A Live-Action ‘Cowboy Bebop’ is a Terrible Idea
Despite the fact that live-action adaptations of anime, from The Last Airbender to Death Note, are universally terrible, Netflix seems intent on milking people’s fandom for quick views of more terrible content. For a variety of reasons that probably merit a deeper analysis, the conventions and strengths of animation and anime in particular, especially its ability to be completely still and introspective in a way live action can’t be, don’t lend themselves to a change in medium. Nevertheless, Netflix is now in the process of adapting the one good anime, Cowboy Bebop, into what is sure to be a live action shitshow.
This decision is especially galling to me since Cowboy Bebop is quite close to my heart and is a personal favorite. About 98% of all anime is crap, and not only is Cowboy Bebop not crap, it is a genuine masterpiece. From its endearing characters, clever world-building, playful attitude toward tone and genre, ground-breaking action scenes,and deep existential and psychological pondering, to its signature incorporation of music, Cowboy Bebop is a show truly like no other in spite of the legion of imitators it has inspired. It takes all the strengths that good anime can have, discards all the weaknesses, and incorporates a deep personal touch that illustrates what makes Shinichiro Watanabe and the rest of the Hajime Yatate team such an interesting group of filmmakers. If I were to rate the series on our Under the Wheels scale, I’d easily give it a Perfect in Every Way. So then one must wonder, why the fuck would you adapt it with real people?
Money of course. Or in this case views, since all of Netflix’s revenue is recurring anyway. Lots of the press attention has focused on John Cho‘s casting as Spike Spiegel, the famously complicated protagonist of the series. John Cho is a fine actor, but any version of Spike that isn’t a drawing voiced by Steven Blum just seems wrong (that’s right, I said Steven Blum; dubbed is better than subbed, weebs). More than all that though, I can’t help but wonder what is the artistic reason for doing this?
There is no point in adapting something unless one wishes to improve, comment, or offer a new perspective on the original work. Straight adaptations that don’t add anything are a pointless waste of time. Why bother redoing something the exact same way when you can just enjoy the original. That said, you can’t improve on Cowboy Bebop, so the creators must be trying to comment or offer a new perspective on it. But what would that be? It’s 10 episodes instead of 26, so are we getting a truncated spark notes version of the show? If so, why? What does that add? Are they trying to offer us a version of the beloved show stripped of everything that made it work? If they are, that’s certainly a bold choice. That would be like adapting a video game into a movie and stripping away the only element, the playability, that makes it a functional piece of media. Oh wait, Hollywood does that all the time. So who the fuck knows. Maybe the people behind this are just creatively bankrupt and looking for a paycheck.
For all its western influence, much of what makes Cowboy Bebop work, its style, its imagination, its pacing, its introspection, and continual shifting in style and tone, is antithetical to the prevailing style of filmmaking both in movies and TV. In light of that, I can’t see this ending any way but badly. The best adaptation they could ever make, is to not make one at all.
