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I See What They Did There

Akira Looks to Hire Its First Non-White Actor: Ken Watanabe

by Susana Polo | 2:43 pm, November 23rd

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It’s sad to say, but movies studios that do not use the opportunities that lie before them to cast non-white actors in roles that would be great opportunities for non-white actors to play the sorts of roles that are rarely open to them do not surprise me. I’m much more likely to blink in astonishment and delight when studios hire non-white actors to play characters who, had they just hired a white actor, no one would have otherwise blinked at. See Thor and the upcoming Man of Steel. We need a word for when you are pleasantly surprised simply because your expectations were so low.

No, what really surprises me about the Akira casting is that every step the studio makes appears to be perfectly calculated to reinforce the idea that maintaining any ties to the integral cultural setting of Akira is absolutely last on the list of priorities. However, finally, the production appears to be courting it’s first non-white actor, and Ken Watanabe is not only actually Asian, but actually Japanese, a distinction of nationality that I don’t have high hopes for Hollywood ever getting through its head.

But don’t get too excited. Naturally, Mr. Watanabe is in the running for a secondary role, not to play any of the young leads. He’s also, perhaps more depressingly, Warner Bros.’ second choice for Colonel Shikishima, after Gary Oldman turned them down. If Warner isn’t careful, it’s going to end up like Avatar: The Last Airbender before it, making sure that all the series leads are folks that won’t run any perceived risks of putting off an American audience. And if it absolutely has to, making some concessions to criticisms of white washing, but only with villains and secondary characters.

One wonders: if Warner Bros. considers Akira‘s current audience and fandom so small that they don’t fear completely alienating it, why did they decide to do an Akira adaptation in the first place?

(via MTV Splash Page.)

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  • Anonymous

    Why wouldn’t Ken Watanabe be one of the FIRST actors one would approach when making a live action Akira? SERIOUSLY?! I’ve never even read Akira, or seen the anime film, and I’m upset about how this project is progressing.

  • Daniel Dellinger

    It wouldn’t surprise me if they were considering not calling it Akira for fear of alienating the general audience with such an “Asian sounding name”

  • http://www.facebook.com/sdmcpherson Stephen Dudley McPherson

    Good to see they actually got someone who’s Japanese. I know it’s for a small role, but at least it’s something. Usually they go for anyone who’s vaguely Asian, but there is a difference between each country and Hollywood needs to know that.

  • http://twitter.com/antiavenger Mike Perry

    This was doomed from the moment they started the project. At this rate, Tetsuo will live at the end of the film in fear of ending on too much of a downer and Ace Attorney adaptation a Japanese studio is doing (Youtube for it) will outdo it in theaters…

  • Terence Ng

    See? It’s all good. They got one Japanese actor to play a bit part in their movie. It’s not white-washed at all! Right? Right?

  • Anonymous

    Also, he’s the ONE token Japanese actor Hollywood can come up with, again and again. I dare them to manage a second one.

  • Anonymous

    tinyurl.ie/7fb

  • Frodo Baggins

    You keep talking about this movie like it *might* end up as bad as The Last Airbender. You forget that this is being made with less than two-thirds the budget, by a director with exactly 0 decent films to his name. It’s gonna make The Last Airbender look like Avatar: The Last Airbender. Ol’ M. Night What a Tweest ain’t lookin’ so shabby these days, huh?

  • Lisa Jonte

    Dear Warner Bros., 

    Bite me.

    No love, Me.

  • Anonymous

    I’ve never read Akira and before the movie business started, I hadn’t really ever heard of it.

    But this annoys and upsets me to no end. 
    Besides, Ken Watanabe is a good actor. He deserves more than to be the token ‘look, we got one Asian actor’. Especially since, as you said, they probably still aren’t caring about nationality.

  • http://taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com/ Taste_is_Sweet

    I can only guess that Warner Bros assumes that if they can whitewash the movie enough, they’ll gain a whole new audience. Or something.

  • Anonymous

    Stop the race baiting stuff! color is only seen with the ones who look for it!

    Mostly white actors because America is still almost 80% white! Do you think in Japan they complain about not having enough white actors for parts?  

  • Frodo Baggins

    Which begs the question of WHY RESET THIS SPECIFICALLY JAPANESE STORY IN AMERICA? At least Magnificent Seven had the decency to change its title from the Japanese inspiration, and dramatically re-contextualize the plot into something new and different. This isn’t like some J-horror remake, where few in the US would have seen the original if not for the Anglicized version. The producers are only doing it because the Akira anime and manga have already attracted a broad American fanbase over the last two decades, and they expect those fans to be guaranteed asses-in-seats. That’s why they’re trying to pass it off with a small budget and a hack director: they don’t think they need to earn our viewership.

    Besides which, America is only 80% white if you count all Hispanics as white. Minus that demographic, they’re only 66% of the population.

    And, many of the most famous Hollywood actors aren’t even American! They tried to get a British guy for the role of Colonel Shikishima, and only after he turned it down did they offer it to an Asian.

  • Frodo Baggins

    Daaaaamn, watchu waitin’ for? Get on reading and watching that shit!

  • Frodo Baggins

    Read it. Watch it. DO IT NOW!

  • Terence Ng

    They can’t. So if he doesn’t play it, you can bet your ass Chow Yung Fat will.

  • Anonymous

    That’s kind of what’s so irritating about the whole thing. They’re assuming the audience is so narrow-minded that we would *never* in a million years be interested in seeing a culturally diverse film.