The year is 2040. It's been almost a decade since the Second Great Kanto Earthquake, and MegaTokyo has made a leap to greater prosperity thanks to the efforts of the megacorporation GENOM and its signature invention, the Boomer: cybernetic lifeforms built for labor and service. New office worker Linna Yamazaki, fresh from the countryside, has come not only to land a big job but to also seek out a group thought to be an urban legend: the armored vigilantes known as the Knight Sabers, who deal with the rash of 'rogue Boomers', much to the chagrin of the A.D. Police. Uncovering their identities, Linna presses the group--made up of billionaire Sylia, rocker Priss, and computer whiz Nene--to let her join them. Together, the quartet will need to learn to gel as a team if they're going to both halt the menace of the rogue Boomers and expose the secret conspiracy GENOM is behind--one with a history that connects to Sylia's own traumatic childhood and the creation of the Boomers themselves.
The Knight Sabers are in for the fight of their lives when GENOM executive Brian J. Mason's intentions are revealed, along with the source of the mysterious 'Boomer plague': Galatea, the result of a secret Boomer project headed by Sylia's father and a powerful gynoid able to control and transform Boomers. Things get even worse when GENOM, taken over by Mason after he has the company's current head killed, cuts off all funding to the A.D. Police and Galatea's connection to the Boomers causes the Knight Sabers' hardsuits--themselves derived from Boomer tech--to become compromised and destroyed. With Galatea's influence causing MegaTokyo to be overrun by rogue Boomers, the Knight Sabers must take the fight to Galatea herself and end her artificial life, once and for all.
The Hardsuits: Hardsuits are powered battle armor developed by Sylia Stingray and Nigel Kirkland. Initially they are suits of armor that the four Knight Sabers step into while wearing body stockings as close contact with skin and "plumbing" connections are required. Sylia states that the reason there are no male knight sabers is because it was easier to find women who shared a similar shape to her than to redesign hardsuits for a different anatomy. After the original suits are lost in the Boomer uprising, the replacement suits that are developed are instead applied to specialized skinsuits as a viscous liquid silver-colored 'biometal' that morphs into the colored hardsuit. The hardsuits and the motoslave are revealed late in the series to be a form of boomer, that the very first set of suits (not seen in the series) were all lost due to their wearers not being well suited for their use and that Sylia had to find people like her whose consciousness could meld with the boomers' nascent consciousness (itself based on Sylia's consciousness due to her father's development process) in order to optimize their function. This requirement is revealed when the Knight Sabers receive psychic messages from Galatea and at times the four women are sometimes able to communicate telepathically. Sylia notes that the highly limited power supply of the hardsuits was to prevent them going rogue.
Inspiration for a live-action take: To realistically depict the hardsuits in a live-action format, the best bet would be to come up with a concept blend (enhanced by CGI) of both the armor stylings used for the Marvel Cinematic Universe interpretations of Iron Man's armors, and the female-designed reactive impact armor worn by Rachel Nichols' Scarlett in 2009's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Each would be tailored to their respective wearer's specifics and styles, but still be lithe and functionally flexible enough to move around in, enough to realistically depict their ability to tear Boomers a new one in the knock-down, drag-out fights prevalent throughout the films.
+Director: A film director is a person who directs the making of a film. A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfillment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, production design, and the creative aspects of filmmaking. Under European Union law, the director is viewed as the author of the film. The film director gives direction to the cast and crew and creates an overall vision through which a film eventually becomes realized, or noticed. Directors need to be able to mediate differences in creative visions and stay within the boundaries of the film's budget.
Kathryn Bigelow [Notable Works: Point Break (1991), K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), The Hurt Locker (2008), Zero Dark Thirty (2012)]: An award-winning director able to helm action films with substance, Strange Days is a perfect qualifier for letting Bigelow helm a live-action take on Bubblegum Crisis. Her tackling these two hypothetical films would be the sci-fi equivalent of Patty Jenkins' helming of Wonder Woman and I could picture similar a similar level of success to follow. Furthuring the Strange Days connection would be having her collaborator James Cameron acting as a producer, given his own work on the forthcoming adaptation of another cyberpunk manga/anime in Battle Angel: Alita.
Sylia Stingray: An enigmatic billionaire, and the founder of the Knight Sabers, Sylia is the daughter of Dr. Steven [Katsuhito in the original series] Stingray, the man who invented Boomers. Implants in her brain were used to create both Galatea and Mackie and her brain patterns were used in the creation of Boomers, thus strongly relating her to boomers; because of this, she sees them as an abomination as her mother did. She acts as ground support for the Knight Sabers. She is in love with Nigel Kirkland, a sullen mechanic who was an engineer on the Boomer project who helped her design and build the Knight Saber hardsuits. Sylia owns and operates an upscale clothing boutique called Silky Doll, which also serves as a front for the Knight Sabers' HQ. Sylia suffers from regular flashbacks; most stem from her extremely complicated and disturbing childhood involving her mother's death and the cruel experiments her father conducted on her. She rarely dons her hardsuit or enters combat, after an incident that led to the deaths of her original two Knight Sabers recruits (one a special forces operative, the other an Olympic-level athlete).
Sylia's hardsuit is equipped with twin retractable Katar-style sword blades that she uses to inflict fatal damage to any boomer who makes the mistake of getting too close to her, and her combat style is even more savage and brutal than Priss's. Her suit is primarily a silver/white color with teal and pink accents. It also sports active stealth systems, and she is known to carry remote-detonated explosive charges.
Evangeline Lilly: A favorite among genre fans everywhere, her recent turns as Hope Van Dyne/the Wasp made her the perfect choice for Sylia. Both characters do happen to be armor-clad rich women with rocky family histories, with Sylia's a bit more darker than Hope's, giving Lilly a shot at portraying a Bruce Wayne-archetype in a hard-hitting sci-fi story not unlike Blade Runner, one of the many influences behind Bubblegum Crisis.
Priscilla "Priss" Asagiri: Priss is the strongest member of the Knight Sabers, specializing in heavy assault. The vocalist of an underground rock band called the Replicants, she lives in the slums of the city in a trailer truck and is a distrustful loner who is rarely seen with her fellow Knight Sabers. A.D. Policeman Leon McNichol is attracted to her, but she initially mocks him (due to her own strong dislike of the AD Police). As the series progresses, her view changes as they both encounter each other in various dangerous situations and they help each other. She also begins to become more friendly with her fellow teammates, though she always retains some distance with them and is very protective of her privacy.
Priss's hardsuit is specifically designed for the alley-style, hit and run fighting tactics she prefers. Her red-accented dark blue suit's main weapon is a set of "knuckle bombs". These are essentially shaped-charge explosive devices on the knuckles of her gauntlets, with which she beats against a Boomer until she can tear inside where its "core" (its heart) resides and destroy it from the inside out. Until Linna's arrival, Priss was the primary combatant of the team and it is her suit that is used in Linna's first test simulation.
Rinko Kikuchi: Remembering her performance in Pacific Rim is what sold me on Kikuchi as Priss. And it'd be interesting to see her portray a hard-rockin' futuristic Joan Jett-type that shows no mercy in a fight with a killer robot. As for her singing voice--well, I'm as in the dark about it as you all are, so that's another story altogether. Still, Kikuchi's got my vote for bringing Priss to life on the big screen.
Linna Yamazaki: Farm girl Linna traveled to MegaTokyo to become a Knight Saber and to get away from her overbearing family. An office lady for the Hugh-Geit Corporation, she is constantly harassed by her bosses but continues to be a positive, friendly, and outgoing person who dreams of helping others. It was her confrontational tendencies and sense for justice which eventually got her admitted into the Knight Sabers. After joining the team, she forms a close sisterly relationship with Nene.
Linna's hardsuit is a green color accented with orange trim, and is extremely maneuverable. As the newest suit of the group, it has some of the most advanced features, including a pair of long, ribbon-like cutters with nanometer-thick mono-molecular edges that can slice through almost anything. This newness is a double-edged sword however, for it fails on its first mission with almost tragic consequences for its owner. Linna's suit also has heavily armored gauntlets, but she does not carry the knuckle bombs that Priss's suit has.
Tao Okamoto: Another genre-savvy actress who's appeared in a lot of recent and current favorite film and TV projects, from The Wolverine to Westworld, with Linna for once we'd get to see her portraying a slightly more 'sunnier' character while still kicking all sorts of robotic butt in a suit of armor.
Nene Romanova: A perky and naïve hacker who is employed as a dispatch operator for the AD Police (making her a perfect mole for the Knight Sabers within the department), Nene is a genius with computers and routinely hacks into military networks. She is recruited into the Knight Sabers after she hacks Sylia's computer trying to learn more about them. She primarily works on sensor ops, battlefield communications, ECM and ECCM. As the series progresses, Mackie develops a crush on her, despite the fact that she is three years older than him. The two eventually become good friends, although their relationship remains platonic.
Designed more for field support and data acquisition than for combat, Nene's hardsuit is an unusual reddish-pink and purple. Her weaponry includes a railgun that can shoot high sectional density armor-piercing metal spikes into her opponents, armored gauntlets, and an incredibly powerful computer system and scanner array that lets her handle almost any field intelligence operations required of her. Nene tries to prove herself as a fighter several times but overestimates her physical prowess and endangers herself and others. Eventually her suit is upgraded with several automatic functions that greatly increase her ability as a fighter.
Chloë Moretz: A very promising young actress with a number of hit films under her belt, Moretz was my number-one choice for Nene, seeing her being able to nail the character's genius, sense of humor, and status as the kid sister of the Knight Sabers with all the right amount of talent and aplomb from hacking computers to planting an armored fist in a Boomer's metallic hide.
Mackie Stingray: Mackie was initially introduced as Sylia's younger brother; however, he's actually a male doppelganger version of Sylia. Created by Sylia's father, in his quest for advancing artificiality, Mackie is neither fully human nor boomer; he's a prototype that was deemed too human and considered a failure. However, he wasn't discarded and was kept around to be a false little brother to Sylia and she accepted Mackie as such. Mackie is depicted as being a naïve, inquisitive and awkward young man who loves machinery and computers; due to his artificial nature, he can never age and remains forever in his mid-teens form. After surviving the infamous earthquake, Mackey reunited with Sylia and walked right into her Knight Saber operation. Although reluctant at Mackie's infatuation with machinery and getting involved in her affairs, she eventually accepted it and allowed him to tag along with the Knight Sabers, where he eventually formed a good relationship with Nene and Nigel. As the series progresses, his origins were revealed as well as his connection with Galatea.
Kodi Smit-McPhee: Another promising actor of his generation, I can see him portraying Mackie akin to a younger version of Brent Spiner's Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, though unaware of his own origins, making for an interesting acting performance on McPhee's part.
Meisio Henderson: The longtime butler of Sylia, Meisio also acts as her housekeeper, aide-de-camp, and surrogate father figure. He serves, much like Batman's butler Alfred Pennyworth, as Sylia's moral anchor, helping to bring her back down-to-earth during tense situations involving rogue Boomers.
Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa: A genre favorite for many fans with a long and storied career, here I picture him being to Meisio what Michael Caine was to Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy, especially regarding the father-figure-daughter relationship between Meisio and Sylia. And for a further bit of Six Degrees--one of his current roles is on the Amazon adaptation of The Man in the High Castle, based on a novel by Philip K. Dick, who wrote the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which would be loosely adapted as Blade Runner, one of the films that inspired Bubblegum Crisis.
Nigel Kirkland: A former engineer, Nigel worked on the Boomer Project with Sylia's father and Brian J. Mason, then later helped Sylia design and build the hardsuits of the Knight Sabers. While now a mechanic, he helps maintain the hardsuits. He is romantically involved with Sylia, but because of his quiet, sullen nature he is called the "man of a thousand grunts" by other characters and his true feelings for Sylia are unknown. Mackie becomes his protege and one of the few people Nigel seems to consider a friend. At the beginning of the series, Priss appears to be infatuated with him, though he does not react to her flirtations. However, he later creates a "Motoslave" (a motorcycle that can transform into an exoskeleton for Priss's hardsuit) specifically for her that, using Nigel's voice, says it wishes to protect Priss. Both Priss and Sylia are attracted to Nigel, however, Nigel never showed preference for either one. However, Sylia was more emotionally desperate to have Nigel and Priss gave up on Nigel since she has Leon. Nigel would later build more advanced hardsuits for the ladies in their battle against the mad Boomers and eventually Galatea.
Joe Manganiello: Considering his filmography, I think it'd be interesting to see Manganiello's next role in a hard-sci-fi setting, and with a character that has as much pathos as Nigel, given his past and his interactions with the other characters.
Leon McNichol: Leon is a frustrated but dedicated cop, with a tendency to rush in without thinking. Having worked his way up from the normal police, Leon sees himself as the protector of the local citizens and initially dislikes the vigilante nature of the Knight Sabers. He meets and becomes a big brother figure for Nene and falls in love with Priss. He is unaware of her being a Knight Saber until later in the series, but when he learns the truth he keeps it to himself. At the end of the series, Priss returns her feelings.
Jensen Ackles: For the better part of 13 years and 14 seasons, we've been watching Ackles go up against all things, well, supernatural, it's easy to forget that he's gotten his feet wet in more sci-fi-oriented fare such as Dark Angel and (believe it or not) Smallville. I think it'd be a treat to see him tackle something like this, especially in a role that effectively makes him the Rick Deckard of the Bubblegum Crisis saga.
Daley Wong: Daley is Leon's partner, and a highly skilled investigator who actively questions the contradictory nature of the AD Police's relationship with the Knight Sabers. After helping to ensure that the rogue Boomer menace doesn't spread any further, he evacuates the city as more and more of it falls under Galatea's control.
Terry Chen: No stranger to most manner of genre film and TV, I looked mainly to his role of Pryce Cheng in Jessica Jones, and could imagine him playing Daley as the more experienced of his and Leon's partnership on the force, acting as the voice of reason for the two.
Quincy Rosenkroitz: The GENOM Chief Executive Officer, Quincy wishes for humans and Boomers to live together peacefully. Though suspicious of Mason's activities, he believes he can control and maintain Mason. With his body badly decayed, he uses tubes and wires to keep him alive, afraid of using more advanced implants. Mason's Boomer secretary later kills him by disconnecting a vital cord in his life-support system. He shares his surname with Christian Rosenkreuz, legendary founder of the Rosicrucians.
Ben Kingsley: The legendary actor was my immediate choice for Crisis' answer to Eldon Tyrell. I could also see him injecting a bit of later-years Howard Hughes and the traditionalist tendencies of Marlon Brando's Vito Corleone into his portrayal, befitting of Rosenkroitz and his seeming belief in his control over Mason and GENOM.
Brian J. Mason: A ruthless corporate shark who works against the wishes of Rosenkroitz, Mason believes the human race should go away and that Boomers should become the new dominant species. He uses Genom's spaceborne solar generator and earthborne energy storage project to search for the underground laboratory that housed the Sotai project (Galatea), on which he worked with Sylia's father and Nigel Kirkland. Because of his traumatizing past, he is a bitter man who wishes to transcend humanity. He adopted Galatea (at the time in a childlike form) in hopes of using her. To fulfill his wish, in a manner he didn't want, she changes him into Boomer-human hybrid, then fuses him to a wall to be hung up high above Megatokyo, so that he can observe Galatea's plans for the city and the world.
Bill Hader: Known mostly for his comedic roles and lengthy stint as a cast member of Saturday Night Live, of late Hader's been dipping his toes into somewhat more serious and dramatic fare, such as the 2014 dramadey The Skeleton Twins and the dark comic HBO series Barry. Given what he's learned in both cases, and coupled with how much he looks like the character, I believe Hader would make a perfect Mason, giving him a portrayal somewhere like a cross between Patrick Bateman and Roy Batty.
Galatea: Galatea is a secret Boomer project started by Sylia's father, Dr. Karl Stingray. It is revealed in flashback that she was grown from an implant inserted into a young Sylia's brain against Sylia's mother's wishes. It is also revealed that Dr. Stingray asked her to go into stasis when she started to function strangely, and that she killed Dr. Stingray while still complying. This reveals that GENOM caused the Great Earthquake in order to seal her in the lab and prevent her from contaminating boomers for her own design. When she is initially seen, she has an appearance like that of a prepubescent Sylia. She is released from stasis by Mason and rapidly matures from her childlike appearance to an adult almost identical to Sylia. After her plans are revealed her hair turns black and her eyes change to red. Late in the series, her mind begins maturing and she begins questioning the meaning and purpose of her existence.
Evangeline Lilly: Given that I've cast her as Sylia, logically I'd cast her as her evil robotic doppleganger as well. With a character like this, I'd sell her on something of a cross between HAL-9000 and the ancient Greek goddess Hera, with a bit of Blade Runner's Pris thrown in for good measure.
Soundtrack: Taking inspiration from Bob Garlen and his TMNT reboot from a while back, I decided to come up with a soundtrack split across both movies. With the music selection, given the female focus of the movies, I wanted a good proportion of the songs to be by some of the toughest, most heavy-hitting women of rock, such as Chrissy Hynde, Patty Smyth, Stevie Nicks, Joan Jett, and the Wilson sister duo better known as Heart. The music choice is also a nod to both Bubblegum Crisis' late 1980's cyberpunk origins and the 1990's reboot of the series, with its own hard rock soundtrack. Songs marked by an asterisk (*) are sung by Priss and the Replicants in the movies. The track list is as follows:
1. Another One Bites the Dust (Queen)
The best song for a small prologue at the start of the film, showing us Sylia's last mission with her original two recruits in what turned out to be their first and final fight in hardsuits against rogue boomers. (Also my little nod to the recent release of the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.)
2. Motorhead (Motorhead)
Played during Linna's first encounter with a mad Boomer that also gives her a direct look at the Knight Sabers in action, and a song perfectly complimenting Priss's brutal beatdown of said Boomer.
3. Middle of the Road (The Pretenders)*
Sung by Priss and the Replicants when Linna, in tracking down info on the Knight Sabers, attends their performance at their usual venue, the Hot Legs nightclub.
4. The Warrior (Scandal)
A great song to accompany Linna while she is put through the rigors of training to become a Knight Saber by Sylia.
5. It's A Long Way To The Top (AC/DC)
Played during Linna's first night out with the Sabers, showing that while she got lucky on her first try, it's a long way to the top if she wants to outdo the likes of Priss.
6. Stand Back (Stevie Nicks)*
Sung by Priss during a performance that Leon attends in an attempt to get to know her better, leading later to a chase between his squad car and her motorcycle--high speed flirting, you could call it. Good luck, Leon...
7. Livin' on the Edge (Aerosmith)
A fitting song for a world on the brink of robot rebellion at almost any minute, played as the Knight Sabers and Mason each race to get to the sealed underground GENOM lab acting as Galatea's "tomb".
8. People are People (Depeche Mode)
Played when Galatea gives a minor demonstration of her power, as she causes a number of Boomers on the surface to mutate and run amok throughout the city, much to the horror of both the citizenry and the A.D. Police, their forces already stretched thin enough as is.
9. Black Hole Sun (Soundgarden)
A good song played as Sylia and the Knight Sabers literally crawl from the wreckage of the lab left in the wake of the newly-reawakened Galatea, in an attempt to evade the search conducted by the A.D. Police.
10. I Hate Myself for Loving You (Joan Jett & the Blackhearts)*
Sung by Priss and the Replicants at what turns out to be their last gig before the city is evacuated; in a way, it compliments her unease in her changing feelings towards Leon.
11. Lunatic Fringe (Red Rider)
A fitting song playing during the Knight Sabers' 'march' on the spaceport, where their only hope to take the fight to Galatea--now merged with a weaponized GENOM satellite--is by hitching a ride on a cargo shuttle bound for the satellite. All while razing any mad Boomers that get in their way.
12. Never (Heart)
Played during the Sabers' fight onboard the Galatea satellite as they're determined to defeat her once and for all, even when it seems hopeless.
13. Kiss Me Deadly (Lita Ford)
A complimentary song for Priss as she finds herself the lone combatant standing in Galatea's way (Linna and Nene beating a retreat at her insistence back to Earth via atmospheric re-entry); she links her hardsuit with her Motoslave exo-armor and challenges Galatea to a one-on-one brawl.
14. Glycerine (Bush)
A great song to end the second film on, as Sylia airlifts the crashed but still-living Knight Sabers to receive medical attention, with many a tearful reunion as the credits start rolling.
And now, ladies and gents, a legendary band that needs no real introduction, give it up for: