Space Battleship Yamato

[Chris_Johnston]

Really love this movie! Totally floored by the production values (especially since pretty much ALL the live-action Sci-Fi from Japan I've seen featured a guy in a rubber suit stomping a model of Tokyo)!

Y'know, I'd seen the 2-hour animated version on KTLA back in the late 70s/early 80s, and always loved that image of Yamato breaking free of the dried-up sea bed.
It wasn't until just now that I thought to find out the condition of the actual wreck.
Sadly, in the same way that Clive Cussler's Raise the Titanic was rendered baseless when the actual wreck was discovered years later, so too with Yamato...

 

[Marc]

Really love this movie! Totally floored by the production values (especially since pretty much ALL the live-action Sci-Fi from Japan I've seen featured a guy in a rubber suit stomping a model of Tokyo)!

Y'know, I'd seen the 2-hour animated version on KTLA back in the late 70s/early 80s, and always loved that image of Yamato breaking free of the dried-up sea bed.
It wasn't until just now that I thought to find out the condition of the actual wreck.
Sadly, in the same way that Clive Cussler's Raise the Titanic was rendered baseless when the actual wreck was discovered years later, so too with Yamato...

Though I've often wonder how much of the orginial Yamato was meant to be included in the Space Battleship version

 

[Cutter John]

Heres the opening theme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2DEvTKWyfg

If you check the guys playlist he's uploaded the entire OST.

Random spoilery thoughts:

* I really liked Yuki in this, as I've always had a fondness for sexy female fighter pilots. Wasn't too fond about how she started to evolve into helpless female toward the end though.

* Big fan of the Black Tiger fighter update as well. Hoping a model kit turns up at some point.

* After watching so many point-blank starship battles on so many shows, it was a real joy to finally see some 'ships out of visual range' ship combat.

*Also wasn't crazy about the ending, though I know that sort of thing is standard for Japanese action films. It kinda kills the possibilty of a sequel. Which is a shame as I'd love to see the Comet Empire storyline done on the big screen.

* Haven't heard anyone mention it, but I got a smile out of the appearance of the humanoid 'Desslar' that appeared toward the end of the film. The facial profile seemed strangely familiar...

 

[Marc]

Heres the opening theme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2DEvTKWyfg

If you check the guys playlist he's uploaded the entire OST.

Random spoilery thoughts:

* I really liked Yuki in this, as I've always had a fondness for sexy female fighter pilots. Wasn't too fond about how she started to evolve into helpless female toward the end though.

* Big fan of the Black Tiger fighter update as well. Hoping a model kit turns up at some point.

* After watching so many point-blank starship battles on so many shows, it was a real joy to finally see some 'ships out of visual range' ship combat.

*Also wasn't crazy about the ending, though I know that sort of thing is standard for Japanese action films. It kinda kills the possibilty of a sequel. Which is a shame as I'd love to see the Comet Empire storyline done on the big screen.

* Haven't heard anyone mention it, but I got a smile out of the appearance of the humanoid 'Desslar' that appeared toward the end of the film. The facial profile seemed strangely familiar...

The ending is consistent with one of the oriiginal anime (Farewell to SBY was the translated title of the video I saw). IIRC it was the one that was remade with the Coment Empire storyline and was a bit of a downer when I saw it.

 

[Cutter John]

More spoilers:


aka 'Arrivederci Yamato'. Yep, I know it well. Shocked the hell out of me when I saw it. With my American sensibilities, I think I preferred the tv version, where only about a third of the cast died.

 

[Tom]

Well the Comet Empire stoyline could be done with Yuki's (and Kodai's?) son as a grown up 25 years or so after the first film. It makes a little sense that the Earth would need quite a bit of time to recover and for the humans to build new cities and a new fleet of ships (Andromeda etc..) . If i recall in the orginal series all this recovery happen in within only a year or two after they got back from Iskandar, that made no sense. The Yamato could of been rebuilt but more intended as a musuem or sentimental reasons but put into service with the Comet Empire threat to go to Telzart while the 'real' fleet tries to engage the Comet Empire. So the big change would be we have Kodia's son leading the mission and a mostly new crew. That would give producers much more freedom with casting etc..

 

[Lynn Minmay]

CollectionDX has reviewed the movie. Start at the 29:00 mark to see it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F1uucfXyaE

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I bought this with subtitles over the weekend at the Baltimore "Shore Leave" Trek convention.

 

[BenRoethig]

Hmm. This puzzles me, especially in light of the fact that Yamato is still extremely popular over there and has a large library of established material to draw from in order to make live-action sequels. Granted, I understand that they aren't typical Hollywood franchise machines in that same Western mindset, but it seems to me that they're severely limiting themselves by killing off a big chunk of the crew.

Then again, as Hartzilla2007 pointed out, the Comet Empire series (Yamato II) completely retconned the "Arrivaderci, Yamato" movie that killed off Kodai and Yuki at the end, so we could easily see that again, although it might get the "WTF" award from more modern movie-going audiences. That was the 70's back then, with different production values and audience tolerances. Might not go over too well this time around.

They could always pull a seaquest. Retcon the scene where Kodai gets off the Yamato and a new ship is built to the same specifications.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Re: reboot - live-action film American & anime series

Makoto Kobayashi recently confirmed that he will be returning to the classic anime.

he is working on a reboot of the original Space Battleship Yamato series

1) Wow and I was just joking about the whole redoing the series to have a different ending than the film thing.

2) Well hopefully any U.S. dub of the new one will be an improvement on the Starblazers dub since their less likely to cut stuff out.

 

[Tom]

CollectionDX has reviewed the movie. Start at the 29:00 mark to see it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F1uucfXyaE

Good review i agree with everything they said. I was the same as a kid the could not wait to get home after school to see the series

 

[Hartzilla2007]

You know theres something I just realized after watching the first season of Space Battleship Yamato, am I crazy or did anyone else notice that J. Michael Straczynski's Crusade have a lot in common with this show?

 

[DWF]

You know theres something I just realized after watching the first season of Space Battleship Yamato, am I crazy or did anyone else notice that J. Michael Straczynski's Crusade have a lot in common with this show?

Only on the surface, Crusade would've gone beyond the plague storyline soon enough.

 

[137th Gebirg]

You know theres something I just realized after watching the first season of Space Battleship Yamato, am I crazy or did anyone else notice that J. Michael Straczynski's Crusade have a lot in common with this show?

Oh yes, I noticed this as well. Earth having a limited amount of time for a small group of people to find a cure for the Shadow Plague, flying around in a one-off vessel that has a single-shot super weapon that takes time to charge and fire more time to recover afterward. Yeah, all too familiar. After being somewhat fed up by the bad writing, I never wanted to finish the series and notice other similarities that I'm sure popped up after a while.

Many science fiction movies and series seem to have lifted directly from Yamato - some subtly, some not so much. I've always maintained that George Lucas directly lifted Analyzer/IQ-9 to make R2-D2. And the whole "Enterprise escaping Spacedock to be pursued by the top-of-the-line fully-automated successor USS Excelsior" scene in ST III was a direct lift from the Comet Empire series when Yamato broke out of its underwater dock, against orders, pursued by Andromeda, its fully automated successor in the next generation of battleships. I honestly don't think there's been anything REALLY new in Science fiction for the past 40 years. Just retelling of the same stories.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

You know theres something I just realized after watching the first season of Space Battleship Yamato, am I crazy or did anyone else notice that J. Michael Straczynski's Crusade have a lot in common with this show?

Only on the surface, Crusade would've gone beyond the plague storyline soon enough.

Yeah I heard about that, It just suprised me how they were kind of similar at that point when I thought about it.

You know theres something I just realized after watching the first season of Space Battleship Yamato, am I crazy or did anyone else notice that J. Michael Straczynski's Crusade have a lot in common with this show?

Oh yes, I noticed this as well. Earth having a limited amount of time for a small group of people to find a cure for the Shadow Plague, flying around in a one-off vessel that has a single-shot super weapon that takes time to charge and fire more time to recover afterward. Yeah, all too familiar. After being somewhat fed up by the bad writing, I never wanted to finish the series and notice other similarities that I'm sure popped up after a while.

Well they did switch to color coded uniforms at one point in the series as well.

 

[Tom]

You know theres something I just realized after watching the first season of Space Battleship Yamato, am I crazy or did anyone else notice that J. Michael Straczynski's Crusade have a lot in common with this show?

Oh yes, I noticed this as well. Earth having a limited amount of time for a small group of people to find a cure for the Shadow Plague, flying around in a one-off vessel that has a single-shot super weapon that takes time to charge and fire more time to recover afterward. Yeah, all too familiar. After being somewhat fed up by the bad writing, I never wanted to finish the series and notice other similarities that I'm sure popped up after a while.

Many science fiction movies and series seem to have lifted directly from Yamato - some subtly, some not so much. I've always maintained that George Lucas directly lifted Analyzer/IQ-9 to make R2-D2. And the whole "Enterprise escaping Spacedock to be pursued by the top-of-the-line fully-automated successor USS Excelsior" scene in ST III was a direct lift from the Comet Empire series when Yamato broke out of its underwater dock, against orders, pursued by Andromeda, its fully automated successor in the next generation of battleships. I honestly don't think there's been anything REALLY new in Science fiction for the past 40 years. Just retelling of the same stories.

Let's not forget TNG's Best of Both Worlds and the Comet Empire season:

- An almost unstopable enemy (CE/Borg) heads for Earth chased by the hero ship (Yamato/Enterprise)

- A huge defense fleet (minus our hero ship) get obliterated by the enemy then continues to head towards Earth

- Our lone hero ship fights the enemy above earth and is ready to ram the enemy until another solution presents it's self.

etc..

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Well, there's not much that wasn't cherry-picked for B5.

 

[Christopher]

Many science fiction movies and series seem to have lifted directly from Yamato - some subtly, some not so much. I've always maintained that George Lucas directly lifted Analyzer/IQ-9 to make R2-D2. And the whole "Enterprise escaping Spacedock to be pursued by the top-of-the-line fully-automated successor USS Excelsior" scene in ST III was a direct lift from the Comet Empire series when Yamato broke out of its underwater dock, against orders, pursued by Andromeda, its fully automated successor in the next generation of battleships. I honestly don't think there's been anything REALLY new in Science fiction for the past 40 years. Just retelling of the same stories.

Let's not forget TNG's Best of Both Worlds and the Comet Empire season:

- An almost unstopable enemy (CE/Borg) heads for Earth chased by the hero ship (Yamato/Enterprise)

- A huge defense fleet (minus our hero ship) get obliterated by the enemy then continues to head towards Earth

- Our lone hero ship fights the enemy above earth and is ready to ram the enemy until another solution presents it's self.

etc..

There are only so many stories in the world. I'm sure there are things in Yamato that closely resemble things in earlier movies, shows, novels, plays, etc. Tropes get reused; that's what makes them tropes. Most of the time, it's not a direct lift from A to B, it's just that A and B were building from the same collective human library of ideas and thus drew on similar elements.

Heck, many of the tropes listed above are quite generic. Lone hero against a vast, unstoppable enemy? Enemy that defeats a whole army to show how powerful it is? Story comes down to a last-minute victory? These are found in thousands of stories. They're basic storytelling vocabulary for establishing the magnitude of a threat and creating tension. And "hero ship escapes without orders and is pursued" is just a variation on the standard trope of the rogue hero who has to defy hidebound authority to get the job done. Stories are driven by conflict, and obstructionist authority figures are a standard source of conflict, a way to make the heroes more exceptional by forcing them to stand alone and even have to overcome their own allies.

Stories are like sentences. They have to draw on a common vocabulary and grammar in order to be meaningful. So the same patterns recur over and over in totally unrelated works. It's really quite silly to assume that all popular culture is directly copied from one piece of popular culture that you happen to like. That one piece is itself drawing on prior cultural and dramatic vocabulary along with everything else.

 

[Tom]

Your right Chris, just having fun pointing out the similarities.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

- Our lone hero ship fights the enemy above earth and is ready to ram the enemy until another solution presents it's self.

etc..

Well except for the film version where the lone hero did ram the enemy.