THE CURSE OF THE SPAGHETTI WESTERN
When I was (much) younger, I felt strange about watching Spaghetti Westerns. For the uninitiated into 1960's movie culture, Spaghetti Westerns were knock-offs of the then-popular Westerns starring Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, John Wayne, and a host of six-shooter-toting, horseback-riding, fistfighting, testosterone-overflowing men in large cowboy hats. Spaghetti Westerns had Italian actors acting like American cowboys, most of the time overacting, in low budget, badly written adventures in the wild west.
The Philippines, of course, had our own versions of these movies, courtesy of the Lapid clan, starting with legendary patriarch Jess, followed by Lito, Jess Jr., and their male brood. The King of Philippine cinema himself, Fernando Poe, Jr., became widely popular with similar movies.
The same strange feeling haunted me when I watched Filipino versions of Kung-Fu movies - Filipinos dressed up, acting like, and even faking the accents of, Chinese characters. This was during the martial arts movie boom of the 70's courtesy of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Wang Jing Lee, and an army of martial arts superstars from Hong Kong.
Now, what does this have to do with The Fullmetal Alchemist live action movie? A lot, actually. Because I couldn't help but feel the strange Spaghetti Western sensation while watching it. Yes, maybe I should have expected the actors to be Japanese with European names and wearing European clothes in a European setting, since I AM a huge fan of the anime, but I couldn't help getting that out-of-place, weird and funny feeling while looking at Asian actors with blond-dyed hair and using Western names.
This was live action, after all, and that made the difference. In the anime, I could always pretend that Edward, Al, Winry, et al, were Westerners despite their use of Nihonggo. Here I had to stare at the Asian actors like they were children role-playing in a game.
Let me be clear, I have nothing against Japanese actors playing the role, it was just a reaction that even I didn't expect. I never had a problem with the three Rurouni Kenshin movies, of course because it was set in Japan and the characters were, well, Japanese.
As for the movie itself, I was far from impressed or satistfied. Pacing was slow, acting was terrible in some instances, characters from the anime were not used, and the story was a 2-hour condensed version of a series that I spent months enjoying. Going into details would thrust us into SPOILER territory, so I'll stop here.
Is it blasphemy for me to wish that Hollywood do a version of the same movie, with Western actors? preferably with Joss Whedon at the helm?
But that's just me. Go watch it yourself, please, and correct me if I'm just being a foolish otaku.
