It makes sense that an actor as spacey and distant as Keanu Reeves would make his living in the science fiction world. The expressionless automaton has seen his thousand mile stare benefit him in science fiction movies lauded (“The Matrix”) and unbearable (“Johnny Mnemonic”). He’s jumping back into outer space again: unperturbed by middling returns on “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” Fox has hired scribe Peter Craig to pen a live action film adaptation of the popular anime series “Cowboy Bebop,” with Keanu set to star.
While even anime fans will acknowledge the genre is made up of unbearably esoteric, ridiculous claptrap, ‘Bebop,’ which ran for 26 episodes, is a decidedly Western combination of elements from space operas, urban action films, lone gun westerns, noir and New Wave cinema, and the show readily wears its inspirations on its sleeve. More notable is the musical flavor- like most anime, it was episodic and often disjointed, but it benefited from colorful work from composer Yoko Kanno, who melded jazz, funk and blues into a free-form stew that captured the fluid nature of the series.
Reeves will star as Spike Spiegel, a space-hopping bounty hunter with amnesia in the year 2071, more or less a pretty broad action avatar for Reeves to project his blank features onto. The other main roles from the series include a bruiser named Jet (think Ron Perlman, Ving Rhames, that sort) and an Asian seductress named Faye Valentine (try not to google image search her at work- she’s not the only, ahem, Faye Valentine). Series creator Shinichiro Watanabe is part of the creative team from the show onboard as producers.
Back in December, Keanu spoke to MTV about adapting the series at length, discussing melding the story of the first and last episodes (even though story was not one of the show’s strong points). Still, whatever passion he’s got to have for the project has to be ignored considering a live action ‘Bebop’ will be a copy of a copy- the show was created as a riff on popular cinematic ideas and motifs, so if you’re even remotely film literate, you will essentially have seen a live action ‘Bebop’ in any number of movies. Not to mention this has been done already, and well, with 2001’s in-continuity animated movie “Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.”