[GaZO Front Topics] G-Saviour: The Full Picture
CREATING AN ENTIRELY AMERICAN FILM
“First of all, please watch it. We can discuss it afterward,” said producer Inoue, leading us into a room at Sunrise.
What we saw in G-SAVIOUR was a taste of a Hollywood SFX movie, making it hard to believe that its motif is a Japanese cel animation.
“The staff are all from abroad. They don’t think of this as an extension of the Japanese ‘Gundam’ world. It’s just a giant robot. They see it as American-made, though there are similar things in the anime that come from Japan,” said Inoue. In other words, it lacks any trace of Japan.
But why would Sunrise, an animation company, make a live-action mobile suit story like “G-SAVIOUR” in America? According to Inoue, Sunrise is not simply an animation production company but a ‘film’ company that has been active based on animation. “The founder of Sunrise came from Osamu Tezuka’s ‘Mushi Production.’ Tezuka, the founder, was famous for his love of movies, and the staff were just as passionate about films. It’s that kind of company.” In this sense, Inoue says there was little resistance to live-action.
Inoue’s reason for launching this project was the advancement of CG (computer graphics) in recent years. “To put it extremely, the elements of CG are very close to animation. For example, putting a picture made with CG on top of the background part is the same feeling as placing a cel painting on the background in cel animation.”
However, Mr. Inoue admits to feeling a sense of incongruity in the movement of mobile suits using CG, as seen in games recently. “The movement of the mecha in cel animation, being hand-drawn and bending and squishing, eliminates the physical contradictions in design and movement. If you just replace it with CG, it won’t work. I thought, can’t Sunrise make a standard one using CG? That was the trigger for making G-SAVIOUR.”
“At the same time,” he says, “there were internal discussions about expanding mobile suit-themed works not only in Japan but also overseas, and there was an opinion that we should try making ‘Gundam’ in America.”
From such conversations, about three years ago, Mr. Inoue wondered if they could create a work that combines live-action and CG for mobile suits and decided to create a 5-minute test film. This is how the “G-SAVIOUR” project was launched, but the amount of money invested in the test film was about 200 million yen. “We assumed that the data from the test film would be fully utilized in the main part,” says Mr. Inoue, even though it was a considerable loss. By the time the work was completed, as mentioned earlier, they ended up investing about 1 billion yen.
Why was Mr. Inoue so persistent about making “G-SAVIOUR” in America? “At that time, I heard that various robot-themed projects were starting in America, so I just wanted to create a work in America as quickly as possible. We, as Japanese, pioneered the world of giant robots and mobile suits. In the world of live-action, I didn’t want to be accused of copying someone in the world of live-action. I wanted to be the pioneer.”
CREATING A SEAMLESS VISUAL EXPERIENCE
When preparing to create a movie in the United States, Mr. Inoue first spent a month communicating all of his needs to the American management staff in charge of things like budgeting.”Every day was filled with lectures. I explained that I wanted to create something like this, with this kind of budget and all the other conditions that needed to be met. I was very thorough in this,” he said. Ultimately, he asked them to choose the best staff members and left the rest to them. One of the conditions Mr. Inoue set was that he did not want anyone who knew about the anime “Mobile Suit Gundam” on the team. “I thought that if even one person was familiar with ‘Gundam,’ the entire project would be pulled into the world of ‘Gundam.’ In other words, I didn’t want this to be a remake-type movie. I wanted it to be as much like a regular drama as possible. To achieve this, I had all the mobile suits replaced with fighter planes as a basic element of the world and only included elements of robot stories in the main mobile suit. I was very conscious of this kind of production.”
As per Inoue’s request, the crew of this project, including veteran director Graeme Campbell who has a history of making documentary-style films, had no connection to animation. The only exception was mechanic designer Kevin Ishioka, who had played a supporting role in films such as “Armageddon,” “Godzilla,” and “Stargate.” “However, all the costume designs and art and character settings for creating animations like the Gundam, that take place on a colony, were all done in Japan from the initial design stage. The G-SAVIOUR mecha design was handled by Kunio Okawara, who designed it while keeping in mind the patterns found in traditional robot-themed works.”
As for the cast, Mr. Inoue was adamant about hiring Western actors. “Considering the setting of the story, I thought it had to be Western actors. This becomes even more apparent when you consider them in military uniforms.”
He also made extensive use of actual American scenery for the landscapes in the film. “If we tried to film in Japan, there would be signs and other things in the way, and in the case of a fictional world like ‘G-SAVIOUR,’ the places where we could actually film would be limited. But in America, there are areas of land that perfectly match the interior of a space colony, with U-shaped dips in the land, so we can film on location rather than on a set.”
When asked about the technical differences between Japan and America regarding the CG aspects, Mr. Inoue had this to say: “The CG software we used was developed in America, so the latest version is more advanced there. In addition, in America, it’s easier to request the necessary tool programs, so we were able to combine the filmed acting of humans and spaceships without any sense of discomfort in the visuals.”
When asked about the success of making a movie in America, Mr. Inoue responded, “It’s about becoming a family with the staff.” In other words, it’s about clearly showing the desire to make a movie together as a team.
He concluded by saying, “I hope that the combination of Japanese robot anime know-how and Hollywood film-making has resulted in a work that will inspire others to challenge themselves to go beyond this. If that happens, I’ll feel that it was worth making.”
GaZOスペシャル ガンダムミレニアムムーク
GaZO SPECIAL: GUNDAM MILLENIUM
PUBLICATION INFORMATION
Publisher: Tokuma Shoten
Released: 2000.01.10
Price: 1,238
Size: A4
Back in January 2000, There was a special GaZO Roman Album published called “Gundam Millenium.” The issue celebrated a variety of different aspects of what Gundam accomplished over the past twenty years and what lie ahead for it.
