By Travis Johnson
Legendary have announced their intention to bring the venerable and sprawling giant mecha anime, Gundam, to the big screen.
“What, or indeed who, is a Gundam?” you may well ask if you’re not well-versed in the socially crippling ways of Japanese animation. Pretty much the defining “mecha” franchise, Gundam began life back in ’79 as the animated TV series Mobile Suit Gundam, “…set in the Universal Century, an era in which humanity’s growing population has led people to emigrate to space colonies. Eventually, the people living in the colonies seek their autonomy, and launch a war of independence against the people living on Earth. Through the tragedies and discord arising from this human conflict, not only the maturation of the main character, but also the intentions of enemies and the surrounding people are sensitively depicted. The battles in the story, in which the characters pilot robots known as mobile suits, are wildly popular.”
They bury the lede in that synopsis, because the key appeal is giant robots smacking the crap out of each other, which Legendary recently gave us in Pacific Rim: Uprising. A statue of a Gundam actually appeared during the climactic battle of that one. A Gundam robot also cropped up in Ready Player One but a) so did every other bloody thing and b) that movie blows.
Legendary are co-producing this one with Gundam creators Sunrise, with veteran producer Cale Boyter overseeing the project. An ETA is probably wildly optimistic at this juncture.
