It’s been more than three years since Legendary Pictures and Sunrise announced they would collaborate on a live-action movie based on the venerable franchise Mobile Suit Gundam, the giant robot anime whose shadow all others stand in. Today, we have our first look at Netflix’s film — a sole piece of concept art — and it’s probably not what you were expecting.
Yeah, the image up top of a Gundam walking away from a massive conflagration of fire like basically every action star ever? That’s it, which comes courtesy of the VFX whizzes at Industrial Light and Magic.
We knew that the film would be directed by Kong: Skull Island’s Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who’s also currently on board to direct the live-action movie adaptation of the Metal Gear Solid video game. The movie is being produced by Legendary Pictures, which made Skull Island and the recent spate of Godzilla films, so the studio is doing big business with films starring giants of various types. Even better, the script is by Brian K. Vaughan, who’s written the incredible Saga comic among many others. Basically, there’s every reason to believe Gundam’s (second) foray into live-action will be very, very good.
But boy, that giant robot sure looks like Nic Cage walking away from an explosion, or at least one of the countless action stars who have badassedly walked away from any scene of massive destruction happening right behind them. It’s weird because it does seem to be somewhat celebrating how awesome war is, when the original Mobile Suit Gundam is so focused on the trauma war inflicts on people, especially Amuro Ray, the teenager who inadvertently becomes the Gundam’s pilot and gets swept up in the war between Earth and the space-bound Principality of Zeon. Still, it’s only a single image, and that image looks very good. If it seems a bit off-brand for the very first look, whatever. Since Netflix’s live-action Gundam movie still has no release date, we clearly have plenty of time to see more.