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Comment by otachack | Hacker News Reader

So many are trashing the live action that I'd like to offer my opinion.

I enjoyed it for what it was, a reimagining. Vicious' actor was terrible but he picked up towards the end. John Cho did a good nod to Spike, Mustafa Shakir killed it as Jet, and Daniella Pineda was decent as Faye.

What absolutely caught my attention was the production quality of the sets though out the show. Each shot felt heavily inspired by the original material and I can honestly study them for awhile at a time, pausing throughout episodes to catch the little details. It was akin to the sets of I.T. Crowd.

It's a beautifully shot show and I challenge others to at least study some scenes. I refuse to believe that I'm alone in this opinion!

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>It's a beautifully shot show

It so isn't. It's got that ugly flat daytime soap lighting that ruins so many of these streaming shows, I guess because they think they can save money by not paying for a good dp.

I enjoyed it very much. I feel that people create high expectations just to be ensure they’ll be disappointed.

A scene for scene live reenactment would’ve been boring.

Just like that Halo show. You can switch things up a bit and do great.

> I feel that people create high expectations just to be ensure they’ll be disappointed.

I might just have low standards, but I never really feel as disappointed as a lot of the community seems to be whenever there's a live action adaptation - be it of Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop or something else.

It's sometimes interesting to see how certain aspects of the original are carried over or changed in the live action. Also, Cowboy Bebop was just pretty to look at!

Ghost in the Shell would have been perfectly fine if they hadn't mixed two completely unrelated stories from the anime, which involved merging a human main character with an AI main character with completely different goals and background. The result was just as confusing as you'd expect from Ghost in the Shell but without any of the interesting parts.

Though I'm not sure why so many people complained about the cast back then. The actors were great and fit their roles reasonably well aside.

I don’t think we watched the same Halo show.

Everyone who really likes Halo hated the show.

To be honest the set design was stellar. I also enjoyed the way it was narrated given that this comes from an animated series. You could still feel the roots, but they really fleshed out that universe in a good way.

You're absolutely not alone - I enjoyed it a great deal!

I preferred the original - some lines in the live-action felt cheesy (in a "pull you out of the fiction" way, not a "this is a strong genre piece and we're leaning into the genre" way), and I felt like the criticism of capitalism in the LA was dulled-down to the point of near-absence - but the LA was certainly enjoyable, and, as you say, spectacularly set-dressed and shot.

At one point I remarked to my partner that "everything about this show is fantastic except for the script"

Agree with all.

> I enjoyed it for what it was, a reimagining.

Akin to the various incarnations of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I LOVED the movie. Perfect romantic story.

The radio play, TV series, books, and then movie were all their own thing. And best enjoyed as such.

The critics (of either) would complain if they were being hung with an old rope. They suck all the oxygen out of the room.

If they called it something else, a lot less people would mind! The fact that they called it a "live adaption of Cowboy Bebop" naturally causes people to compare the two... and if the live adaption reimagines all of the characters and changes plot lines, people are going to complain... even if you ignore all of the woke nonsense they added.

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