News Live-Action ‘Cowboy Bebop’ tv series in the works

I did a rewatch of the anime to prep for the live action show and I spent most of the time put off by the portrayal of Vicious and Julia, especially at the outset. But as the show progressed, the foreshadowing that their character arcs were diverging from the anime became more overt and it started to click a lot more. I was pretty happy with the changes overall.

In the end, I thought they did enough to justify another season at minimum. Hopefully Netflix will change their mind.

 

They won’t. Not unless there is a massive uptick in views.

 

You had spike, running away from a past
You had vicious and Julia, both trapped by their past
You had jet, who was *wrong* about his past
And Faye, who didn’t have a past, and what she did have, turned out to be a lie.
All of them were working on moving on, but having to deal with the ramifications of their past… in much the same way humanity writ large was, simultaneously hanging onto things whilst also trying to find a way forwards.
Sometimes from pasts they didn’t actively choose… that was true for every last featured character.
It was some pretty cool writing.

 

I liked her acting but not so much the way her dialog was written.

 

Why not the latter, in particular? I'm curious.

 

Yeah, the writers tried too hard to make Faye snarky, which she hardly was in the original.

 

They just made her foul mouthed and made her this inexplicable badass who seems equal to Spike as a bounty hunter and fighter even tho she’s not long uniced. Gone is the motivation of her crippling medical debt (even more timely now than it was in the 90s) and her gambling and risk taking to try to stay afloat.

 

She certainly had a ton of attitude and edge in the original, though I think it comes across better in Megumi Hayashibara's performance than Wendee Lee's. As I recall, Lee played her as kind of playfully seductive, in keeping with her character design (at least judging from the clips I saw in the movie DVD's bonus features). What's interesting about Hayashibara's performance is that it's a complete contrast to her sexualized design, more like a bratty teenage punk with a huge chip on her shoulder -- like she doesn't have to try to act sexy because her looks do the job automatically.

Pineda's Faye isn't quite as hard-edged as that, but I think her snarkiness works well as a variation, in that she's outspoken and confrontational and doesn't take any crap. You can't expect an exact copy from different performers, as proven by the Japanese and English voice casts. The point of doing different versions is to explore variations on a theme.

 

Fair enough. Wasn't a bar for me b/c really, there was no telling what skills she acquired before getting iced (esp. in this setting), she was schooled by a master con-artist (which I noted was at the forefront of the bounty story that made her name, as recounted in her "waltz" with Ein), and I felt like her gambling and risk-taking was still mostly there even absent the debt motive, since it's already established in-frame that cowboying is a hit-or-miss and feast-or-famine business at the best of times.

Also, I don't remember if the Iron Mink and her fake "mother" were in-frame in the original; if not, they were a genuinely hilarious (and hilariously squicky) addition. We also get to see her respond more naturally to the possibility of companionship here than the original Faye ever does, we learn something about her sexuality apart from her just weaponizing it (best lesbian meet-cute EVAR BTW), and I guess I just liked Pineda's Faye a lot more. She's a really fun and engaging character who actually has an organic reason to commit to being with the other members of the Bebop by the time we get to Ep. 9.

On the whole, I must confess I actually like her more than the original Faye, for the most part. (I am not discounting that the original article had her own character logic that made sense: she did. All the pieces of the original Bebop fit just as well as the live-action version. But I just love Pineda's work and the character she conjured more.)

 

YMMV.

Also, it’s always the women characters who get reimagined to be bi/gay so that felt obvious, pat and by the numbers. Imagine the outrage had Jet gotten down with another dude.

 

Kinda feels right, TBH. We live in an age when even bisexual women have good cause to broadcast as gay, given how Team Dude is behaving (and not long after a centuries-long deficit of gay representation). Chalk it up to a product of the time.

 

I've been fan of Pineda since she was on The Originals, and I'm still mad her character only lasted one season.

 

Pretty much completely an invention of the show. In the original, Whitney was a male con artist who manipulated Faye into a romance in order to trick her into taking on his debts.

https://cowboybebop.fandom.com/wiki/Whitney_Haggis

You know, the anime is on Netflix too, if you want to refresh your memory. I rewatched the whole thing (and got the movie from the library, since Netflix oddly doesn't have it) before watching the remake.

Huh? There are plenty of gay male romances on TV these days, like Stamets and Culber in Star Trek: Discovery, say. And that includes some characters in adaptations, such as Mr. Terrific in the Arrowverse, Negative Man in Doom Patrol, Moose in Riverdale, and Phastos in Marvel's Eternals. Also John Cho's Sulu in Star Trek Beyond, though it was just barely hinted.

I don't doubt there would be outrage from the usual idiots, but it's not "always" the women anymore, though I agree that does tend to be more common.

 

I know. I'll get round to it at some point.

 

Nah. Because it often plays to the common straight male idea that two women are hot because they imagine themselves pleasing both of them.

 

While it's true that pretty much any lesbian representation in mainstream media involving pretty people could be written off on those grounds, I feel like that's a bit of a cop-out.

Like, I know actual IRL couples who could stand in for Pineda and her mechanic lover in the series. I don't feel comfortable just writing them off as cis-dude bait on those grounds alone. More importantly, the context matters. And the context in this case rules out cis-dude fantasies about harems. And in point of fact seems specifically calibrated for that purpose.

 

One can always make a case for an individual use. It’s just a too common go-to for media because it’s more acceptable.

 

Re: Snark and Faye

There's a big difference between snark and having an edge/attitude. The dialogue given to Faye in the live-action is snarky for the sake of snark — a quip to have a quip. It doesn't give the character anymore of an edge or attitude. And, as @Maurice pointed out, Faye in the live-action lacks the depth of motivation of the original.

Pineda, however, does elevate the material with her performance.

 

I see where you're coming from, but I guess I just don't accept this as an excuse to complain about lesbian representation. Of which Bebop is frankly one of the healthiest examples in recent shows.

EDIT: Aside from what Jaime and Christopher have already said, I'll add that if there were some signifiers of lesbianism-for-male-consumption going on -- both participants being hot femme models, say, or their story revolving in some way around some denial of the sexuality or the betrayal of some male partner in the wings, or if there was gratuitous sexualization in some other way that denied their agency or capability -- I could get there. But none of that is present. So I can't get there. And so I feel more like this is functioning as an excuse to complain than genuine concern.

 

I’ll be honest, the only people I hear complaining about lesbians in modern genre fiction/Tv in general are dudes. *shrug*
Did it seem a little bit like an obvious reach for PC brownie points here?
Kinda. Maybe. I guess.
But did it work in story?
Yeah, pretty well. It surprised Faye too, which was interesting, and worked well with whole amnesiac angle.
Given how much it danced back and forth over the perceived PC aspect to much modern TV, I am not sure I could even put it in that box though… this is the show that had a ‘black male’ pun, had mixed gender brutal fights from episode one, a trans/cross dresser, eco-protester villains, and all kinds of crazy stuff going on.
Basically, it worked, and had less titillation aspects/male gaze than even ‘Bound’ did back in the day.
I’d say it was just good work from all concerned.
YMMV