The point of this topic isn’t to say that live action is better than animation; it’s to present ideas of how to adapt animation into live action-preferably NOT in the same way that Yogi Bear and Alvin And The Chipmunks were.
The show kind of already did that. It had the twist of Zane being a robot, and then for the next several seasons, he tried to come to terms with it and fit in with the other ninja, who in turn started to accept him for who he was. Which, well, to quote another topic…
Yeah. Pretty much this.
I dunno…he always felt unique to me. He presents himself as this power-hungry warlord, but he actually doesn’t want to be evil-he just has evil corrupting his spirit. He cares about his son, but he’s given in to being a destroyer, even though he doesn’t like it. And of course, all that helps him to be redeemed. Makes total sense to me. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if an upcoming season has Garmadon being redeemed once more.
Nor am I saying it is. My point is that the conversation begins and ends at “it shouldn’t go live-action.” If it happens, the movie will probably be a terrible cashgrab anyway and all hope is lost, because–let’s be real–this is Hollywood we’re talking here.
I don’t think the show went far enough. It should have been a serious struggle for him from the moment he found out, but he seemed relatively chill (heh) with it by the end of the episode. It created some conflicts later on, but I didn’t buy how little trauma it caused him. If that happened to a real person, it would potentially drive them insane. Obviously, Zane can’t lose his mind and devote himself to Nyarlathotep or anything, but I think if he clearly went through greater adversity and took longer to get through it, his “true potential” would be earned.
Which is a terrible premise for a villain, at least with how he’s written. He does bad things not because of his beliefs or choices, but because he can’t stop himself. If he were written more like, idk, Bruce Banner, this could work–but he’s not. This is a cop-out “motive” for him.
Of course, when I said that, I was more thinking about the movie, where his personality is wildly inconsistent, but the movie was a bleedin’ mistake in any case.
I mean, sure, real Hollywood would most likely treat it as a cash-grab opportunity. But the point of this topic is for us to express our wishful thinking of what an actual, good live-action Ninjago movie would be like.
Well, Zane’s not a “real person” if he’s a robot, is he?
Movie Garmadon felt like a mashup of Lord Business and Batman from the first Lego Movie, at least to me. But TV show Garmadon was, I think, a better-written villain.
I don’t know about the Bruce Banner comparison. I always thought Garmadon was more like Darth Vader; he was consumed by darkness and was pushed to do evil things, but deep down, he knows that he’s doing wrong. Because of this, he hates himself and tries to break down the foundation of his belief. In that way, he’s embraced his own villainy.
But you want a villain with bad motivation? Here you are:
Von Nebula was, in many respects, a cool villain for the first wave of Hero Factory; he had an awesome design, and his personality was threatening. But his backstory prevents him from being an actual “good” villain. He used to be an actual Hero, until he was on a mission with Stormer and Thresher, and he bailed on said mission. This was what turned him evil? Uh…no. I can’t buy that.
With Stormer feeling bad, I can kind of understand. He was probably wondering where he went wrong in training Von Ness/Von Nebula. But how does that make Von Nebula hate Stormer so much? If he had other stuff happen to him after he abandoned Hero Factory, maybe, but the show didn’t present any evidence of this.
Also-I actually laughed when I saw the thumbnail for this video. Turning Will Smith’s Genie orange to match Nadakhan? Hilarious. Even if Will Smith would be a poor casting choice for Nadakhan…
Fair enough, though I still consider a live-action switch rather meritless.
I wasn’t sure what to compare him to. You made it sound like he’s supposed to be a villain who doesn’t try or want to do bad things, but is ultimately forced to go against his beliefs. Vader is gradually conditioned into accepting Sidious’s philosophy (though the prequels are so poorly-written that it doesn’t come across well), so I guess I misunderstood what you were trying to get across. Still, Vader in the OT was perfectly fine so my own point is still valid.
This. It’d be a reboot, but with characterization and setting more inspired by the very early days.
Notably:
Some sort of conflict with Garmadon at the end - they don’t have to defeat him necessarily, but the way he just walks through Samukai the Portal at the end is super anti-climactic.
Keep Cole’s character in line with the more grounded, consistent person we met in this season, rather than just being a dumping ground for anything that doesn’t fit the other ninja.
Jay should be the only one who is consistently cracking obnoxious jokes / acting super teenager-ey. I don’t mind this, but it gets tiring when pretty much the entire human cast of ninja are doing it.
More orientally-inspired. If we’re going to do Exo-Force again, then we do Exo-Force, but none of this half-baked stuff. Other than the skeletons having some underworld-related technologies (potentially), keep it more traditional. Doesn’t have to be set in literal, real-world Japan though - it can still be “the land of Ninjago”.
Zane should be a human.
I’m ok if Nya’s water ninja arc wants to be brought forward a bit, but not sure about that.
Garmadon needs to be completely reworked as a character, he’s been revived so many times and had so many personality shifts that he is an absolute mess. You can keep the broad strokes, but thematic consolidation is vitally necessary with this guy.
You can maybe forshadow Lloyd for a potential sequel, but he presents so many problems for the story that you’d have to really be clever when introducing him.
Keep Kruncha and Knuckle, they were great.
Of course, none of this demands live action, but Ninjago is one of the very few franchises I can name that could feasibly benefit from it.
If you’re going for a more typical ninja setting, with only the underworld having technology in any sense, Zane being a robot doesn’t fit. (Unless maybe he was designed by Samukai or something…)
You’ve got one movie. I feel like Zane’s character, before we found out he was a robot, was still plenty interesting enough, and the reveal kind of cheapened it.
Over time, of course, they found other ways to develop his character (and I’d say he’s turned out better than most of the others, he’s had at least a few decent arcs) but you need a few movies to really do that idea justice without also cheapening his prior development as a human character, unless you give him an awful lot of focus (which I wouldn’t want to do in a live-action adaptation - I think you’d start with Kai, but once the four are properly introduced you’d be dividing the screentime among them pretty evenly.)
And @Racie02 is right that it also wouldn’t suit with the less technological tone that I believe would be a better fit for the movie.
tl;dr - Zane’s robot stuff over-complicates his character, isn’t at all necessary to still hit the right emotional tone for him, and takes more time than it’s worth for a single movie.
But that’s the thing. Zane being a robot explained why he had his personality quirks, and it kickstarted a whole new emotional arc for him-which is exactly what a sequel should do.
I guess I probably found it worse because it was about the time they started making the other three ninja all a bit more samey than they originally were. I found it compelling enough that he was the odd-one-out before learning “oh, he’s different because he’s literally not human. Ok.”
You make a point, and like I said, there’s potential for it in development down the line if it’s handled very well. But it’s certainly not worth tackling for a single movie, which was more the direction I think this topic was asking in.
I mean, yeah, I guess I see how you would think that. But if they did make a whole series of live-action Ninjago movies, then this would inevitably happen.
I just have to say, I’ve thought about it what it would look like… nothing comes up. I can’t imagine Ninjago not lego on my own. There were those little backstory sequences in SotFS, and I feel like that kind of gives me an idea, but it’s still too animated.
TBH, I hope that if they ever do make a live-action Ninjago movie, they do a better job than the Ninjago movie did. I don’t want to offend anyone that might’ve liked it, but it just doesn’t feel like the original Ninjago. And then they changed the appearances of the show’s characters! I mean, I’d understand why they’d do that but aren’t people going into the show gonna watch the first 7 seasons first?!
I’d like it if they made a live-action movie that didn’t screw up the TV show. That’s my only request.
There are people on DeviantArt that have drawn up what they think a live-action Ninjago would look like, with the characters as humans instead of Lego minifigures. I would provide links, but if I did, the mods might see it as advertising and block this post, so…
And they showed up in Season 13, too.
I don’t know that it was supposed to. The reason why the filmmakers decided to start up a whole new canon was for pretty much the same reason Bionicle G2 was a full-on reboot-to make it easier to draw in new fans without having to explain the mythos.
There was a time where I would have agreed with you, but I distinctly remember having a dream once where Ninjago was actually a licensed theme based on a non-Lego IP, weirdly enough.
Okay, so I looked on deviantart and pinterest for Ninjago fanart and wow, a lot of it’s really well done. I feel like that kind of stuff gives me an excellent idea of live-action ninja. I saved some of the things I found on my pinterest, under the same username.
I think that a live-action Ninjago movie should keep the looks from the pre-SoG, though. I don’t know how easy it would be to get actors that fit the ninja’s descriptions, but I’m not expecting a live-action movie anytime soon, maybe years later.
I also found a link on these very well done Ninjago posters on the same website as this! It’s also ttv so I don’t think it would count as advertising: Ninjago Season Posters
