As a massive fan of the animated medium, the term “live-action remake” always sounds weird. Why would anyone want to take the exaggerated flow of the characters, the eye-popping locales, the ability to seamlessly blur the lines between various genres that come with animation, and restrict it with the rigidity of live-action? It is quite the mystery. Now, there are some good examples to counter that pointed question: the Rurouni Kenshin film series, Blade of the Immortal, Alita – Battle Angel, and Speed Racer. But the plethora of Disney live-action remakes, The Last Airbender, and Dragon Ball Evolution add to the argument that it’s better to keep the two mediums far apart. But, which side of the proverbial scales will Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop land on? Let’s find out.
The live-action show is developed by André Nemec and written by Christopher Yost, along with Shinichiro Watanabe, the director of the original anime, on the creative team as a consultant. Just like the original anime, the show follows Spike Spiegel (John Cho) and Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), two bounty hunters who travel across the galaxy in the Bebop. Later on, the family of two is expanded with the entry of Faye Valentine (Daniella Pined), a bounty hunter suffering from amnesia after years of being cryogenically frozen, and Ein, the corgi. Spike’s arch-nemesis, Vicious (Alex Hassell), serves as the antagonist as he works to overthrow the Syndicate, a criminal organisation that he’s a part of. Julia (Elena Satine) is Vicious’s wife and, according to the official description, “the dream-like object of Spike Spiegel’s desire.” And it is how their paths collide that makes the crux of Cowboy Bebop.
So, if you have watched the original anime, you can already smell the problem with this live-action show. If you haven’t watched the animated series at all or you haven’t revisited it recently, here is an explicit suggestion: watch the animated series. First timers, please don’t let this be your first impression of Cowboy Bebop. Second or third or fourth timers, please refresh your feelings for Cowboy Bebop by watching the anime first and then tackling the live-action show. Because the live-action version is clearly both an adaptation and a beat-for-beat remake, but with some key revelations presented completely out of order which undercuts the characters’ emotional development. You won’t find any such issues in the anime. Hence, at the risk of sounding repetitive, watch that animated series first and then tune in to this live-action show.
To the live-action Cowboy Bebop’s credit, it does get many aspects of the original show right. The casting by Dylan Jury and Debra Zane, at least in terms of the actors’ likeness to their animated counterparts, is absolutely on point. Not just the main cast, but the live-action versions of some of the one-and-done characters from the anime like Asimov (Jan Uddin) and Maria Murdock (Adrienne Barbeau) are fantastic. The hair and makeup and costume departments have done a phenomenal job. There was some controversy with Faye’s look, largely started by a bunch of sexist “fans” of the anime asking her costume to be more revealing. But that’s the last thing fans should be concerned about. The VFX by Scanline, Ingenuity Studios, Barnstorm VFX, FolksVFX, Goodbye Kansas Studios, and MRX Toronto is immaculate. From the Swordfish to the Astral Gates, Ganymede, the church from the episode Ballad of the Fallen Angels, it’s close to perfection. And sometimes when the show is not aping the plots and subplots of the original anime or undermining Yoko Kanno’s (composer of the original anime’s score too) score, it flows, thereby raising the question if this show should’ve been a prequel to the anime instead of a remake.
Everything apart from the aforementioned elements in Cowboy Bebop range from questionable to plain bad.
Straight off the bat, the live-action show commits the most common mistake when it comes to translating animation: inconsistent tone. The best thing about animation is that the characters can contort their face, do gravity-defying poses, speak whimsically, without hurting the somber, haunting, noir, and western-esque atmosphere of the story. It’s the medium of animation that ties together all these contradictory elements in a digestible way. When live-action properties, such as Cowboy Bebop here, try to do that by making the characters spout philosophical phrases and then bumble around like a child, it immediately seems off-putting.
In the anime, Pierrot Le Fou genuinely feels like a monster who has walked out of a horror novel and meets a tragic end. In the live-action show, he’s treated like a joke, with his iconic smile and laugh sounding outright annoying instead of menacing. The same can be said about Teddy Bomber, who in the anime is a man-child but very much a threat, capable of outsmarting Spike and Andy. His live-action iteration is, for the lack of a better word: embarrassing. Casting Mason Alexander Park, a non-binary actor, as Gren is laudable. But then they are turned into Ana’s (confidently performed by Tamara Tunie) assistant, hence watering down Gren’s journey from the anime.
Since Fou Teddy, and Gren are side characters, that criticism can sound nitpicky. Unfortunately, it’s not because that particular problem extends to the main cast as well. John Cho is undoubtedly a very capable actor and he has proven his worth time and again on the big and the small screen. In Cowboy Bebop though he just seems disinterested, bored, and stuck doing an impression of Spike for around 10 hours. Why? Because Spike’s devil-may-care, charming, distant, funny, and prickly demeanor can be expressed through the artwork before he even utters a word. In live-action, it does depend on the editing, the camera movement, the costume, and more; but largely it hinges on the acting. And going by Cho’s performance, it seems like the only note he got from his directors and showrunners is “act cool.” Which on-screen translates to blatant indifference, something that Spike isn’t supposed to be. All this could’ve been redeemed with the fight scenes. Sadly, even those are comically atrocious and weirdly stilted, with the switches between Cho and his stunt double being laughably obvious.
Does that sound depressing? Well, brace yourselves. Jet, for some reason, is not just an ex-cop but an ex-family man who has to deal with his ex-wife, his daughter, and his ex-wife’s current husband who happens to be a cop. If that’s not the most cliched, Hollywood treatment of a character who didn’t need any of that in the original anime to be a father-figure to Spike, Faye, Edward, and Ein, then what is? Shakir’s performance is brilliant though, with echoes of Beau Billingslea’s (the voice of Jet Black in the original anime) vocal inflections. Daniella Pineda surprises by walking the line between her animated counterpart and her own take on Faye. But then the path leading back to her past is horrifically butchered, thereby dampening the raw power of the tape from Faye’s childhood. Vicious is a laughing-stock, with Hassell channeling Eddie Redmayne from Jupiter Ascending. Vicious, in the anime, is a nearly unstoppable entity. Hassell’s version is a stereotypical abusive husband who wants to appear manlier than Spike (irritatingly called Fearless) in front of his father and vents his inability to do so by beating up Julia. And the less that can be said about Julia, Ein, and Edward’s cameo, the better.
Despite being roughly similar in length (the original anime has twenty-six 24-minute-long episodes and the live-action show has ten 1-hour-long episodes), the live-action Cowboy Bebop strangely covers less ground than the anime. It comes off as a parody of the original. The characters feel shallow, the tone seems like it is all over the place, the action is incomprehensible, and the world that once felt full of life feels artificial and not very lived-in. All the numerous problems with this adaptation can be credited to what’s lost in translation between animation and live-action. . But, since what is done is done, Nemec and his team need to come up with a solution because they clearly intend to stretch this for a few more seasons. Some of the areas that they should look into are telling self-contained stories, not just retelling stories from the original, using the runtime to let scenes breathe instead of either populating them with “banter” or rushing through them and taking care of the tone instead of the overall look. Or, even better, they can put an end to live-action adaptations and continue things via the medium of animation.
