Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on Aug 4, 2017 18:54:33 GMT -5
Lupin III 2014
I actually don’t think the idea of a live action Lupin III adaptation is inherently a doomed one. The original manga remains very distinct and everything that followed—even the initial experiment of the pilot film—has been very different stylistically. Often the first series went out of its way to make the stories a bit more naturalistic, even, while still maintaining some of the advantages of animation. At least as far as Lupin is concerned, those are two-fold:
1. It allows for more flexibility in terms of the setting and staging of action—you can do a lot in animation that would be prohibitive in terms of cost, particularly for a weekly TV show.
2. It facilitates suspension of disbelief. This is the big one for Lupin, I think—obviously there’s stock stuff like the disguises and such, but just the fact that it’s a cartoon (or manga) allows us to let our guard down a bit—or a lot—more.
Any live-action adaptation could get around the first through some combination of smart storytelling, effective direction, and budget. The second’s a bigger challenge—you have to anticipate and reset the audience’s limits and come up with a new way of telling the story. One way around this is to graft the characters onto some established template. This has actually done with Lupin before: the first Lupin film adaptation was 1974’s Strange Psychokinetic Strategy is evidently (couldn’t get ahold of it) a rote 1970s Japanese slapstick. To a large extent, of course, this is just using a recognizable name to market generic product. This is what I expected from the 2014 live action film (simply titled Lupin III, but I’ll call it Lupin 2014 here to avoid confusion): a generic heist with some recognizable names.
Surprisingly, that’s not the case. The film is very much in tune with existing Lupin lore. I actually haven’t watched anything Lupin since early January, I think, so I have to admit the opening robbery brought a smile to my face. It felt like Lupin, and at least initially seemed to be pulling off a live-action cartoon style. However, everything started to come crashing down when we meet our first antagonist: Michael. Michael.
Now, it’s not so bad, actually. Turns out he’s from Hong Kong, full name Michael Lee. But the presence of a random English name immediately brought to mind the various nineties-and-aughts era TV specials, full of random ancillary characters with prosaic Anglophone mononyms. And the story of Lupin 2014 is essentially the same as one of those formulaic annual TV specials. The best of these specials was probably Episode Zero: First Contact, which used its “origin story” framing as an excuse to show a different character dynamic than we usually get. Lupin 2014 also purports to be an origin story, but doesn’t want to put in any of the work. Lupin and Fujiko already work together, they know Jigen at least by sight and he acts like an old friend immediately, so we can get right back to the familiar dynamic (Goemon gets introduced, but Lupin already knows him and he stands somewhat aloof from the other three anyway). So it’s a straightforward theft with nothing really new to offer.
That isn’t quite enough to hang a film on, let alone a live-action one—even the poorest Lupin specials usually have something else going on. Here it’s a slightly baroque plot involving Michael, who might be Fujiko’s half-brother. Their father may have been killed by Lupin’s mentor Dawson over Cleopatra’s necklace, but it turns out a third thief, Pranak, actually did it. So we have a story about family and redemption. The only problem is that it does not land, at all. Blood may be thicker than water, but that doesn’t automatically imbue the film with any thematic depth. These aren’t our relations, and the film does not bother to do the work to make us feel these ties and grudges between thieves are important.
It doesn’t help that Michael’s bland (even though the directer Ryuhei Kitamura preferred him to Lupin). As is Pranak. As is Fujiko (though actress Meisa Kuroki pulled off some of the slapstick well—the little dance with Lupin was the only comedic part to land for me). As is almost everybody. Well, Tadanobu Asano’s Zenigata isn’t bland, but he is bad, though that’s more the fault of the writing (of the “Zenigata is an incompetent buffoon” type) and the casting; Asano just lacks the physical (seriously, a short Zenigata with a weak chin is no Zenigata to me) and vocal presence to make the character work. The lone bright spot is Shun Oguri as Lupin, who essentially carries the film. But while he does a good job of embodying Lupin in three dimensions, sometimes he leans a bit too much on vocal quirks that really don’t work in live action.
Indeed, Lupin 2014 is, more than anything else, an exercise in brand. It’s no superficial grafting as with Strange Psychokinetic Strategy but rather soaked-through so we know that this is a Lupin film. The odd thing is, though, that despite the filmmakers’ desire to strike out on their own (and Monkey Punch’s involvement) almost all of that consists of animated lore. Stuff like Lupin and Jigen’s choice of guns is not really integral to the story, and having them wave around vintage firearms actually does kind of take one out of the film. Maybe more egregious is the use of the Fiat here—the use of actual cars restricts the film’s big car chase to aggressive lane changing. The Fiat is, if anything, less essential to Lupin lore—it’s not even in the majority of animated Lupin—but broad brand signifiers need to be kept, no matter the appropriateness.
But so often it’s also just off enough that it highlights that this isn’t the original, and not in great ways. For instance, the music—which does a fair amount to carry animated Lupin—is a sort of Yuji Ohno-ish jazz, but lacks any sense of melody or excitement. The costuming is another weak point—the henchmen are flamboyant in a way redolent of the bad nineties species, but worse is Lupin. The filmmakers debated about the appropriateness of Lupin’s red jacket, but there’s no reason at all for it to have been crushed velvet, particularly for a film taking place in Thailand. And there’s absolutely no justification for pairing it black leather pants, even if we ignore the particulars of running around in a tropical climate.
You could see choices like these as solidifying a sort live action cartoon aesthetic, but the film has none of the fleetness of the even the more mediocre animated Lupins I’ve seen. Sleight-of-hand’s implicit in animation, and I never quite recognized how true that was until seeing this film. We rarely, if ever, see how Lupin manages to ensnare Zenigata in his own cuffs, which makes Lupin seem clever. Here it’s just Lupin grabbing the wrists of a less-coordinated foe—force as a substitute for cleverness. This is a problem with the action scenes in general—there’s a lot of quick-paced martial arts but it all feels like padding. There’s little tension in the action because there’s little tension in the plot, and no amount of random zooming, panning, or semi-quick cutting can solve it.
This reaches a ridiculous height during assault on Pranak’s compound—it’s a literal assault, four (again, two with vintage weapons!) against an army. No diversionary tactics or anything like that—they have a couple furiously-typing computer whizzes but otherwise it’s just a big, straightforward push, devoid of any suspense or surprise. One generally does not watch capers for brute force solutions, but that’s all we get here.
Lupin 2014 is indeed a generic, subpar product, but to my surprise it’s generic and subpar in a familiar Lupin way, not in a mid-budget, poorly-thought-out action film way like I expected. Maybe it was the pressure of having to adapt a major project in a new medium. After all, one of the reasons the Lupin TV specials tended to be so broad and by-the-numbers was because they had the threat of cancellation over them. But I’d assume a live-action film was an attempt to expand the audience, not just cater—pander would be the better word, actually—to the existing one.
I know the answer to why this film was made (¥¥¥), but why like this? It’s particularly striking since this has been the main question of the animated Lupin series since the early 2010s, and it’s resulted in different results: the more conventional Lupin III Part IV “Blue Jacket” series and the more audacious Woman Called Fujiko Mine asked and answered this question in different ways, and both injected new life into the franchise. It’s also notable that Fujiko’s spinoff, Jigen’s Gravestone, managed to skip over these questions altogether to give us another fine story with a completely different thematic focus, and I expect something similar with the upcoming “Blue Jacket” season. Of course, it helps that both series were done more-than-competently and genuinely fun to watch. Ironic, then, that what was to be Lupin’s big leap into three dimensions was one of his flattest stories.
Recommended? If you’re curious just watch the first ten minutes—it’s a nice taste of what a live action Lupin could be, but after that taste it gets dull. Really, this film is boring—I can’t hate it because it doesn’t muster up enough of a reaction in me. It exists, and that’s about all that can really be said about it. Having written that…
Stray Observation
—This is the second film to simply be titled Lupin III—the first was the much-superior Mystery of Mamo, which, of course, isn’t often referred to as that so as to avoid confusion with the TV show.
—The treasure of the film—Cleopatra’s necklace—is very obviously made out of plastic.
—There is a fair amount of derp in this film, but the absolute best would be a meeting between Michael and Pranak that happens “in total privacy”…in a glass box, with an audience. Has no one heard that tale of Frank Poole and Dave Bowman? Well, Lupin has, but it turns out he can’t read lips—rather, his Ray-Bans have some kind of HAL-ish program that reads lips for him.
—Speaking of lips, the dubbing of the Thai, Chinese, and English actors was terrible. I’m not sure if this is par for the course for this sort of film or not, though.
—There’s some odd stuff with futuristic tech, too. All the thieves have transparent smartphones for some reason. And the supercomputer they use to evade the security system has a sort of holographic display, and lots of big screens where you can swish things around. Very nice of them—when I’ve worked with supercomputers it was always via command-line.
—In other reviews the two hacker characters were singled-out as bad additions, but that’s only true of the short, rotund, stereotypical Jonathan. I’m honestly fine with the other, Pierre, who’s with Lupin and Fujiko from the beginning. He doesn’t have much of a character, but no one does here. He’s just a competent thief and an attractive face—nothing wrong with that.
—Lupin uses an explosive called “Malibu,” which he talks about like it’s some new kind of club drug. Hey, maybe it’s that too.
—There’s some coy stuff about “Lupin’s real name” here, but he’s very clearly the real grandson of Arsène Lupin, even if they might be pushing a bit on the chronology. They even show a family photo!
—To end this review on a high note, the reason Dawson outlines for their thieving—to liberate fine goods from people with too much money and not enough taste—is almost straight out of LeBlanc, which is a nice touch.
I actually don’t think the idea of a live action Lupin III adaptation is inherently a doomed one. The original manga remains very distinct and everything that followed—even the initial experiment of the pilot film—has been very different stylistically. Often the first series went out of its way to make the stories a bit more naturalistic, even, while still maintaining some of the advantages of animation. At least as far as Lupin is concerned, those are two-fold:
1. It allows for more flexibility in terms of the setting and staging of action—you can do a lot in animation that would be prohibitive in terms of cost, particularly for a weekly TV show.
2. It facilitates suspension of disbelief. This is the big one for Lupin, I think—obviously there’s stock stuff like the disguises and such, but just the fact that it’s a cartoon (or manga) allows us to let our guard down a bit—or a lot—more.
Any live-action adaptation could get around the first through some combination of smart storytelling, effective direction, and budget. The second’s a bigger challenge—you have to anticipate and reset the audience’s limits and come up with a new way of telling the story. One way around this is to graft the characters onto some established template. This has actually done with Lupin before: the first Lupin film adaptation was 1974’s Strange Psychokinetic Strategy is evidently (couldn’t get ahold of it) a rote 1970s Japanese slapstick. To a large extent, of course, this is just using a recognizable name to market generic product. This is what I expected from the 2014 live action film (simply titled Lupin III, but I’ll call it Lupin 2014 here to avoid confusion): a generic heist with some recognizable names.
Surprisingly, that’s not the case. The film is very much in tune with existing Lupin lore. I actually haven’t watched anything Lupin since early January, I think, so I have to admit the opening robbery brought a smile to my face. It felt like Lupin, and at least initially seemed to be pulling off a live-action cartoon style. However, everything started to come crashing down when we meet our first antagonist: Michael. Michael.
Now, it’s not so bad, actually. Turns out he’s from Hong Kong, full name Michael Lee. But the presence of a random English name immediately brought to mind the various nineties-and-aughts era TV specials, full of random ancillary characters with prosaic Anglophone mononyms. And the story of Lupin 2014 is essentially the same as one of those formulaic annual TV specials. The best of these specials was probably Episode Zero: First Contact, which used its “origin story” framing as an excuse to show a different character dynamic than we usually get. Lupin 2014 also purports to be an origin story, but doesn’t want to put in any of the work. Lupin and Fujiko already work together, they know Jigen at least by sight and he acts like an old friend immediately, so we can get right back to the familiar dynamic (Goemon gets introduced, but Lupin already knows him and he stands somewhat aloof from the other three anyway). So it’s a straightforward theft with nothing really new to offer.
That isn’t quite enough to hang a film on, let alone a live-action one—even the poorest Lupin specials usually have something else going on. Here it’s a slightly baroque plot involving Michael, who might be Fujiko’s half-brother. Their father may have been killed by Lupin’s mentor Dawson over Cleopatra’s necklace, but it turns out a third thief, Pranak, actually did it. So we have a story about family and redemption. The only problem is that it does not land, at all. Blood may be thicker than water, but that doesn’t automatically imbue the film with any thematic depth. These aren’t our relations, and the film does not bother to do the work to make us feel these ties and grudges between thieves are important.
It doesn’t help that Michael’s bland (even though the directer Ryuhei Kitamura preferred him to Lupin). As is Pranak. As is Fujiko (though actress Meisa Kuroki pulled off some of the slapstick well—the little dance with Lupin was the only comedic part to land for me). As is almost everybody. Well, Tadanobu Asano’s Zenigata isn’t bland, but he is bad, though that’s more the fault of the writing (of the “Zenigata is an incompetent buffoon” type) and the casting; Asano just lacks the physical (seriously, a short Zenigata with a weak chin is no Zenigata to me) and vocal presence to make the character work. The lone bright spot is Shun Oguri as Lupin, who essentially carries the film. But while he does a good job of embodying Lupin in three dimensions, sometimes he leans a bit too much on vocal quirks that really don’t work in live action.
Indeed, Lupin 2014 is, more than anything else, an exercise in brand. It’s no superficial grafting as with Strange Psychokinetic Strategy but rather soaked-through so we know that this is a Lupin film. The odd thing is, though, that despite the filmmakers’ desire to strike out on their own (and Monkey Punch’s involvement) almost all of that consists of animated lore. Stuff like Lupin and Jigen’s choice of guns is not really integral to the story, and having them wave around vintage firearms actually does kind of take one out of the film. Maybe more egregious is the use of the Fiat here—the use of actual cars restricts the film’s big car chase to aggressive lane changing. The Fiat is, if anything, less essential to Lupin lore—it’s not even in the majority of animated Lupin—but broad brand signifiers need to be kept, no matter the appropriateness.
But so often it’s also just off enough that it highlights that this isn’t the original, and not in great ways. For instance, the music—which does a fair amount to carry animated Lupin—is a sort of Yuji Ohno-ish jazz, but lacks any sense of melody or excitement. The costuming is another weak point—the henchmen are flamboyant in a way redolent of the bad nineties species, but worse is Lupin. The filmmakers debated about the appropriateness of Lupin’s red jacket, but there’s no reason at all for it to have been crushed velvet, particularly for a film taking place in Thailand. And there’s absolutely no justification for pairing it black leather pants, even if we ignore the particulars of running around in a tropical climate.
You could see choices like these as solidifying a sort live action cartoon aesthetic, but the film has none of the fleetness of the even the more mediocre animated Lupins I’ve seen. Sleight-of-hand’s implicit in animation, and I never quite recognized how true that was until seeing this film. We rarely, if ever, see how Lupin manages to ensnare Zenigata in his own cuffs, which makes Lupin seem clever. Here it’s just Lupin grabbing the wrists of a less-coordinated foe—force as a substitute for cleverness. This is a problem with the action scenes in general—there’s a lot of quick-paced martial arts but it all feels like padding. There’s little tension in the action because there’s little tension in the plot, and no amount of random zooming, panning, or semi-quick cutting can solve it.
This reaches a ridiculous height during assault on Pranak’s compound—it’s a literal assault, four (again, two with vintage weapons!) against an army. No diversionary tactics or anything like that—they have a couple furiously-typing computer whizzes but otherwise it’s just a big, straightforward push, devoid of any suspense or surprise. One generally does not watch capers for brute force solutions, but that’s all we get here.
Lupin 2014 is indeed a generic, subpar product, but to my surprise it’s generic and subpar in a familiar Lupin way, not in a mid-budget, poorly-thought-out action film way like I expected. Maybe it was the pressure of having to adapt a major project in a new medium. After all, one of the reasons the Lupin TV specials tended to be so broad and by-the-numbers was because they had the threat of cancellation over them. But I’d assume a live-action film was an attempt to expand the audience, not just cater—pander would be the better word, actually—to the existing one.
I know the answer to why this film was made (¥¥¥), but why like this? It’s particularly striking since this has been the main question of the animated Lupin series since the early 2010s, and it’s resulted in different results: the more conventional Lupin III Part IV “Blue Jacket” series and the more audacious Woman Called Fujiko Mine asked and answered this question in different ways, and both injected new life into the franchise. It’s also notable that Fujiko’s spinoff, Jigen’s Gravestone, managed to skip over these questions altogether to give us another fine story with a completely different thematic focus, and I expect something similar with the upcoming “Blue Jacket” season. Of course, it helps that both series were done more-than-competently and genuinely fun to watch. Ironic, then, that what was to be Lupin’s big leap into three dimensions was one of his flattest stories.
Recommended? If you’re curious just watch the first ten minutes—it’s a nice taste of what a live action Lupin could be, but after that taste it gets dull. Really, this film is boring—I can’t hate it because it doesn’t muster up enough of a reaction in me. It exists, and that’s about all that can really be said about it. Having written that…
Stray Observation
—This is the second film to simply be titled Lupin III—the first was the much-superior Mystery of Mamo, which, of course, isn’t often referred to as that so as to avoid confusion with the TV show.
—The treasure of the film—Cleopatra’s necklace—is very obviously made out of plastic.
—There is a fair amount of derp in this film, but the absolute best would be a meeting between Michael and Pranak that happens “in total privacy”…in a glass box, with an audience. Has no one heard that tale of Frank Poole and Dave Bowman? Well, Lupin has, but it turns out he can’t read lips—rather, his Ray-Bans have some kind of HAL-ish program that reads lips for him.
—Speaking of lips, the dubbing of the Thai, Chinese, and English actors was terrible. I’m not sure if this is par for the course for this sort of film or not, though.
—There’s some odd stuff with futuristic tech, too. All the thieves have transparent smartphones for some reason. And the supercomputer they use to evade the security system has a sort of holographic display, and lots of big screens where you can swish things around. Very nice of them—when I’ve worked with supercomputers it was always via command-line.
—In other reviews the two hacker characters were singled-out as bad additions, but that’s only true of the short, rotund, stereotypical Jonathan. I’m honestly fine with the other, Pierre, who’s with Lupin and Fujiko from the beginning. He doesn’t have much of a character, but no one does here. He’s just a competent thief and an attractive face—nothing wrong with that.
—Lupin uses an explosive called “Malibu,” which he talks about like it’s some new kind of club drug. Hey, maybe it’s that too.
—There’s some coy stuff about “Lupin’s real name” here, but he’s very clearly the real grandson of Arsène Lupin, even if they might be pushing a bit on the chronology. They even show a family photo!
—To end this review on a high note, the reason Dawson outlines for their thieving—to liberate fine goods from people with too much money and not enough taste—is almost straight out of LeBlanc, which is a nice touch.
