Legendary has hired Brian K. Vaughan to write the script for Gundam。Gundams are also giant robots. But unlike transformers, gundams are piloted, which means that it is much easier to add human elements... At the moment, Paramount still does not seem to make transformers act like humans and have their facial expressions and characters...Is it possible that in the future, gundams will steal the shine from transformers and transformers will be completely marginalised?

 

I don't even know if the Gundam movie is gonna be released at this point, there's such little news surrounding it.

 

Given that films like Pacific Rim and the Mazinger Z Infinity theatrical release weren't the greatest performers (though really the latter might have been to absolutely piss-poor advertising, I didn't even know it had one until after the showing date had long past), Gundam is going to be a hard sell in the western market.

I fully expect it to dominate in the east, though, particularly Japan. They have the moving 1/1 scale statue of the Unicorn Gundam, straight up amusement park rides where actors play the parts of some of the White Base crew (and, again, there's a 1/1 scale Gundam involved), and they have ENTIRE SAKE BARS themed around Gundam. It's a freakin' institution in Japan.

 

It will be better in many levels.

 

Absolutely not.

 

No

 

I hope not. Piloted mechs do nothing for me.

 

No, it won't. Even Godzilla, who is one of the world's most popular monster, in his movie KOTM is tracking with a domestic total of only $110M and where most of the box office will be coming from overseas. Godzilla won't be stealing anyone's thunder with those returns. The reason I bring up Godzilla is because they both feature large characters fighting, but you can take a look at Pacific Rim as well which brings about the same amount. Transformers is its own thing. There is a larger nostogic presence around Transformers in Western culture that Gundam doesn't have (you could probably say this about the rest of the world besides Japan too).

 

I honestly never followed Gundam. I only really followed Macross/Robotech

Now if they made a Macross/Robotech Movie. I would see that in a heartbeat. I remember Toby McGuire started a production company many years ago to do just that, but went the way of the Unicorns. All Smoke/Mirrors/Myth at this point.

 

as big fan of Gundam as well as transformers I can say that it is still to unknown to general American audiences that were not already aware of it before hand. hell the RX-78 might even be mistaken for a Transformer at first and I think Hasbro would step up there game if Bandai ever got their model kits and toys as popular as they were in the 90s and early 2000s. lastly Bandai is still not focusing enough on western nations to overthrow Hasbro or Lego for that matter. so no gundam will not steal the spotlight from Transformers at this time or any time in the near future.

 

Might be? There were more than a few people I've talked to in real life who weirdly thought the RX-78-2 Gundam in Ready Player One was in fact Optimus Prime. Even though the Gundam is mainly white and Prime is red/blue. And the dude who becomes the Gundam straight up says 'Gundam' before jumping off the ship.

You do realize Hasbro already tried this right? The RID mini-cons with the armor still on the sprues? It was a test to see if that kind of 'toy' would work in the modern market and to be quite frank it didn't catch on. It didn't catch on in Japan either when Takara first tried it with Arms Micron on a slightly bigger scale, requiring all the microns to be build from sprues and the stickers for the main figures all to be hand-applied no matter how ridiculous (*has 'Vietam style flashbacks to putting on the big chrome bumper sticker on War Breakdown*).

The problem with model kits trying to be active in the action figure market is, really, patience and skill. Something kids generally don't have, they just want the toy NOW NOW NOW. Gundam is a freakin' national institution in Japan, where you have entire goddamn stores that sell nothing but Gunpla - short for GUNdam PLAstic - models. It's part of their culture. And on the subject of culture, I don't think anybody wants a repeat of the 90s after what happened with Gundam Wing and G Gundam - the former had kits pulled from shelves because of one suit; the Deathscythe Hell Custom, because parents freaked out over that one word in that one suit's name. And G Gundam? Japanese stereotypes of other countries abound where virtually everybody's name got changed (I.E. the sombrero wearing Mexican Gundam was 'Spike Gundam' in the English dub...its true name is TEQUILA Gundam), right down to the two most important suits of the show - in the dub, the show's name makes no sense because there isn't a "G" Gundam. This is because the two core suits of the show are actually named "God" Gundam and "Devil" Gundam, but for much the same reasons the parents all freaked out over 'Hell', this forced the dub to rename the titular suit as Burning Gundam and the main antagonist suit as Dark Gundam.

Mainly because they, as far as I know, only produce Gunpla in Japan (as every single Gunpla kit box ever will tell you), so the cost of exporting those things internationally is astronomical. This is why a decent sized Gunpla from a shop like Hobbytown USA will run you between $20-30, and that doesn't count the capital investment needed to build it (sprue cutters to get the parts off because do not fucking use scissors or nail clippers, paint if you need to make color corrections since these kits aren't perfect, not even the Master Grades, and other hobby tools to do the manual labor like sanding nub marks, etc.). Hasbro products and LEGO are able to be enjoyed out of the box as the thing advertised on the box, whereas with Gunpla, half the fun is building the kit.

 

can't say yet, if the gundam movie does well and they decide to adapt more of universal century and/or there continuities, hasbro and paramount will have more competion in the mech genre movei and toy wise. i don't expect gunpla to boom but robot damashii might so long as the film does well

 

Depends on how its made.

 

Did you even watch Bumblebee?

 

i'd say bumblebee was the only really expressive character

 

Wait... They made a Tranzor Z movie?

 

So Optimus' big, expressive eyes don't count? Or Blitzwing's when Bumblebee gets him with his missile? Even Shatter and Dropkick were highly expressive with their faces, and they were meant to look more alien and less relatable.

 

also Shatter's megatron-esque smile. Very G-1 decepticonish

IDK I know a lotta chicks who dig Gundam more than Trans Formers

 

Hm.

Maybe? I'm sure some people just view all giant robots as the same sort of thing or genre regardless of the things that separate one from the other. Though if you're referring to the allegedly upcoming Hollywood Gundam movie(s) that will most likely not be very good, given that arguably it's a bigger franchise, and how I'm sure people will view the robots as bigger and thus cooler than any of the TF's, I wouldn't be surprised if comparisons were drawn even if it's not entirely accurate.

It'd be more accurate comparing them to the Jaegers of Pacific Rim.