Take A Deep Breath Everyone: Akira‘s Been Greenlit Again

Watch: The Colonel’s gonna be played by Mickey Rooney, who is now actually the great-great-grandson of Mr. Yunioshi from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Well, on the bright side, a Special Platinum Hits Edition of Akira will surely come out in Best Buys across America.

Nooooo! The thing with Akira is that is very Japanese to the point of exclusivity.
What I mean is that there are so many themes that can’t be replicated by other countries, or if so have less of an impact on them. For example, (SPOILERS) near the end of the comics, an American fleet of warships was on standby to invade. This is before the final devastating explosion. This is parallel to WW2 when the Americans launched an attack on Japan ending two cities and thousands of lives. That’s scary, and everyone through the comic is living in fear.

What can the Americans do to replicate that? Have an attack that will never happen like the cold war? Replicate the fear of the Cuban Missile Crisis? Again, these things may have been frightening but did not damage the country in the same way as an actual nuclear attack.

Outside of that are they going to include the class-warfare or the Olympic Games or other little details which had the characters screwed over and gave them a reason to lash out?

I think it’s also worth mentioning that the pervading feel of the post-apocalyptic Japan is based out of the culture that pervaded the populace after WWI and Hiroshima. You can’t replicate that kind of history, reality, reverence, and anxiety outside of a Japanese setting. There’s something very distinct about that kind of post-apocalyptica, different from the post-apocalypse depicted in The Road, Mad Max, or even the zombie movie.

Ooo! Will it be in 3D too?  *hurk*

Taking race out of it (which obviously Warners did), did they even see Tron?? If you are going to piss off an entire nation as well as the fans, you could at least cast a lead with some charisma.

There are so many things I hate about Warner Bros apparent unwillingness to cast Asian actors in (at least!) the main leads of an iconic non-Western movie like this, but aside from perpetuating the casual everyone-is-white racism of Hollywood, it’s the underlying assumption that white people somehow are too emotionally fragile to be able to sympathize with a character who doesn’t look exactly like they do. Give us some damn credit.

I would like to thank WB for preemptively saving me the $75 (give or take) it would have cost to take my family to see this movie.  I only wish I could not see it more than once.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OH FFS.

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And you know when it fails epically, then Hollywood will use it as their excuse to say, ‘Well, people just aren’t interested in these silly anime-inspired type films’ instead of admitting that they made a shitty movie nobody wanted to see.

TetsCLUoooo!

TRONedaaaa!

A smaller budget, a worse director, and a less-popular lead than before… with winning attributes like these assuaging any doubts about the potential of a remake, how could Warner Brothers NOT greenlight it?

http://tinyurl.com/4xphq52

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I fully support making a live action Akira 3D, as long as it’s SHOT in 3D. But with a $90 million budget and a hack director, I doubt that would happen.

Well, according to a hilarious early script treatment, Nine ‘Leven.

From Cracked.com: Akira is now housed beneath the “memorial bunker” commemorating the initial destruction of the city. It’s described as a blank expanse of concrete with two “massive blue spot lights beam[ing] into the heavens. Millions of names etched along the walls. The only way they could be more overt would be to pencil in a new friend for Tetsuo named Ground Zero, whose only line of dialogue is “Never Forget!”

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-actual-live-action-akira-script-worse-than-you-think/

Why the hell would you repaint the Mona Lisa? Akira is a masterpiece; it’s bad enough their are two English dubs kicking around, now they want to recast Japanese characters with Caucasian actors? How many crap products does Hollywood have to churn out before realizing this is always a losing formula?

As far as bad dubs go none have been worse than the one for ‘Detonator Orgun’. It’s awful, oh so is the one for Macross Plus. My point is the English dub for Akira is tolerable. Also, Holywood will do what they please as long as it makes them money, hence this ’3-D’ crap.

It’s just greater depth perception!!!!

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