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Live-Action Remake of Akira
GusherJizmac writes "Looks like Warner Bros. is looking to remake classic anime, Akira, as a live
action feature-length film. Will current computer generated special effects be enough to bring this masterpiece to life?" We touched on this earlier, but now it looks closer to production, since Norrington has finished shooting for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
no way this can ever be as good as the anime. there's something about anime that just can't be done right with live-action and real actors.
zing
the actors will have to be very good at stressed-out grunting and making their *grrrrrrr* faces. on the bright side, anna nicole smith can play tetsuo when he grows into that blob in the stadium.
Wow, this is one DVD I wouldn't mind seeing bastardized via DRM. The fewer people who see this the better.
Trillions of cells per frame.
Oh, cels? Nevermind.
There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line. -- Oscar Levant
What will the cash cows think of next? I mean this is just an attempt to capitalize on an already successful movie. In other words, no matter how shitty this movie is a lot of people will go to see it anyway. And it will probably be pretty bad....
as good as the original as far as this movie goes.
How about instead of making live action out of cartoons we do cartoon versions of live action movies.
Or mix the two. The movie Final Fantasy has amazing graphics and to a casual movie goer who didn't know ahead of time that it was an animated might have been fooled
All apologies to the CGI geniuses out there, but there is no way in hell your graphics will match the insanity that was Akira.
Akira isn't just a movie, it's a work of art. There are just some things that don't translate from comic books to live action, and at the bottom of that list is Akira.
You can get it on Kazaa or Morpheus...
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
1. Put linux on the X-box
2. ?????
3. Profit!
"In the process, the biker must do battle with anti-government activists, greedy politicians and irresponsible scientists."
How about dealing with the societal and ethical impacts of forced and natural evolution and experimentation? Or maybe I was watching a different movie...
Think about it a second. Making an animation from live action probably that bad. For example, the Star Trek cartoons told their stories as well as the original live action TV series. It's also not hard to imagine Planet of the Apes as a cartoon.
But going back the other way? It gives me the willies. There's so much that can be lost, and it's just a hard problem in general. It's a little like a cryptographic one way function. Easy to compute y = f(x), but coming up with x = f(y) is hard.
Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape
...that makes us have to redo a cartoon as live action? I just don't get it. The rest of the world doesn't view cartoons as just something for the Saturday morning kiddies, but here if you watch anime, most people look at you like you have two heads.
It would actually be nice if Disney would just release all of those old Japanese Anime titles they bought up as DVD's with English Sub and Dub tracks. Instead they bastardize them into some multi million dollar flop. *sigh*
- No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades really cramps his style.
If there was ever a bad idea, this has got to take the cake. Possibly the only way to make a better movie than the original anime is to do a trilogy that goes into greater depth and goes back to the original comics for material.
"League," set in a version of Victorian-era England where fictional characters like Dr. Jekyll, Capt. Nemo and Allan Quartermain band together to fight crime for the queen, is scheduled for a summer 2003 release via Twentieth Century Fox.
Do we really want this guy to do Akira?
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
I hope they are doing this one better than that poor Tomb Raider movie. Jon Voight's daughter, whatever is her name, just did not have large enough boobs to be Lara Croft. And the plot was a real sleep inducer. By the time any really interesting F/X hit the screen, I couldn't hear the soundtrack over the snoring.
That's going to be one bloody movie. I swear there was more blood and guts in Akira than any other movie I've ever seen (granted there are worse out there, but I'm not about to see them). I think I'll just stay away from this version. Akira won't be the same without the gore, and I won't be the same after seeing it again. Thanks, but no thanks.
"No manual entry for woman."
I don't think messing up anime into films is a good idea.. The only thing good i can think of that is that it will get greater exposure, but as in the case of Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon, and countless other victimized animes, is this really what we want? These animes were just fine until some media exec decided to pay the language translation & dubbing people the minimum wage..
I argue for animation because I believe it provides an additional dimension for film art; it frees filmmakers from the anchor of realism that's built into every live-action film, and allows them to visualize their imaginations. Animation need not be limited to family films and cheerful fantasies. The Japanese have known that for years....
The thought of what a live action Akira might be like scares me.
"I've been a fan of the anime for many years and understood which elements would have to be brought to a live-action translation of it," Robinson told Daily Variety.
I really hoped that the interviewer would have asked Robinson if he read the manga, because the manga is epic compared to the movie. A lot of first time viewers, and rightly so, complained that alot of Akira didnt make sense. And thats because it was a movie that that tried to capture a story the size of the Bible in just two hours. I really dont see how he can stay true to Akira if he never read the manga, and from his comments, he gives no indication that he has. Personally I think the money could have been much better spent creating a high quality Akira animated series, like the GITS2 series being made now.But then again hollywood is going ape over superhero movies, and they figure they should give anime/manga a shot, but for a live action movie, especially for the first anime live action American movie, I think Ghost in the Shell would have been a better fit. It would have been much easier to accomplish visually, it is on many levels an equal to Akira, and it is certainly more understandle for the larger audience, even without reading Shirows manga.
On a personal note, if the movie does not contain the
"KANEDA!!"
"TETSUO!!"
"KANEDA!!"
shout sequence at the Olympic stadium then it isnt worth watching.
It will sink worst than Battlefield Earth! Just don't attempt to recreate a masterpiece unless you attempt to bring the Manga to life instead, but it still would not work.
I'm still waiting for the live-action Overfiend series.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
And why do they think making it live action would be worthwhile? You don't buy anything by going that way, despite popular belief. If anything, you put more strain on the audience.
Look at Inspector Gadget, for example. A cartoon man with a telescoping neck is quite acceptable. But when you do that in live action, like in the Inspector Gadget movie, it's DISTURBING. It doesn't even look right! You start asking questions like "How can a hat possibly contain a helicopter?"
While I'm on the subject, let's talk about Video Game to Movie licensing: Any game brought to the screen should be ANIMATED. Nobody has ever wondered what Mario would look like as a live human. And now that we know that, we regret having that question answered.
OK, apparently everyone agrees that Akira would be a terrible movie to make over, because they got it right the first time, but what about a live action XXX Urotsukidoji...kidding, but what would be a good live action movie?
Josh Hartnett and Ben Affleck star as Tetsuo and Kaneda, who will for the purposes of this film be given wholesome American names such as "Mike" and "Richard" (In the final act, Mike makes a humorous observation that Richard's name can be shortened to Dick!)
The two high school football players who were wrongfully accused and placed in a boys home (Not that there's anything wrong with that) do battle with the evil Osama Bin Akira (Played by Vin Diesel). The battle results in the evil leader using his mind control powers to send Mike battling against democracy by channelling previous generations of communists through dark rituals involving Lenin and Satan.
In the end, Mike is brought back down to earth by Richard singing the national anthem over a loud speaker and waving old glory. The two have a long embrace and make a joke about how they love each other but aren't gay.
5 stars!
s200.org - visit it (me), love it (me).
Apparently, Will Wheaton will star, Natalie Portman will make a brief appearance (her first "full-frontal" scene), the special effects will be rendered on a Beowulf cluster of Ti notebooks running whatever the latest beta Linux kernel is available, a new character will be created who can only say the words, "cowboy" and "neil", and the movie will end with Yoda using the force to make the entire universe disappear.
Well between the all-star cast and the killer ending, I'd say we don't have much hope of any sequels...
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
A movie has both video and audio. I imagine that while the visuals will hard to improve on, we can look forward to an otherwise stimulating (more modern) soundtrack.
...if they keep the rape and bludgeoning of small deformed children
I wonder if they can get Mr Miagi to play the spazzed-out scientist?
Battle Angel Alita is also possibly going to become a movie (James Cameron possibly involved?). I think it has a better shot at being successful because at least that had sympathetic characters and a comprehensible plot.
At one level, this is true, there is no way that live-action can duplicate anime, but the re-creation of this classic is not about duplicating a piece of anime, but presenting a great story to an audience which would otherwise never experience it.
Also, providing conciencious marketing, attention can be drawn to the fact that the live-action version is based on an anime film, so it may draw new viewers for the original and perhaps anime as a whole.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
any anime Ive ever seen is like minimal frames of actual annimation... throw up a still of a guy in a fighting position and have some cheesy lines behind them moving around... I think the difficult part to making this move will be finding old enough hollywood technology to keep it from looking too good. I find it funny how americans go so nutty for anime... when you know over in japan they are going just as nutty for the simpsons.
If you concede that The Matrix was almost live-action anime, they might just be able to pull this off.
Think about the early chase sequence between the agent and Trinity. Now think about the chase late in the movie in the open-air market, complete with Ghost in the Shell-style exploding watermelons. They might just be able to make it happen.
I write in my journal
I can't wait for this to come out. Of course, they'll probably have to change the name of the movie so that the caucasian actors won't look out of place.
Tetsuo -> Johnny Blonde
Akira -> Sammy American
Oh yeah, can't wait.
Am I the only one who sees problems with the idea of Captain Nemo throwing in his lot with Queen Victoria?
Seeing as I seem to recall his relationships with the british empire as being limited to 'stabbing'.
Not to troll, but why does Akira get all the attention that it does?
I enjoyed the film, found it interesting, but it did not "blow me away", like it seems to do for everyone else...
The animation was very well done, but other than that - I found the plot confusing, and that the characters were not developed enough. The main character was hardly introduced; it was difficult to get a feel for his character - his struggles, his motivations, etc. I have not read the manga, but from what I have heard, there is more depth to the story. (Granted there is only so much that can fit into two hours.)
I'm assuming that if this is actually done live-action, and especially if the western audience is kept in mind, many things will be changed - some for the better, some for the worse. In which case, more time may be spent developing character background. But, it also quite probable that the overall feeling may get lost in the translation even using computer graphics. Regardless, I'm still interested and will probably see it.
Don't get me wrong, I am not anti-anime. Miyazaki's films, especially US releases Princess Mononoke and My Neighbor Totoro, are some of the most amazing films I've seen.
I just haven't seen the fascination with Akira yet. Perhaps I may, if I read the multi-volume manga, and watched it again...
--
jason
As a bigshot Hollywood producer, I like the way you think! Write a script and I'll give it to my people, their people, his people, and her people (gotta have a love interest - Reese Witherspoon).
I disagree. I find Angelina Jolie (cache names in my brain) to have quite ample tracts of land for the character. Hell, I'm sure Billy Bob felt the same way.
For example, consider the local divisions of certain phone companies which have other operations such as long distance, wireless, etc. The local operations usually were/are in monopolistic franchise positions for their service area. The companies invest (spend) the profits of local operations to further their positions in their other ventures. In this role, the local operation is being treated as a cash cow.
Is anyone else familiar with the term as used by the original poster?
Akira is in my opinion total perfection. It is the greatest movie ever made. The last thing it could ever need is Hollywood to screw it up. If you cant understand the movie, don't change it. There must be some way to prevent this. I just will not stand for it! We don't need some idiot in Hollywood to kill the greatest story in film I have ever seen. I must vent!! Too angry from news!!! Similar anger to Carrot Top induced murderous rage. Must rampage!!!
If only Bill Gates had a penny for every time Windows crashed... oh wait.. he does!
... If Mini Me will get a role ...
True, this will be, at best, a complete disaster but it could be worse. Special effects and hollywood have become quite adept at generating fantastical sci-fi settings and distopias like akira. Can you imagine it if they tried to make a live action remake of Princess Mononoke?? gah, or perhaps if they decided to butcher a series. A live action, english Excel Saga would probably lead to many people running from the theater screaming "SHUT UPS SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!"
Will there be a crappy dub so I can walk out of the theatre and yell "CANADA!"
just to piss off all my my northern friends?
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
As far as I'm concerned, the Akira soundtrack is among the finest scores ever created for a film. It's quite perfect as the background discourse for the overall feel of the production.
Kaneda's bike - I've *got* to see the real thing!
We've already got the limited edition DVD of the animated Akira, so why not a live action? It'll be interesting to see what they can do. I just hope they have the budget to actually make a credible attempt.
Apparently they are going to be making Tetsuo and Kaneda brothers in the movie for some stupid reason.
Enough said.
...from awesome original comic
...to anime
...to hollywood
that's how the story goes
Don't forget where the Wachowsky brothers got their inspiration from...MANGAs ! Now I agree that Akira is a work of art as anime but with the current technology at the hands of the right people this could really be something.
Tell me I'm not the only one who noticed the reference to Ghost in the Shell when agent Smith lands on top of the building on one knee with his gun pointing up as the roof cracks at the impact. That was a good example of a pure manga-style anime scene which looks quite good in live-action in fact if you watch the Matrix documentary its obvious that this was a Manga turned live-action and what a surprise...it was a major breakthrough.
People were saying the same thing about LOTR and that's not half as bad as people feared (even the hardcore fans of Tolkien). If we keep an open mind and judge this film for what it will be (not what we *think it will be* then we'll at least give them a chance to try and bring another dimension to Akira...I personally hope that it'll be as good as the Matrix in terms of effects and that we'll get that Manga/anime feeling that made the Matrix so different (for me anyway)
Everyman dies, not everyman really lives. -W.W
I've long ago decided that the article submission system is completely arbitrary. It really sucks when you write a nice, detaild description for something, only to have it rejected - and someone else gets credit for it with a staff-written description a few hours later.
The LEAST they could do is give a REASON for rejecting it, even if it's a generic one.
It is worth pointing out that the WB is responsible for - The Matrix Buffy The Vampire Slayer (TV) Yes WB has ruined alot of movies that had the potential to be great. Yet sometimes the suits at WB do listen to the right people (Matrix) and make some good/great movies. It's to early to pass judgement but based on Stephen (Blade) Norrington's involvement I remain hopeful he can produce a worthy adaptation if the suits at WB listen to him.
Stomp Tokyo!
So if any of you are hoping hollywood'll stay 'true to the story', when every story they do has to be shouted at the audience, there is no chance. I bet the final product will be almost unrecognizable.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Why does Hollywood think they can do live actions of EVERYTHING? Warner has no clue how to do this much less actually doing it. Idiots.
isn't using the words anna nicole smith and cash cow on the same page a textbook example?
Actually, the "League" comic book is a pretty good concept by Alan Moore (Writer of "Watchmen" - arguably one of the best comic books - and the "From Hell" comic books).
It's one of those indepth comic books and draws various literary characters from the Victorian-era. I mean, someone has even posted a panel-by-panel annotation for it. The second series has a martian invasion of earth similar to War of the Worlds.
So we really want this guy to do Akira? I don't know. But that doesn't mean you should dismiss the "League" concept so quickly.
Final thoughts.... Hopefully The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen won't be butchered like the "From Hell" movie. Hmm... IIRC, Sean Connery is going to be Allan Quartermain.
The odds of this film doing any justice at all to the anime (let alone the manga)are not good. But there are a few examples out there that crossed similar mediums and achieved something really wonderful. Literature-to-film is probably a larger rift to cross than live action/animation, and look whats been achieved there. The Lord Of The Rings, Spider-Man, Silence of the Lambs, 2001: a space oddyssy, all are examples of that large rift between mediums that was bridged by conbinations of will, love of the original piece, and a determination to do justice to the original piece and satisfy, if not astound the fans of the work. i felt that was achieved in the movies i mentioned above. even before some of them were released, you just KNEW there was something else driving the parties responsible for them other than just money. i dont get that impression from this akira project, which is a shame. given the right amount of time, money, and respect, this could be drop dead wicked cool. it could be something that you remember watching for the first time for the rest of your life, like i do the anime akira. but it looks like it will be a souped up made for tv movie. i think my point here is that it has the potential to be something brilliant, and mabey if the right team is brought together in the future, or the right kind of driven personality gets placed in charge, we may see it down the line. i can only hope.
While I loved Akira, I don't think making a live action version will be a good idea. Let's go through the list of similar (near) failures:
1. Super Mario Brothers - Boy, didn't that one screw up. Only good thing about that movie was John Leguizamo, who is awesome no matter what.
2. Final Fantasy - While a good film in my opinion, it didn't do too hot at the box office. Not to mention the story could have been way better, and should have been more along the lines of classic FF.
3. Resident Evil - Good flick, but still didn't do too hot in theaters. Saving Graces: The ladies, of course. Hot hot HOT!
4. Tomb Raider - Too much Angelina Jolie. Good story, but could have been better. This one did OK at the box office, but still not _that_ big.
And here's the big one...
5. G Savior. I'm sure alot of you are saying "What the hell is G-Savior?" It was a live action attempt at a Gundam movie. And boy, did it tank. Not one mention of the word Gundam, and even less big robots blowing stuff up.
It's easy to see why a fan of a masterpiece like Akira wouldn't have their hopes set too high for a live action flick. If it does work, though, I'm sure we can expect to see alot more Anime translated to live-action. I can see Mononoke Hime, Ghost In The Shell, hell FUNimation might go for broke and try to do Live Action DBZ. Wouldn't that be interesting (and frightening).
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Dear god someone stop them.
I've always wanted Akira redone to include the whole story but only in anime form and NOT done by American BIG BUSINESS!!
'couse if you've seen Norrington's live action flicks...you know for sure that this is really going to lick hairy monkey balls.
disney has always made a point to release thier anime with subs and original voice track.
in my opinion, disney does a bang up job of bringing legitamacy to japanese anime in the USA. not only do they release these movies with superstar talent to bring attention to the picture, they always have maintained a steady release schedule.
i really dont see where you can call what they do 'bastardization'. there are very few above-par english dubs on anime, so them bringing thier own into the mix doesn't affect consumers.
if anything disney helps by exposes the art to a wider audience. good for them.
Two in particular that caught my attention.
1. Cris Rock playing Inspector Cleusau in a Pink Panther Remake.
2. A proposed remake of the classic caper film 'The Italian Job' set in Los Angeles!
5 golden manbabies for him!
Whoa!
Why would you 'remake' this classic? The Anime genre is as much about the style of the drawings as it is about the story. Remaking just the story part going to lose most of the appeal of the original. Sorry to say, but this looks like a typical Hollywood thing to do. I'm really a little upset about the stupidity of this project even though the final outcome might not be ... half bad.
"but other than that - I found the plot confusing, and that the characters were not developed enough. "
You haven't seen the restranslation. The original one was really, really shitty. You had to either get a fansub or know a bit of japanese to really enjoy it. The new retranslation that Pioneer has released is great. It's like a whole new movie!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
... be enough to bring this masterpiece to life? Seriously, I do not consider akira to be a masterpiece. It's a good anime, yes, but NOT a masterpiece. This was the first anime I saw and I was very UNimpressed. I was wondering what the big deal was, and I didn't watch another for about 5 years or so just because of Akira. I realise later on, after having fully immersed myself into the genre, that maybe it is a good movie.. But do NOT recommmend this movie for a newbie! There are many more with better plot and action. (Metropolis was good =)
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
man no one here has any faith in hollywood. adn for good reason too! anyone see that shameful butching of "Fist of the North Star" live action deal? i damn near took a crap on my tv to show my distaste for that. And so with many things hollywood will make some cheesy cross between power rangers and godzilla which will only make anime that much more unatractive to the non anime watching crowd. Thanks hollywood for improperly using your galatic powers of influence adn mind control yet again. You do know that there is a special place in hell you yous guys for all of thecrap that you been putting out don't you? eh what does it matter just so long as you can make billions that you can't take with you when the reaper man comes for you riding tall on his mighty pale stead, Binky, you're happy right?
Yeah, you just know they're going to wreck Akira. Who knows, the Hollowood version might even make a whit of sense.. *BLASTPHEMY* !
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
we need live action akira like we need anime plan 9 from outer space...
akira looked "cool" but that was about it -- the story was total spaghetti.
Actually I wouldn't mind the original soundtrack being possibly remixed by the likes of Infected Mushroom, Astral Projection, Wizzy Noise and a couple other goa trance musicians. :-)
...because there is just NO WAY to replicate the scene with the giant teddybears and the japanese background chorus short of handing out acid in the theater entrance.
Besides, Hollywood doesn't have a sufficient amount of actors with severe facial muscle tissue dysfunction to bring about that correct "aaahheEhHAA"-anime-style acting.
I mean, Street Fighter was SUCH an awesome movie once they did the live action version of that.
How can it fail?!?! heh...
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
I am wondering why it is the fad of recent times to bring cartoons into Live Action. I for one, do *not* approve. In many cases, cartoons tell the story and character designs much better then live action could hope, unless they have huge budgets for computer graphics. Flintstones, for example, all the ways they had comparable technologies with their animals. The little elephant vaccumm cleaner... I feel bad for the actors, that have to stand and act with a blue screen actor, trying to imagine the blue guy actually looks a totally different... America should give cartoons more of a chance to be mature and for adults. In America's culture, it is so hard to find grown up plots and thoughts without sex and violence going along with it.
Do yourself a big favour: Shut up, buy the comic and read it before spouting what you have no clue about.
It's thanks to people like you creativity gets killed off.
The fist of north star and Crying freeman spring to mind. Both managed to catch the feel of the original anime, and both unfortunately failed in the box official. But none diluded my high opinion for the original animes.
This isn't a flame...but let's face it, the Japanese are not very creative. I've seen TONS of anime movies and quite frankly, they're all the same...except for Miazaki(sp).
It's what Lester Bang's once wrote about...it's an "Industry of Cool". I would venture a guess that most of the people out there claiming to love Anime are really trying to be trendy yet unique at the same time.
>He's a newbie, he's only posted 7 comments, and he's trying, but the
>last 4 have been zeros.
Yeah, but he did get modded Funny for quoting the Simpsons.
BTW, the young ones have no chance. They play Tomb Raider and watch Invader Zim. And still quote the Simpsons, the last cool thing their generation saw before mass culture died.
I don't want to change the music...I want to see an upgrade of the technical aspect of the audio in general. I love the OST myself, and I find no fault with the original audio. It was done well for the time.
Audio technology continues to improve and I'd like to see what can be done by today's standards. I see no reason to alter it other than technically.
As a fan, wouldn't you like to see a THX logo associated w/it? Right now it's DTS....how old is that?
in that case 99% of all anime is in fact "remakes." To put in weastern view its much more of adapting a book into a movie. With manga to anime, you already have the visuals as to what it should look like as it was created. there is no trouble finding charaters to fit the part, you draw em, just you need to find good voice actors wich is a vaible trade in japan. (note to american dub shops, don't use weel known actors to voice act, to me i want to put the known face into the anime charcter wich takes away, like steve balmuchi in ff:sw it annoyed me to know end knowing the actor but trying to put him into the role he was voicing)
In larger scale every single story is a remake of an older story written, filmed or spoken long ago.
But i also see this as a chance, as i remeber the manga wasn't even completed when the anime was made, they could actually compliment the anime and the live action to each other, differnt view points and all.
This is so sad... why do they try this when they already must know they will fail ?
The whole flair and mood of Akira is so end-time. And since Bladrunner I haven't seen any Hollywood movie doing end-time properly. Most of the time they do some steril and ultra-clean version of end-time which is just making me go mad.
And without the author of Akira helping them they will just miss the flair and story as well, IMHO.
It's just plain sad that every now and then some idiot wants to try to make a live-action remake of a good anime or even normal film that he liked... they all fail horribly. Look at the Streetfighter live-action remake, or for normal films look at Rollerball. What's next ? Ghost in the Shell, directed by Steven Spielberg ?
Those people just don't understand that really good films are events that occur only once ! Rocky Horror Picture Show can't ever be done again, the same is true for every outstanding anime (don't forget the hundreds of bad animes that we don't get to see just because the aren't those lucky events with the right people at the right time being in the same boat).
Hey you know if this becomes a hit there's always the option to do a Broadway musical verision. That would be grand!
How will they find actors with big enough eyes?
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Let me think of all the live-action anime remakes I can think of at 6:15AM...
The Guyver (2 of 'em!)
Crying Freeman
Fist of the North Star
Riki-Oh
Zeram (yeah, I think that came before Iria, but...)
Dragonball
City Hunter
Uh-huh. I'm sure Akira will be just as good. In other words, It's going to super-majorly SUCK ASS.
Is being long the only qualification necessary for being an epic? I mean, Alan Moore can write graphic novels that will take you several days to read (not counting The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), whereas you could read all six Akira books in one day and not care if you never read them again. Akira has a lot of action and very little substance (the Lord of the Rings pops to mind here) and you can have a lot of fun for the money it would cost you to own the entire series.
The Akira story is much better suited to the motion picture format (though not necessarily live action).
Maybe not as a movie, but as a sitcom? College student with lots of cute girls (mostly robot girls), with plenty of soft fanservice? Sounds better than 90% of the stuff out there.....
-asb
I don't see this being done. Whatever Hollywood comes up with, good or bad, is going to be heavily compressed. Already people are saying that Tetsuo and Kaneda will be cast as brothers, which totally sidesteps the whole fraternity/pledge thing and replaces it with Saving Private Ryan.
Live action *could* be good. They could make the characters appropriately scary. As it stands, Kaneda's a goofball, and Tetsuo looks nine years old. In live action, they could give these characters some...oomph?
I doubt they will. In Hollywood, everything has to have neat moral meaning. Kaneda won't be slimy, just witty. The Marshal will start off distrusting his employers. Kei will stop being annoying and become literal. Tetsuo will probably have a redemption, at which point you are free to leave the theater, numb the pain with alcohol, and watch The Matrix and/or Fight Club for the 27th time.
The genius of Akira was the absence of clear answers. No single character had any idea what the fuck was going on. It was only when Tetsuo threatened the city that a bunch of people put aside their petty differences and focused on reality. Even then, some of them didn't.
Yet all their sudden goodwill couldn't save them from Tetsuo. They created an immature, ego-driven monster and it went right out of control . They had to open the bottle - Akira - to blow up the city and take away the evil for them.
Just like when we dropped the bomb.
The nuclear image frames the movie like a pair of bookends. The nuke, the "elephant in the room" for every Japanese debate about... self-worth, self-control, damn near everything.
For comparison, Saving Private Ryan is framed by scenes of old men paying their respects to fallen comrades. Awww...*sniffle* The bittersweet tears of the victor...competent, morally true, and assured an eventual victory. How nice for us. Ask the Japanese how they feel about themselves.
This project is comparable to Dune. Too much interplay of morally-neutral characters to do anything but pictoralize. Best-case scenario: Just as confusing as the original. Worst-case: Americanized.
with danny devito as mr. nezu! i just said this yesterday watching 'death to smoochie' (good movie)- he would be perfect. ok thats one down, how about the rest?
I've been saying "Canada".
Why didn't anyone tell me? I've been making an ass out of myself.
Surprisingly, it played out extremely well as live action.
And with a story as compelling, thrilling, and entertaining as Akira, this *could* be an excellent film in the works, if it is done properly. I think good casting will play an important part, probably more so than the special effects. The Matrix did this right, they didn't get "good" actors, but they got the best actors for the parts.
We shall wait and see!
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
For those that don't know, the Akira anime was made when the original manga was only half finished. While the anime ends after the scene at the olympic stadium the manga diverges sharply at that point. So many things which are left unexplained in the anime are dealt with in the manga it's a shame not to have read it.
Dude, didn't you like watch Mission Impossible 2? The only thing I could think after walking out of that abomination was "Well, the cineamatography was probably as close as we'll see to Live action Anime".
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
Jesus H. Christ, can't hollywood write any original screenplays anymore? Bad enough they ruin the classics, now they're trying to remake animated ones (and TV series too) as live action movies. Name ONE movie that worked for. JUST ONE. Hey, how about Jim Carey's The Grinch? No, wait, that sucked enough for two films, it wasn't even bad enough for camp. And now they want to remake what was the most sophisticated animated film EVER when it was made? Hey, while you're at it why don't they remake a popular, not-particularly-great, but suitable-only-for-animation TV series like Dragon Ball Z as a live action movie too? Oh wait, they're already doing that.
Somewhere in Hollywood, an unscrupulous American producer needs killing, and somewhere in Tokyo a soulless Japanese producer ought to be committing seppuku. I can't imagine that Katsuhiro Otomo would approve of this.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Its a movie about these two kids and they run around screaming "Tetsuo!" and "CANADA!" and stuff gets broke and there are these scary toys that move.
I first saw Akira 3-4 times in japanese only: no subtitles, no overdub, no comprehension of japanese. Wait, you know, I've never seen it with any whiff of english. And I prolly understand the story better than all of you! (read previous paragraph if you don't believe me)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I'm Charlton Heston, so you need not feel sorry for me. Have you seen my movies? I was a STUD back in the day.
Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape
Now they can ef it like they did the new dialog on that crappy dvd they put out. At least they could have left an option for the old dialog on the dvd.....
we need live action akira like we need anime plan 9 from outer space...
:-)
You swine, you utter, utter swine. Now I'm going to have a mental image of an anime Bela Lugosi pratting about with his cloak over his face... For the rest of my LIFE! Now they have to make an anime Plan 9, just to save my sanity!
Actually, the anime guy would probably look a lot more like Lugosi than the fellow they used in the original Plan 9
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
get a story! This is my perpetual frustration with anime and manga as genres--they're boring/confusing as hell. Japanese animators are brilliant with the visuals, simply brilliant, but they can't write their way out of a paper bag. And I say this as someone who's studied and lived in Japan for years, and understand the cultural motives behind what they're doing, ie. ambiguity preferred to clarity, moral complexity that defies the Western good vs. evil scheme, but it still makes for a crappy story. If Akira Kurosawa can make great film after great film, why can't the anime crowd? Why can't they take a page from the book of the folks who did 'Hotaru no Haka'--"Grave of the Fireflies" (the finest anime ever made, but one which is never mentioned on /.)?
And I keep going back to see the newest anime because I keep hoping that some day the stories will measure up to the incredible animation, but I'm disappointed every time. Princess Mononoke was good up to the point where they got to Iron Town, and then it all went downhill. Metropolis was stunning, but once again the writers lost their way pretty early in that one. Ghost in the Shell was probably the best of the bunch, but still slack.
The most perplexing thing of all to me is all the people on this page who will savage Peter Jackson for the most minor and petty of pacing mistakes or story omissions will turn around and slavishly gibber and drool with excitement at the newest piece of desultory anime drivel. It just doesn't add up. As far as I can see, the current best use for anime is as a TV in the background, with the sound off, playing the part of a beautiful picture that moves.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
ugh, akira meets bugs bunny.... Somehow warner brothers doesn't seem like the best group to be doing a remake of akira. I'll wager this remake will be to 'akira' as the hollywood 'nikita' was to 'la femme nikita'. neutered drivel.
I agree that several of the Manga-esque Matrix scenes came out very well, but I just don't think they carry the same look and feel of the original. I can only vaguely remember the scene in the Matrix that we're talking about, but I can vividly remember the scene in Ghost in the Shell.
If no-one minds my digression: So Kiki's Delivery Service is available somewhere on DVD with sub? (Maybe something my family can watch and enjoy for once instead of viewing me as a slightly marginalized nerd.) Also I have to disagree with another poster. The Sum of All Fears REALLY sucked. Admittedly from a fan of the novels, but JEEZUS BEEJEEZUS could you frag up poor Tom Clancy's novel any more!
Back when they remade "Psycho" a couple of years ago, someone made the astute observation that filmmakers should remake BAD movies, in order to try and improve them, not GOOD ones. What's the point in remaking a classic? Odds are, you're just going to fuck it up. With bad movies, there's nowhere to go but up.
(By "bad" I mean everything that isn't a classic, so remaking mediocre movies like "The Thomas Crown Affair" is fine.)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I've always wonder what happened to Plans 1 through 8.
Norrington can't capture the style.
The anime captured the manga's style because the same guy made the manga and wrote/directed the anime. Norrington's a different guy using a different style. The only director who I think can do Akira's style in live action is James Cameron, who has other plans and wouldn't do it anyway because it's too similar to Terminator 2. If Norrington is mainly interested in Akira's cyberpunk/post-apocalypse style, he should have stuck with Blade or another screenplay because this way he's up against Akira's baggage and The Matrix sequels.
What Akira's anime lost was substance: it only told about 1/4 of the manga's story, and what it kept it rearranged. If he made two 3-hour movies (split conveniently before and after the apocalypse), he could get most of the manga's storyline. That way an Americanized live action version of Akira may actually feel closer to the manga than the anime version did. But does he have the guts to do that?
And even if he had the energy to make it, could he withstand the bad PR? Akira stars a loser teen who gets to act out revenge fantasies and orgies (think Columbine) and its big event is another boy who shows his fear of murder by blowing up a city (think WTC). For Norrington to get the $100M or so needed to make Akira, he'd have to remove those parts, risking ruining the plot.
...which version of the Anime would they re-create? I first saw Akira in college. Thank goodness for psychedelics! A few weeks ago on the Adventure channel (I think) I saw Akira was playing. I flipped to it, only to be shocked by different voices and music. In fact the more I watched, the more odd it seemed. I had no idea there were two english language versions released. Anyone else see a version of Akira they didn't recognize? It's a bit unsettling.
A meat-space rendition of this movie would definitely be hard to swallow.
It's all Hood
Quick, get Spielberg on the line, we need to find a non-retarded 14-year-old who can ride a 1200cc Kawasaki for the lead part.
And for the love of cash, someone write in some boobs into this movie.. can't have blood without boobs!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
It's all of those assholes who saw the trailers for the live action Scooby Doo and said "Gee that looks good".
To the no talent hacks in Hollywood that's all they need to hear. They see a crowded market place and say "Me too!".
Ug.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
If he can't do it, no one can!
Actually, considering that I have a friend (Jeff Stan, film critic for "Dark Cinema" magazine and scriptwriter) who's in kinda tight with Norrington's circles, I can say with confidence that if anyone could pull this off, it would be Steven Norrington.
On the other hand, I sat through an anime version of Metropolis and came out almost in tears it was so bad. So it works both ways.
Colour me ambivalent.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Maybe someone should sit these people down and explain to them that one of the reasons anime is so popular among geeks is because it is *fscking animated.*
Maybe WB could instead release and, for once, properly advertise some translated anime movie for half the cost, twice the profit, and four times less suck ass. Jesus on a fricken' pogo stick!
It can't be as bad as the live action remake of "Fist of the North Star". That as just HORRIBLE!
*shudders*
The anime movie was adapted from a series of comics books by Otomo. The movie cut out, combined, etc. characters and parts so it would flow and work as a movie.
Now they're going to adapt an animated movie, which was adapted from a comic book, for live action.
Why waste the time...just rerelease the anime version to theaters again.
Just a correction: "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" hasn't even started shooting yet. They'll be starting in Prague in 2 weeks or so.
I'd like to see that.
The movie is just a fraction of the actual storyline. About 1/8th at the most, you really should read the comic and have your mind blown away.
the 20 minutes where the actors yell "Kanedaaaaaaaaaa..... Tetsuooooooo.... Kanedaaaaaaaaaa..... Tetsuooooooo.... Kanedaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..... Tetsuooooooo.... Kanedaaaaaaaaaa..... Tetsuooooooo.... Kanedaaaaaaaaaa..... Tetsuoooooooooooooooo.... Kanedaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..... Tetsuooooooo.... Kanedaaaaaaaaaa..... Tetsuoooooooooooooooooo.... "
Every time they try to do anime to live action the result normally sucks. Now they want to ruin Akira.
What the fuck?
Too similar to Terminator 2.
In what way? ummm, they're both in the future...
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Reminds me of the trapper-keeper episode of South Park
:)
Mr Garrison: "What the hell is that? Oh my god what is that thing?! Children there's a huge boulbous montrousity heading for the classroom! Oh my god it's awful, it's coming for the door!"
Rosie O'Donnell: "Hello Kids!"
Later Rosie stands next to a now Tetsuo-like Cartman, and a cop remarks that he's seeing double
Why?! As many others have already said, this would be blasphemy. There is no way that a live-action remake of this epic anime work could do it justice. Visually, no studio will be able to reproduce the complexities that any anime conveys. Why don't they realize that it is already good for a reason? It's good because its anime!
Cripes, the first thing you should have noticed between Ghost in the Shell and the Matrix was the green lettering.
The slight problem with your analysis between the Matrix and Mangas. You are correct in that the inspiration for the Matrix was very well taken from Mangas. After all, the often stated idea about creative works is that other works inspired them (wish the copyright office and Congress would listen). The problem is that the Matrix was inspired by Ghost in the Shell. It wasn't Ghost in the Shell but it's own work, meant to stand on its own and separate.
Now, I'm not saying that a good live action Akira cannot be pulled off. Just that the Hollywood types at the WB in working with the creative minds should realize the expectations. There will be a huge expectation from Akira and anime fans for quality work. As you already noted, LOTR/Tolkien admirers were dubious about the film work but mostly liked the end result, but that's also a key point that maybe LOTR production and shooting standards were elevated due to the perceived demands and expecations of a critical fan base. After all, the movie studios could have put out a LOTR film years ago, but they did wisely wait (how did the director put it, something like 'only recently has the technology reached where Tolkien's work can be accurately portrayed" or something to that effect').
It's hard to imagine what goes on the minds of movie execs, but hopefully they will allow an impressive movie. From what I read of the press release, the mere fact that the have been patient and allowed review upon review of screenplays before deciding on one is a promising aspect that maybe the Akira live action film will turn out nicely.
I have a box of telephone rings under my bed. Whenever I get lonely, I
open it up a little bit, and I get a phone call. One day I dropped the
box all over the floor. The phone wouldn't stop ringing. I had to get
it disconnected. So I got a new phone. I didn't have much money, so I
had to get an irregular. It doesn't have a five. I ran into a friend
of mine on the street the other day. He said why don't you give me a
call. I told him I can't call everybody I want to anymore, my phone
doesn't have a five. He asked how long had it been that way. I said I
didn't know -- my calendar doesn't have any sevens.
-- Steven Wright
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