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Rumor: Two Directors in the Running for Live-Action Akira Adaptation

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guek

Banned
Know what would be fucking sick? Setting it in the States, but using an all-black cast in like, Neo Atlanta or something.
How about Asian gangs in Neo-Los Angeles. That way we can cast Asian actors without it being weird that they're speaking English instead of Japanese.
 

Fury451

Banned
i think akira is a very boring film. the animation is top notch and still holds up well even today but its plot and characters are suuuper boring. :| going live action makes it lose the one and only thing the movie has going for itself imo



split a single movie into 3? fucking hell


edit: oh hang on, akira was originally a manga? how does that compare to the animated movie? cause like i said, that movie is trash.
It's a fairly lengthy story collected as a 6 volume manga.

It's good, but if you don't like much of the anime I'm not sure that it'll appeal any more for you. The anime is an extremely truncated retelling of maybe 1/4 of the manga, with plot lines either removed, altered, or added from later in the manga. Some characters are quite different too- Kaneda is fairly different in the manga.

The hodgepodge approach is why the movies plot is kind of...weird.
 
Wonder when casting directors will realize there are Asians in the US. I really wish this was being directed by Justin Lin. Better Luck Tomorrow showed he could deal with teenage drama, F&F showed he could deal with action, and both show he's capable of actually casting minorities in lead roles
 

Shy

Member
*sigh* FFS. Why can't they let this fucking die.

At least when this shit comes back from the dead. Someone links the American Akira. Which is always a plus.
 
They have been trying to make this for like 20 years now. If GITS actually makes money, Scarlett Johansson will be the savior of Anime in Hollywood.
 
Espinosa is trash. I haven't seen life yet (prolly shouldn't even bother) but his child 44 and the movie with denzel were bad. Not guilty pleasures, and I couldn't derive any worth from them tbh. He gets great actors and puts out boring useless stuff

I normally don't really pay attention to recognize someone so mediocre but I'm just surprised he keeps getting some dope actors in his work
 
How about Asian gangs in Neo-Los Angeles. That way we can cast Asian actors without it being weird that they're speaking English instead of Japanese.

This sounds cool, but they're not going to set it in an American city only to cast Asians, because then they might as well just leave the setting in Neo Tokyo if that was the case.
 
Tetsuo
Chris-Pratt-624x345.jpg


Kaneda
161129085646865.jpg


Kei
landscape-1450730783-upload-2.png
Tetsuo

danny-devito.jpg


Kaneda
Willem-Dafoe-You-have-to--010_zpsomodwaad.jpg


Kei
hqdefault.jpg
 
So if they're bound and determined to make this fucking thing, I'm pretty sure they have to

(have to!)

realize by now that there are two key components they need in place:

1) This needs to be set in Japan, and star Japanese/Japanese-American actors
2) This needs to be a trilogy.

If they can't figure out a way to do those two things, they need to not fucking do it.
I think a modern American-set adaptation of Akira makes plenty of sense. Like a lot of sci-fi Japanese stories of the time, its themes drew from the post-war economic resurgence that don't make quite as much sense for direct adaptation 2017. Now, apply some of those themes (societal pressures, political corruption, alienation, military, rebellion against authority/control, identities in flux) to a post-Trump, post-Apocalyptic America and you're cooking with gas.

Of course, this will only work if they go for a primarily minority cast. Maybe draw inspiration from The Warriors, or even West Side Story with a Peurto Rican biker gang in Neo-New York or Mega-Manhattan.
 
One of the biggest problems with a Hollywood adaptation of Akira is they get screwed either way. They'll get a lot of criticism if they whitewash it, because it's a story that's very much about Japan. But if they go authentic they run into the other issue, that it's an extremely negative story about Japan.

It would be easy to see it as anti-Japanese regardless of which approach they take.

I don't think this will actually happen -- we've been hearing about it for decades at this point -- but if they do still go with it I'd like to see a truly divergent adaptation. (That Pakistan idea is actually kind of cool!) Akira already got an amazing film made of it, and you aren't going to beat it on authenticity no matter how hard you try.
 
Tetsuo
http://www.nayaindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Chris-Pratt-624x345.jpg[/img

Kaneda
[img]http://static.ounousa.com/Content/ResizedImages/638/654/inside/161129085646865.jpg[/img

Kei
[img]https://chetiralti.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/landscape-1450730783-upload-2.png?w=660[/img[/QUOTE]

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/rfNJN51.gif
 
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