable skills driving something significantly higher performance like a Formula One car. The similarities are vastly eclipsed by the differences in performance and function.

[Dark Duel]

Kamille designing the Gundam Mk.II, etc.

Kamille did NOT design the Gundam MkII, his father did. IIRC his mother was involved in metallurgical development for the Titans and might've played a part in the MkII's development(unsure), but it was designed principally by Franklin Bidan. Kamille's only involvement with the Gundam MkII prior to his joining the AEUG consisted of stealing one of them and taking it for a joyride during which he tried to stomp the Titans officer who smacked him around earlier.

Kamille sketched out concept designs that were used to develop the Zeta Gundam as well as the Flying Armor used by the MkII. By that time, he'd already been piloting the MkII for a fair amount of time IIRC.

[Mr_Wolverine]

First of all: I'm back and I hope you all are well.
I told you. I told you seven years ago it was going to happen. I told you in multiple topics administrators always chose to close to prevent such discussion. Here's one: viewtopic.php?t=14205&start=60#p318241
Now "I came to laugh at you", Char should say at this point. It's happening.

[*] A "nobody" kid from the space boonies falls into the cockpit of a Gundam and is inexplicably revealed to be a natural mobile suit pilot who, despite having no formal training, is able to brutally beat down seasoned pros who've trained for YEARS... partly thanks to innate psychic powers they didn't know they had.

Not exactly true, because the main protagonists usually have some engineering background behind them, if not were directly involved with mobile suit development.
Amuro had his father being the head of the Federation's MS development program, Kamille designing the Gundam Mk.II, etc.

This only superficially looks like a sound argument. It's functionally equivalent to arguing that knowing all of the mechanical principles behind a Formula One car's engine and transmission is a substitute for the training and experience that you'd need to win a Formula One Driver's Championship.

In real world, you'd be right. But Gundam IS NOT real world. It's Sci-Fi. Like Star Wars.
Luke Skywalker was a 17yo farmer driving a landspeeder X-34, when he joined the Rebel Forces. In his first sortie piloting a X-Wing Fighter, he managed to shoot down multiple Imperial TIE Fighters flown by far more experienced pilots, and succeeded -the only one!- to hit the target and destroy Death Star!
So it's already happened before, in science fiction. Why you have so much trouble according that very same degree of "suspension of disbelief" to Amuro?

[Seto Kaiba]

So it's already happened before, in science fiction. Why you have so much trouble according that very same degree of "suspension of disbelief" to Amuro?

In general, for the reasons which I have already elaborated upon at some length.

Not being much of a Star Wars fan, it occurred to me to check the example you built your argument on and I'm rather perplexed that you picked an example that is the exact opposite of what you're attempting to assert. I'm assuming this was unintentional?

Luke Skywalker was a 17yo farmer driving a landspeeder X-34, when he joined the Rebel Forces. In his first sortie piloting a X-Wing Fighter, he managed to shoot down multiple Imperial TIE Fighters flown by far more experienced pilots, and succeeded -the only one!- to hit the target and destroy Death Star!

On review, that model X-34 landspeeder wasn't the only vehicle Luke's foster family owned.

The Lars family also had a high-performance light aircraft called a T-16 skyhopper that Luke frequently flew for recreational purposes with his friends. Recreation that included stunt flying, including a popular trick of flying down a local canyon while using the craft's underslung cannon to "bulls-eye" local (~2m) vermin, as he mentioned during the Death Star briefing in A New Hope. The specs available on Wookieepedia claim that this craft had a flight ceiling of either 300m (Canon) or 300km (Legends), but agree that it was able to travel as fast as 1,200km/h (Mach 0.972, assuming Tattooine's atmosphere is comparable to Earth's). It was also mentioned that the T-16 and X-Wing are made by the same company and had similar controls, that had made transitioning to the X-Wing relatively easy for Luke.

Put simply, your example is the polar opposite of the point you were attempting to make. Luke was already a veteran stunt pilot with considerable experience on an armed, near-supersonic aircraft noted to be similar to the military-grade starfighter he was later assigned to. The only opponent it can be established that he'd fought who was more experienced was Darth Vader. His success in the trench run that destroyed said Death Star is literally attributed in-universe to actual magic... so let's discount that as well.

If Amuro or another Gundam protagonist had been in Luke's position, they'd have had something like a Hobby HiZack sitting around that they practiced on all the time before falling into the Gundam's cockpit.

[Mr_Wolverine]

So it's already happened before, in science fiction. Why you have so much trouble according that very same degree of "suspension of disbelief" to Amuro?

In general, for the reasons which I have already elaborated upon at some length.

Not being much of a Star Wars fan, it occurred to me to check the example you built your argument on and I'm rather perplexed that you picked an example that is the exact opposite of what you're attempting to assert. I'm assuming this was unintentional?

Luke Skywalker was a 17yo farmer driving a landspeeder X-34, when he joined the Rebel Forces. In his first sortie piloting a X-Wing Fighter, he managed to shoot down multiple Imperial TIE Fighters flown by far more experienced pilots, and succeeded -the only one!- to hit the target and destroy Death Star!

On review, that model X-34 landspeeder wasn't the only vehicle Luke's foster family owned.

The Lars family also had a high-performance light aircraft called a T-16 skyhopper that Luke frequently flew for recreational purposes with his friends. Recreation that included stunt flying, including a popular trick of flying down a local canyon while using the craft's underslung cannon to "bulls-eye" local (~2m) vermin, as he mentioned during the Death Star briefing in A New Hope. The specs available on Wookieepedia claim that this craft had a flight ceiling of either 300m (Canon) or 300km (Legends), but agree that it was able to travel as fast as 1,200km/h (Mach 0.972, assuming Tattooine's atmosphere is comparable to Earth's). It was also mentioned that the T-16 and X-Wing are made by the same company and had similar controls, that had made transitioning to the X-Wing relatively easy for Luke.

Put simply, your example is the polar opposite of the point you were attempting to make. Luke was already a veteran stunt pilot with considerable experience on an armed, near-supersonic aircraft noted to be similar to the military-grade starfighter he was later assigned to. The only opponent it can be established that he'd fought who was more experienced was Darth Vader. His success in the trench run that destroyed said Death Star is literally attributed in-universe to actual magic... so let's discount that as well.

If Amuro or another Gundam protagonist had been in Luke's position, they'd have had something like a Hobby HiZack sitting around that they practiced on all the time before falling into the Gundam's cockpit.

No buddy, my example suits very well the situation.
First of all, I work with military jet airplanes as a TFC, a tactical fighter controller. I graduated at NATTC in Pensacola in 1995. I went back there as an instructor in 2016. I'm myself also a hobby pilot since 1997. I'm saying those details to make you understand I'm not speaking from the top of my head, but after a 23 years long experience and specific training.

Well, a stunt pilot is nothing close to a fighter pilot. But that's not it all: a military test pilot is not necessarily an accomplished fighter pilot either. Those are just different works. A Fighter pilot could be even less skilled in flying his jet at the maximum performance, but will be able to perform combat manouvers a stunt pilot or a test pilot could barely fly or even being unable to accomplish. A stunt pilot can be even better than a fighter pilot in performing aerobatics, but it's very unlikely he can perform a Hi-Lo-Hi strike flight pattern, or a double-scissors dogfight pattern, while aiming to, firing to and eventually hitting targets.

Back on Star Wars: Luke was surely a skilled pilot but NOT a combat pilot. He sure could fly a X-Wing, but avoiding enemy fire and perform attack patterns and strike flight profiles with sniper accuracy while speeding inside Death Star canyons are out of the best stunt pilot's background. You need a trained combat pilot, for that! And, again, Luke Skywalker was not a combat pilot. He couldn't even rely on his craft's A.I. - not at the same level Amuro could with Gundam's learning computer!
Even so, Luke did it! And nobody in the audience cared about the fact he was just a 17 yo farmer and hobby pilot.
So even Amuro's case can be accepted by the audience in the very same way.

[Seto Kaiba]

A stunt pilot can be even better than a fighter pilot in performing aerobatics, but it's very unlikely he can perform a Hi-Lo-Hi strike flight pattern, or a double-scissors dogfight pattern, while aiming to, firing to and eventually hitting targets.

"Unlikely" is not the same thing as "impossible"... and remember we are talking about a kid whose life goal at that point in time was to join the military, presumably to become a pilot there. Also remember that the stunt that he boasts about entails flying through a narrow canyon at speed while reliably shooting targets so small that trained fighter pilots in the room dismiss hitting a similarly sized target as "impossible even for a computer"... and Luke's targets were moving (by dint of being alive), where the target the trained fighter pilots insist is impossible was a stationary one.

Your parallel's not running around on your professional experience (which is wicked cool, BTW)... the problem is you're trying to apply that expertise without regard for the facts established about the subject.

In all fairness, we can't make snide comments about protagonists in Star Wars having great success when it has been established that they've got relevant training, experience, and actual goddamn space magic backing 'em up when Gundam's protagonists have no training, no relevant skills, no predestination space magic keeping them from dying or any BS like that, and somehow manage to whip the military's best pilots while still thumbing through the owner's manual.

Back on Star Wars: Luke was surely a skilled pilot but NOT a combat pilot. He sure could fly a X-Wing, but avoiding enemy fire and perform attack patterns and strike flight profiles with sniper accuracy while speeding inside Death Star canyons are out of the best stunt pilot's background.

Avoiding enemy fire was explicitly established in the briefing to be Easy Mode, as the Death Star's defenses were designed around repelling large scale direct attacks by fleets of warships... not fighters. As the officer doing the briefing says, the Empire doesn't consider a small one-man fighter to be any threat and designed accordingly.

As noted above, performing attack and strike flight profiles inside tight canyons while firing on tiny targets with sniper-like accuracy was literally what Luke was bragging about casually doing back home.

Even so, Luke did it! And nobody in the audience cared about the fact he was just a 17 yo farmer and hobby pilot.
So even Amuro's case can be accepted by the audience in the very same way.

Ah, no. As illustrated above, it's very much apples and oranges.

Luke was not just a trained pilot with significant experience on a similar craft to the one he was flying and in the sort of conditions necessary to approach and strike the target, he was also explicitly noted to be so good at that kind of thing that a feat trained pilots insisted was impossible was routine to him. He went into that with a LOT more experience, training, and relevant skill than pretty much any Universal Century Gundam main series protagonist... except maybe Bellri Zenam. Amuro, Kamille, Judau, Banagher... none of them had experience on anything remotely comparable to a real mobile suit under any conditions and they had no training or experience with weapons of any kind under any conditions. They're high school kids... some mechanically gifted, but all of them lacking in emotional maturity. These are two radically different classes of preparedness here.

[Mr_Wolverine]

A stunt pilot can be even better than a fighter pilot in performing aerobatics, but it's very unlikely he can perform a Hi-Lo-Hi strike flight pattern, or a double-scissors dogfight pattern, while aiming to, firing to and eventually hitting targets.

"Unlikely" is not the same thing as "impossible"...

No, man. I wrote that it is "very unlikely", not just "unlikely". It falls closer to "impossible" than to just "unlikely". But if you prefer "impossible", I'll rectify my previous statement here: "It's IMPOSSIBLE to a mere stunt pilot to perform (and even to know accurately) the above combat manouvers while also successfully avoiding enemy fire and -at the same time- focusing on hitting a target."

and remember we are talking about a kid whose life goal at that point in time was to join the military, presumably to become a pilot there. Also remember that the stunt that he boasts about entails flying through a narrow canyon at speed while reliably shooting targets so small that trained fighter pilots in the room dismiss hitting a similarly sized target as "impossible even for a computer"... and Luke's targets were moving (by dint of being alive), where the target the trained fighter pilots insist is impossible was a stationary one.

Oh, I remember that stunt very well... but I also remember that X-Wings are far faster than Luke's Landspeeder (X-wings managed to overfly multiple times the whole Death Star's Equator -nearly 280 nautical miles or 315 sm- in a matter of minutes), so targeting (even with an automatic lock-on) it's way more difficult. Another important thing you missed about Luke's stunt is that he used to fire on animals on Tatooine while NOBODY was firing at him.
In other words, that's just a briefing room daredevil kid stunt to impress older and more experienced comrades, not an evidence you can use to support your statements.

Luke's whole life goal was to become a combat pilot? That doesn't mean he already is a combat pilot! On the other hand, space colony inhabitants like Amuro Ray are ALL at some degree pilots of something. On a lesser degree they're all astronauts, since they're all trained to survive and escape from their colonies in case of catastrophic damage, as seen in multiple UC series. E.g. young Al from Gundam 0080, 8yo, already knows EVA walk basic techniques. Probably they perform colony evacuation drills as much as we perform fire drills or earthquake drills. And probably, even teens know how to operate an emergency space craft. It's never shown in the show, but it's reasonable given the setting.

Your parallel's not running around on your professional experience (which is wicked cool, BTW)... the problem is you're trying to apply that expertise without regard for the facts established about the subject.

Oh, well... I'm actually doing it right now.

In all fairness, we can't make snide comments about protagonists in Star Wars having great success when it has been established that they've got relevant training, experience, and actual ZOINKS space magic backing 'em up when Gundam's protagonists have no training, no relevant skills, no predestination space magic keeping them from dying or any BS like that, and somehow manage to whip the military's best pilots while still thumbing through the owner's manual.

Main thing: that's not the owner manual.
That's called "Emergency Operating Walkthrough".
It's something ALL weapons systems have nowadays. It's specifically meant to help non-qualified personnel (and I mean a non-military person) to use that specific weapons system in an emergency situation. It's also printed on paper to be still available in a blackout situation so that non-qualified person can also switch that system on (maybe in a degradate functionality mode) before operating it. So yes, even nowadays an average untrained person could operate a complex weapons system like a tank being somehow effective. Maybe even to take off a jet... until he's been so lucky not to be shot down and then needs to land. Choppers? No, they're out of that league. Just imagine in the case of a sophisticated AI like Gundam's. Something that does the most complex manouvers for you.
Then, let's we deal with the amount of skill required: it's said in Gundam's first episodes that Gene and Slander are newbies, it's in Char's dialogues with Dren. It's also stated that Gundam has a buffer of pre-programmed combat actions so doesn't require a the pilot to operate it continuously while fighting. It's a feature Amuro says Zakus don't have, and it's understandable that EFSF required such a feature to reduce de gap between feddies pilots and zeons. Lt. Matilda used to backup Gundam's fighting computer as often as possible, to deliver new combat data to Jaburo to be uploaded in GMs.
In short, during the early episodes Amuro doesn't do much other than choosing the target priority and eventually pull the trigger. The rest is all up to Gundam.
And, about "magic" in Star Wars... what about a newtype's clairvoyance?

Back on Star Wars: Luke was surely a skilled pilot but NOT a combat pilot. He sure could fly a X-Wing, but avoiding enemy fire and perform attack patterns and strike flight profiles with sniper accuracy while speeding inside Death Star canyons are out of the best stunt pilot's background.

Avoiding enemy fire was explicitly established in the briefing to be Easy Mode, as the Death Star's defenses were designed around repelling large scale direct attacks by fleets of warships... not fighters. As the officer doing the briefing says, the Empire doesn't consider a small one-man fighter to be any threat and designed accordingly.

You're missing badly on that, my friend. When I talk about enemy fire I mean the huge amount of TIE Fighters and TIE interceptors launched to intercept and destroy the Rebels' squadrons.
I think I don't need to add more on this.

As noted above, performing attack and strike flight profiles inside tight canyons while firing on tiny targets with sniper-like accuracy was literally what Luke was bragging about casually doing back home.

And once again, as I already noted above, shooting on unarmed and helpless animals is very different from shooting to a target while trying to avoid enemy interceptors and fire batteries specifically placed to protect your target. While also flying way faster. And while performing also evasive flight patterns.It's so obvious I'm surprised I have to insist on this point.

Even so, Luke did it! And nobody in the audience cared about the fact he was just a 17 yo farmer and hobby pilot.
So even Amuro's case can be accepted by the audience in the very same way.

Ah, no. As illustrated above, it's very much apples and oranges.

No, buddy. You're desperately trying to sell your opinion like the One Truth... but it's just your personal opinion, it's as good as mine or anyone else's... and I'm discussing it by pairing oranges with oranges. Besides that, please understand also that, given the fictional sci-fi background of all these works (Star Wars, Gundam and many others), your objections appear inconsistent.

After all, as much as we know, Amuro could have attended a mobile worker piloting course at school, not too differently from what Banagher Links will do in 0096 UC. And again, as much as we know, Mobile Suits interface could be dramatically similar to that of those training mobile workers to speed up EFSF pilots' familiarization with basic commands... they don't have time to waste, after all.

...too many of your doubts can be dismissed by "it's fantasy narration" or, even worse, "in real life things don't go the way you think". My advice?
Just enjoy the show. Even live action. There will be so much to talk about...

They're high school kids... some mechanically gifted, but all of them lacking in emotional maturity.

No wait. They don't lack anything at all. One of Gundam's main plots is always been "child soldiers forced by adults to fight a war they can't even understand"
They don't lack maturity. They have the exact amount of maturity required by the plot. They have the maturity needed to show you the story as they live it in their perspective. And if they must be instantly transformed from geeks to ace pilots to grant the narration device required for such plot, given the sci-fi background of the story, well, THEY CAN.

At the end of the day, it's just that: characters can perform unlikely (that as you said doesn't mean "impossible", but to me you failed in bringing evidences it IS impossible on this subject), if needed story-wise.

[Seto Kaiba]

But if you prefer "impossible", I'll rectify my previous statement here: "It's IMPOSSIBLE to a mere stunt pilot to perform (and even to know accurately) the above combat manouvers while also successfully avoiding enemy fire and -at the same time- focusing on hitting a target."

"Rectifying" your argument to take it from fallacious to total and outright contradiction of the facts seems unwise.

Most of your argument is based on misremembered details or incorrect statements, and at several points you're conflating events in two different Star Wars movies. That's really neither here nor there though, so I've deleted my original reply addressing your last post.

Ironically, the whole point I was originally making was that it made no sense to start whining about possibly having a Gundam story made like the last main Star Wars feature because the very points that were being cited as crippling flaws in Star Wars are standard Gundam tropes.

[Deathzealot]

Can we please stop this argument? It has gone on long enough. Everyone has their opinions on several things about Gundam including the whole "A No-Name Kid Falling Into the Cockpit of a Top-of-Line War Machine and able to fully pilot it minutes later" stick. Not to mention Star Wars is brought into a thread about Gundam making it go off topic. So please stop this... I am actually surprised the mods haven't caught this yet.

[Kuruni]

Well, I'll reserve my opinion until I see the action scene. If it's fun then it's good. If it's like Ong-Bak with mech then it's good for me.

Story can pack up and go to hell. Even if it win Oscar, if fight scene isn't fun then it suck.

[pirx]

As i wrote before - CGI tech can do the job, no problems. Gundams will look cool, have lots of details, fluid movements.
Avatar, Warcraft, Pacific Rim, Life of Pi, latest CGI-ed Jungle Book - they all show what modern CGI can do.
But all that does not mean a thing if movie won't have a good story. If they manage to let's say, sensibly compress entire First Gundam into one 2 hour movie then it most likely will succeed. Otherwise it will fail at box office.

[Deathzealot]

That is the thing. There is a reason why I want them to go with their own Gundam universe instead of trying to do this with First Gundam for when Tomino-Sensei tried to compress the series into movies it was three movies instead of just one. I don't think it would possible to compress the entire series into one single movie.

[BrentD15]

Apparently, I've been out of the loop for too long.

[Seto Kaiba]

Well, I'll reserve my opinion until I see the action scene. If it's fun then it's good. If it's like Ong-Bak with mech then it's good for me.

Story can pack up and go to hell. Even if it win Oscar, if fight scene isn't fun then it suck.

It's essentially a given that they're going to give the film a significant special effects budget so they can have the same kind of impressive CG effects as any other modern big budget film. You don't go adapting a famous series about giant fighting robots and half-ass the robots. (It might be worth worrying that they'll go way too far with the detail and we'll end up with the same kind of excessively busy junkyard vomit in the Michael Bay Transformers movies though.)

The story's the part we SHOULD be worried about... because the giant fighting robots will draw the audience initially, but the story's what keeps them engaged and in those seats. If you've got great special effects, but your story's dull as dishwater or an utter mess, the movie's not going to leave much of an impact and may be unable to recoup its budget. The recent Ghost in the Shell movie is a good example of that, having an incredibly dull story that felt compelled to keep diverging to explain why they'd cast a white woman as the explicitly-Japanese Motoko Kusanagi, ending up something like $100 million in the red once advertising is factored in.

[Kuruni]

Well, I'll reserve my opinion until I see the action scene. If it's fun then it's good. If it's like Ong-Bak with mech then it's good for me.

Story can pack up and go to hell. Even if it win Oscar, if fight scene isn't fun then it suck.

It's essentially a given that they're going to give the film a significant special effects budget so they can have the same kind of impressive CG effects as any other modern big budget film. You don't go adapting a famous series about giant fighting robots and half-ass the robots. (It might be worth worrying that they'll go way too far with the detail and we'll end up with the same kind of excessively busy junkyard vomit in the Michael Bay Transformers movies though.)

Haha. I didn't even think of CGI, I will be cool if they give me Tokusatsu-style rubber suits fighting as long as it's fun to watch (and you hit the spot on Transformers, it's "so much action that I cannot tell what's going on the screen".) That's why I used Ong-Bak as example in the last post.