AKIRA - Live-Action Adaptation

-Worriedly looks around.-

Um, is this thread about to explode? ^note  See what I did there?

(For the record, the idea of an African-American directing an adaptation of an Asian work of fiction is not without precedent. But of course, YMMV big time.)

Bumping this thread because we got a false alarm.

Jordan Peele's not directing the AKIRA movie. This is why.

Actually, here's an idea. How about we brainstorm how we would do the movie?

I'll start.

• I would start by being truer to the text and have my cast be mainly Asian. Ghost in the Shell (2017) inadvertently proved that whitewashing is not cool and as such, my cast would consist of Asians, with a mix of established actors and unknowns.
  • I guess if I have to, I could make the military guys be American, but the main cast must be Asian.
  • Hideo Kojima cameoing as the guy who tried to take Takashi from the government laboratories in the beginning.
• Have either Kenji Kawai or Keiichi Okabe do the music. (Something like AKIRA would really be up their alley.)
• Have Weta Workshop do the props like the big Sci-Fi guns, the Capsules' motorbikes (especially Kaneda's bike), and use makeup effects on the Esper kids to recreate that sickly look they had.
• Probably have it be more than one movie (maybe 2-3 movies).
• Maybe have either Warren Ellis (since dystopian sci-fi stories are a forte of his) or Katsuhiro Otomo (since he wrote the manga and the anime movie while directing the latter) or the both of them as writers while having Otomo as supervisor since AKIRA is essentially his creation.
• Have it be produced by Legendary Pictures and maybe directed by either Neill Blomkamp, Guillermo del Toro, Doug Liman or really anyone who agrees that whitewashing a Japanese work is an extremely despicable idea.

And that is how I would make the AKIRA live-action movie.

edited 19th Sep '17 5:36:11 PM by TargetmasterJoe

Oh, um, this just in.

Thor: Ragnarok's Taika Waititi may be the one to direct AKIRA.

Then again, this will apparently take place in "New Manhattan" as opposed to Neo-Tokyo.

...Guys, don't make the same mistakes as GITS. Just don't. You'll only get trouble.

Oh, they will. That's pretty much inevitable. Look forward to the adventures of Kaneda Jensen and Ted Sherman.

Setting it in New Manhattan is a step in the right direction if you ask me.

This project just won't die.

Then pray Taika Waititi gets picked to do the project because he doesn't want to whitewash the story:

Well, that's fairly standard practice for America:

• 1) Take a well known property from another country.
• 2) Proceed to break it in as many ways as possible.

Remember the Red Dwarf pilot? Remember the Doctor Who movie?

edited 10th Oct '17 3:20:10 PM by HextarVigar

Well, I'm impressed.

I honestly had no idea who this guy even was until I read his page.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople was great, What We Do In The Shadows is hilarious, and while I don't think of AKIRA as the funniest movie, Ragnarok looks awesome both in terms of actions as well as having some spectacular visuals and sound design from the trailers alone. So colour me enthused. A lot more so than I would have been even a few months ago, with Ghost still haunting theatres.

Well, Waititi's Akira has just gotten an official release date: May 21, 2021

I can't believe this project is actually taking off the ground…

And I can't believe there's a 10-page-long, 8-year-ord thread for this hitherto completely hypothetical project. >.>

I am worried. I mean, the movie is a milestone - visually. The story makes zero sense whatsoever.

Waititi apparently wants to be closer to the manga, but… obviously you can't condense the entire manga in a single movie, so I don't know how he's gonna do that.

They’re apparently splitting it into two parts.

That is still not really that much time, but I guess they could cut out some subplots.

AKIRA proper would take a ridiculous amount of screentime to cover coherently.

If they go balls to the walls with the psychic power aspect, I'm all for it.

It contrasts nicely with the X-men films that try and restrain the various psychics too much for my liking.

Seeing Tetsuo put a hole in the moon on the big screen will be a treat. The first half of the Duology could end with Tetsuo Blowing up Neo Tokyo a second time, the second movie can end with his Mutation and eventual Ascension to a level on Par with the Pheonix Force from the comics.

Edited by Demongodofchaos2 on May 24th 2019 at 10:49:24 AM

I fear that the movie will fall into Seinfeld is unfunny territory, though. Because a lot of what was inventive back when the first movie was released is nowadays pretty run of the mill.

It's kind of what happenned with Alita, yeah…

So I've finally read the end of the manga… and I somewhat doubt they can adapt it as is. I mean it literally ends with Kaneda and his pals creating an independent new nation inside of Japan and telling the Americans to piss off. And boy were those whole climax and epilogue confusing as hell.

By the way, which actress would you see for the role of Choko? If she's even in the film…

I don't remember who is Choko, perhaps you mean Chiyoko? (There might be some Dub Name Change involved).

I read Akira years ago. It was awesome but I don't remember it very well.

Uuh… yeah, Chiyoko. She's called "Choko" in the latest French edition, no idea why.

Akira wasn't exactly the first piece of media depicting delinquent gang wars or even escaped psychic test subjects. Futuristic city scapes featuring animated billboard advertisement was already seen in Space Pirate Captain Harlock, which predates even Blade Runner by a few years.

I think it's how its individual elements come together, which make Akira a memorable whole not just its novelty factors. I must have seen a parody of the Thom Joad speech from Grapes of Wrath before seeing the original movie but that didn't diminish my eventual enjoyment of the film.

I suppose any strongish actress could be Chiyoko. Good thing Hollywood has plenty of them!

Maybe Gwendoline Christie?