Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop Season 1 Review: ‘An ugly facsimile of the real thing’

“Cowboy Bebop live-action adaptation.” Have more cursed words ever been spoken? Once again, we’re getting a designed-by-committee remake of a beloved series by corporate suits who hope that by imitating a masterpiece, they can somehow tap into the acclaim that work garnered. However, like a JPEG of the Mona Lisa, that’s been saved 1,000 times then printed, Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop is only an ugly facsimile of the real thing.

A recipe for disaster

The premise of the Cowboy Bebop remake is simple:

1. Take an episode from the anime.
2. Chop it up into its constituent scenes.
3. Film some new material that has little to do with what’s going on in the episode.
4. Shuffle it all together.

The excellent pacing of the original is gone and replaced by efforts to make the show more serialized. Unfortunately, all the new scenes have all the subtlety of your typical MCU film (which is appropriate since they got someone who has written almost exclusively for superhero movies and series to pen most of the new material). As a result, the show is at odds with itself as it struggles between adapting the original and being its own thing.

Had the Cowboy Bebop remake been an actual reboot, maybe it wouldn’t feel so disjointed, but it makes a point to go out of its way to recreate scenes from the anime; Yoko Kanno even returns as the composer for the series. The series is so intent in evoking the original that it backfires and reminds us that we’re watching a sixth-grade version of a Broadway play.

My Not-So-Funny Valentine

The casting for Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop is underutilized at best. The only one who is a perfect fit is Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black but, unfortunately, they had to gum up the works by making him a dad in the remake. So, several times throughout the first season, the main story is frustratingly sidelined by Jet’s issues with his daughter, ex-wife, or the partner his wife left him for. The need to “humanize” the characters by adding unnecessary baggage to their backstories is a recurrent issue and one that kills the impeccable pacing we saw in the original.

John Cho does a decent job as Spike Spiegel but comes off as more tired than aloof, which seems to be more a symptom of poor writing than a lack of effort on Cho’s behalf. While acting his way through the material sourced from the original, he channels Spike admirably — it’s mostly only the new content where he seems to struggle. Having to chew through the poorly written new scenes while maintaining Spike’s sense of cool would be perplexing for most actors.

Rounding out the leading trio is Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine, who is mishandled in Netflix’s reinterpretation of the character. In the anime, Faye is a lazy femme fatale who uses her sexuality to further her goals. While Netflix understandably moves away from the skimpy outfits and over-the-top fan-service of the original, it has also removed what made the original trio tick. One of Faye’s foils in the anime is that Spike and Jet are seemingly immune to her wiles, which is a catalyst for her affection for the crew of the Bebop to grow over the series. It also ties into her need for the crew to “prove” their genuine affection for her by asking her to come back (or at least not protesting her return). In contrast, reboot Faye has all the aggression and sarcasm of the original but none of that vulnerability.

Not so vicious

Netflix also misinterprets another major character in Julia (Elene Satine). In the original, Julia was Spike’s icon, ever-present in his mind but unattainable. Her history with Spike was a central mystery throughout the series, only being spelled out in its two-part conclusion. However, here Julia’s role is unnecessarily expanded. This was presumably done to grant the character more autonomy, but it completely alters the viewer’s perception of Spike. Instead of her being his Madonna, she’s a woman trapped in an abusive relationship with Vicious until her story takes a sharp right turn and heads into sheer wackiness.

But it’s Vicious who may have received the shortest end of the stick in the remake. Alex Hassell might be a Shakespearian actor of some acclaim, but he doesn’t pull off a good Vicious. Spike and Vicious are like opposite sides of a coin — not only are their pasts intertwined, but they are similar in height, weight, and age (which is not the case with Alex Hassell and John Cho). The difference between the two is that Spike’s desire for violence lessened while Vicious’s increased.

In the anime, Vicious is a sadist, psychopath, who is just as mysterious a component of Spike’s past as Julia. However, the remake gives him a subplot from the get-go that makes him out to be more conniving and manipulative than brazen and domineering. In fact, several scenes make him look rather pathetic and petulant, which kills the dread he’s supposed to instill. Since each episode of the remake is around twice as long as those that make up the original, the time has to be filled with something. Unfortunately, expanding the Syndicate and Vicious’s backstory is where the bulk of this new material comes from, and the series is all the worse for it. It also leads to an ending for the first season that is a slap in the face to the source material and makes it seem more like a parody than a serious adaptation.

Painting with a hairbrush

Unfortunately, it’s not just the writing that makes Cowboy Bebop a chore to watch — it looks remarkably worse than the anime, too. It appears that they were aiming for a washed-out grindhouse look, but it just makes almost every single scene (especially those set outdoors during the day) look like a monotone, muddled mess. It’s terrible to the point where several of the publicity shots have clearly been adjusted so you can actually see what’s going on.

The cinematography is serviceable but boring. The camera mostly switches between the obnoxious dutch angles that have become a hallmark of modern filmmaking, awkward closeups, and wide-angled, perfectly-framed shots that are so elementary that it sometimes feels like you’re watching a stage play. I didn’t expect the viewpoint to be as good as the anime, where the “camera” can be anywhere, but I did expect it to be shot with more panache.

Set design and props are a mixed bag as well. Pains were taken to ensure that some aspects were carried over from the anime, like the scene where the Bebop passes through the gate in the first episode. However, in the periphery, things get sloppy. In the same episode, we see Katarina driving a 1970s Camaro to flee from Spike and Faye. Later in the same episode, there are propeller planes in the background during the scene at the hangar. Why are these anachronistic objects on an asteroid colony? It’s just one more aspect of the show where you can see that things work as long as they’re following the original material but fall apart outside of it.

Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop Season 1 Review: The final verdict

“IF YOu Don’T LIke IT yOU cAn JusT wATcH thE ORiGINAl onE, It’s nOt gOINg aNywHeRE,” is the battle cry of those afflicted with corporate Stockholm Syndrome. However, live-action remakes of animated classics are almost universally panned, but they still keep getting made while doing little more than tainting the legacy of the originals. Because let’s face it, Netflix is attempting to displace the original in exchange for potentially reeling in tons of viewers hopeful that this remake might finally be the one that’s worthwhile. This means that irrespective of whether people actually like it or not, Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop will probably get a season 2, which is astounding to me. Do yourself a favor and watch the original instead, and forget that this remake exists. You’ll be a happier person for it.