Akira

Its finally happening.

Garrett Hedlund (Sam from Tron Legacy) is being considered for the lead. You can panic now.

FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

It could be good. It won't be Akira, but it could be good.

edited 20th Oct '11 3:34:23 AM by Gvzbgul

As much as I like your enthusiasm, I get the feeling this is going to hurt for everyone involved.

TETSUOOOOOO
my nightmare has returned from the dead

I will give any Live-Action adaptation this though; the Giant Mutant Man-Baby is only going to be far more terrifying.

no it will suck
ITS IN CGI

BUT IT'S A GIANT MUTANT MAN-BABY! WITH FINGERS GROWING ON IT'S FINGERS, WAILING INHUMANLY!! THE VERY THOUGHT IS PRACTICALLY A BROWN NOTE IN AND OF ITSELF!!D:

Fuck you, Hollywood. Fuck you with ten cycles in a conga-line.

I just don't get why so many people are ready to bash this before getting so much as a spoiler or screenshot.

they americanized it
new tokyo is new manhattan
OF COURSE

I'm withholding my judgment until i see a proper trailer for this.

WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE AMERICAN?!?

Dammit, can they at least have SOME Japanese people in this?

So you're fine with Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe, but not Big Applesauce? It's not like the Japanese setting was important to the story.

edited 20th Oct '11 9:12:44 AM by RavenWilder

Indeed. Kurosawa did Shakespeare in Feudal Japan while Sergio Leone John Sturges placed Yojimbo and Seven Samurai in a Western setting. The actual setting of the story is kinda trivial, outside of some of the Shinto aspects and American involvement towards the end of the manga. Now, I don't necessarily have my hopes up for the movie but I don't see the big deal with transporting the setting.

edited 20th Oct '11 11:14:41 AM by Kentok

I can get why people might be worried (it's a Hollywood remake, after all), but none of the info we have so far is actually bad news.

As for the setting, would you rather have it set in a version of Japan where everyone speaks English?

edited 20th Oct '11 11:12:59 AM by RTaco

In the case of the Seven Samurai the setting is actually pretty important, in the way how the villagers interact with the samurai.

Yes, but Seven Samurai is a case where you can quite easily make a transition to a western counterpart like John Sturges did in Magnificent Seven. Though they are cosmetically different, in the end they are the same location; rural farmland. Changing something like Tokyo to Manhattan is a whole other animal. Both cities have different histories and atmospheres which affect the way you see and interact with it. Tokyo is just as important a character as the others, you can't just change it.

What parts of the story, specifically, require a Tokyo setting to work?

You mean aside the fact that its grounded in recent japanese history like Hiroshima, Economic Resurgence and Over-Populaisation, nothing. Why?

Okay, I get the Hiroshima comparison, but what do economic resurgence or overpopulation have to do with Akira?

Are you serious? You don't see comparisons to 1980's Japan and their economy since Hiroshima in Akira. In the book, Japan manages to bring itself back up after World War III, so much so that they have plans to host the frickin' Olympic Games. As for the over-population, have you seen Neo-Tokyo?! The city is huge! The population is so big, the government barely has control.

So it's optimistic about humanity's chances following a large scale nuclear war; big deal.

Seemed like a run-of-the-mill overcrowded metropolis to me, not too different from many that exist all over the world in Real Life.

And both just happen to tie directly to Japan. Im just saying that if you were to change it from Tokyo to Manhattan, you would be losing alot of the story and the subtext.