The director of the live action Alita: Battle Angel movie (which is being produced by James Cameron) has stepped up to talk about why it was decided the main heroine would have humongous Gollum eyes, an attribute that any anime enthusiast would say simply does not work in the 3D realm.
Robert Rodriguez spoke to Empire Magazine on the matter:
“It was always Jim’s intention to create a photo-realistic version of the manga eyes that we’re so accustomed to seeing.
We really wanted to honor that tradition and see that look standing next to any human character.
To have the right person to emote behind it was really essential. Her origins are in the film and you understand why she looks that way.
If the eyes are the windows to the soul, we have some pretty big windows. You can see a lot going on in there! When it gets to the emotional scenes it’s really uncanny and striking. And captivating!”
The movie can finally bomb at the box office on July 20th.
I believe the mangaka draw that way to show that Alita has a keen and sharp eye. It doesn’t have to be big.
Cameron is a good director but he probably misunderstood the mangaka’s original intention.
“oh how cool it would be with life actors…fuc*ing everything up.” isn’t there an asteroid huge enough somewhere to sterilize this planet once and for all?
He’s only making her eyes big because he’s a foreigner looking in, thinking he can do something different from an outside perspective, which he can, but no one will care about your unique perspective, and he doesn’t realize it, and he doesn’t understand the niche that is anime because when you live your life making movies for general audiences, you living outside that niche, trying to suddenly be on the inside looking out won’t work, that’s no who you are, and certainly will find no way to relate to those of us who have lived inside looking out our whole lives, we’re not just temporarily adapting to a niche we don’t understand. But of course no one will tell him this, nor would he understand if they did.
well Jim’s a fucking idiot
““It was always Jim’s intention to create a photo-realistic version of the manga eyes that we’re so accustomed to seeing.”
I give up. Why??????????