Now, I know getting canceled by Netflix means little. I gave this show a chance, after being impressed with the intro sequence remake, but found it to be soulless. Maybe Cowboy Bebop just doesn't translate to live action; what seemed charming in the original was played for kitsch in the remake.
I thought Jet was great, Spike and Faye were just ok, Vicious was absolutely terrible and since the main villain was basically played for comic relief it kept the show from having any real emotional impact or gravitas.
Totally agree. And Ed. She was only shown briefly, but what was there was truly terrible. It was like they scribbled some dialogue, grabbed a kid off the street, designed a costume, and filmed the cameo in a single day. If this series were ever to continue, I hope they would reevaluate their choices here.
I feel like the live Ed was universally disliked, but everyone seemed to agree that Ed would have been nearly impossible for anyone to pull off in-person without it looking really cringe.
It could have been successfully moved into live action, but as the animation was built by creative genius, you'd need the same level of skill for a good live action. Maybe someone like Joss Whedon could have breathed life into it?
The show had potential, but the casting was bad, the character design was bad, the writing was bad, the directing was sub-par, and the aesthetic was 75% there which just isn't enough for something like this.
Yep. Everything shouted "see, we did that thing from the anime, everyone! WINK-U FACE-U!" and on top of that, it was a jumbled mess because instead of just adapting the story, they had the audacity to "re-imagine" it. Fans love the series because it's such masterpiece of storytelling and it had amazing production quality.
It's like taking pasta, tomatoes, cheese, olive oil, raw chicken breast, etc and throwing them in a blender, tossing the paste into a pan and baking it, and being amazed that you somehow didn't reproduce a mouth-watering delicious chicken Parmesan.
> It's like taking pasta, tomatoes, cheese, olive oil, raw chicken breast, etc and throwing them in a blender, tossing the paste into a pan and baking it, and being amazed that you somehow didn't reproduce a mouth-watering delicious chicken Parmesan.
Funny timing on that simile. Right now I'm watching a Cutthroat Kitchen episode where contestants almost have to do that very thing.
Sounds like it would have been smarter to never have greenlit the project to begin with. I wonder how many of these types of shows were passed by HBO, so Netflix jumps on it, or if Netflix took it just so someone else couldn't, or any other number of situations that meant it was getting made not because of true desire to make that project but business
It wasn't the worst thing I've seen on Netflix, but I never watched any of the original anime. Kind of like never reading the book before watching the Hobbit. Your opinion of that movie is much different from those that had.
Netflix has a pattern. They have stats from a lot of multi-season shows and know that there's a sharp drop off in viewers the more seasons a show runs for, even if they're all excellent. This makes the first season a great investment, but remaining seasons are subject to rapidly diminishing returns.
So, their solution is to put a lot of effort into season 1 and, if it does really well, put vastly diminished resources into season 2. If season 1 doesn't blow their metrics out the window, they just cancel it. Since season 2's produced under this approach are usually pretty rough (e.g. Altered Carbon), there are almost never season 3's. There are exceptions (e.g. Stranger Things), but there are an awful lot of Netflix shows that never get a second season despite a very respectable first season (e.g. Marco Polo).
The anime version of Cowboy Bebop is a classic. In general, it's hard to remake a classic and leave fans of the classic happy. When the first shots of the costumes and cast came out I almost completely dismissed the Netfix series. Harold from Harold&Kumar is Spike? Jet looked like a janitor. The hype wasn't there for me.
So, I delayed watching the series, heard the grumblings, and went in with low expectations.
This is not Netflix's A-game. They did a great job in some respects, but really cheaped out in others.
The casting is a mixed bag, but mostly good. John Cho is actually pretty good as spike and Mustafa Shakir is brilliant as Jet. Pineda's Faye Valentine was less good. While Spike and Jet still felt at least somewhat like the anime characters, Valentine in the Netflix series was just off, and far too comical. Ed shows up only in the last episode and, well... Yeah. Let's face it, Ed is a difficult role and has to be played by someone fairly young. If I were directing a series like this I'd definitely want to shoot several episodes from later in the series with Ed before shooting the introduction precisely because of how hard it is to jump into the roll. The actor who played Ed was set up to fail.
The effects are good and the Bebop plus Swordfish are very well realized. The action is fairly well choreographed. The sets outside the ship are where Netflix got cheap. The rewrote things to reuse several locations a lot, such as the bar. The same junkyard set stands in for an assortment of locations and seems to pop up every episode, minimally redressed and shot from different angles.
The writing is where Netflix deviated from the anime most substantially. The plots of some episodes are almost totally unrecognizable, and generally do not compare well to the anime. The writers chose to flesh out and make explicit more of the syndicate backstory, with far more of Spike, Viscious, and Julia's past shown. The show becomes more interesting because of this. If they'd done a more faithful remake there'd have been less reason to watch the show. I'd have preferred that Ein's treatment was just a little more faithful though. Poor dog got screwed.
If you're a fan of the anime, lower your expectations, expect something a little different, and you may enjoy the Netflix series. I'd watch Season 2 even knowing it would be one of Netflix's usual half-efforts with a greatly reduced budget. It's not the anime but, if you like the genre, it's worth watching.
Marco Polo did get a second season, and it was also pretty good from what I remember - almost entirely because Benedict Wong is so good as Kublai Khan.
Now, I know getting canceled by Netflix means little. I gave this show a chance, after being impressed with the intro sequence remake, but found it to be soulless. Maybe Cowboy Bebop just doesn't translate to live action; what seemed charming in the original was played for kitsch in the remake.
I couldn't even make it to the last episodes.