Oh.....dear....god.......Tetsuo !!! *LIVE ACTION AKIRA*

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Tue Jul 19, 2011 8:23 pm

Keanu has also turned down the role of Spike in the Bebop movie. These things must be getting bad if even Keanu doesn't want to be attached to them.

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Postby Guyver Spawn » Tue Jul 19, 2011 8:34 pm

I thought he was still playing Spike since I remember him saying that Fox still wants to do a movie out of the series? I still find it odd that you have non-Japanese actors are called with Japanese names in an North American city.
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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Tue Jul 19, 2011 8:52 pm

I might be getting my wires crossed, though I'm pretty sure I heard that somewhere. Either that or the film went under in some other way.

But, yeah. I've no idea why you'd give Caucasian actors Japanese character to play in a North American city. At the same time, I can't understand why Japanese characters speak the English language in the English dubs of anime. Though, I guess I can be called the hypocrite since I like Charlton Heston playing Hebrew and Roman characters in The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur. Though to be fair, we have hundreds of years of inaccurate European art to blame for Caucasian Jews in Scripture. These days we've seemed to be getting better with casting the right ethnic group in our movies, though.

Well, Mel Gibson has at least...

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Postby EvangelionFan » Tue Jul 19, 2011 8:55 pm

View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:I'm looking forward to this as much as I am to The Last Airbender... Aeon Flux... and every other Hollywood live-action interpretation of Japanese anime that sucked.

Aeon Flux was an American-Korean animation collaboration that aired on MTV and had nothing to do with anime. Simiarly, Avatar: The Last Airbender is an American production by Nickelodeon.

As for an American-produced Live-Action Akira, I believe George Takei has made some points to consider: [article link]
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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Tue Jul 19, 2011 9:08 pm

View Original PostEvangelionFan wrote:Aeon Flux was an American-Korean animation collaboration that aired on MTV and had nothing to do with anime. Simiarly, Avatar: The Last Airbender is an American production by Nickelodeon.

Whoops! :lol: See, that's true and I knew that. I just don't know why I wrote that... other than Airbender was heavily influenced by Eastern Animation... which isn't really an excuse because Teen Titan was also heavily influenced in a similar way...

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Postby drinian » Tue Jul 19, 2011 9:22 pm

View Original PostEvangelionFan wrote:As for an American-produced Live-Action Akira, I believe George Takei has made some points to consider: [article link]

While he's right about the trouble that Asian-American actors in Hollywood can have (although, really, at 5% of the population I bet the statistics would be interesting as to whether they're mathematically represented at an equal rate) -- it's not like Japan doesn't adapt British and American stories into anime and film. I'm thinking specifically of things like the Agatha Christie anime, although I'm sure there's others. A story's a story. It wasn't the race of the actor that made Dragonball: Evolution a failure.
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Postby EvangelionFan » Tue Jul 19, 2011 9:47 pm

View Original Postdrinian wrote:While he's right about the trouble that Asian-American actors in Hollywood can have (although, really, at 5% of the population I bet the statistics would be interesting as to whether they're mathematically represented at an equal rate) -- it's not like Japan doesn't adapt British and American stories into anime and film. I'm thinking specifically of things like the Agatha Christie anime, although I'm sure there's others. A story's a story. It wasn't the race of the actor that made Dragonball: Evolution a failure.


You're right, and although I feel Takei has good intentions his opinions are short-sighted in regards to, as you said, Japan adapting British and American stories in anime and film. It comes down to how strongly the film intends to stay true to the original work, because if it intends to be set in Japan I'd think it would be appropriate to cast Japanese or asian actors in key roles.

Add to that the fact that hardly anything has been said about this adaptation, especially about the setting, and any position on approving or disapproving cast choices becomes akin to shooting blind.
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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Wed Jul 20, 2011 8:10 am

View Original PostEvangelionFan wrote:Add to that the fact that hardly anything has been said about this adaptation, especially about the setting, and any position on approving or disapproving cast choices becomes akin to shooting blind.

Well, a few people got their hand on a draft of the script, which revealed a little about setting, and didn't like it. What irks me is the utter lack of professionalism in the writing style. The term "SMASH TO BLACK" is an unreadable script action in it of itself (Seriously, how's that different from just cutting to black?), slows the reader down (because the reader is now thinking "Seriously, how's that different from just cutting to black?"), and seems to be a result of a producer tuning to a non-union writer paid peanuts and saying "Make this darker/edgier/gritter/more shocking/ect."

For some reason, I'm reminded that it was the also producers of Warner Brothers that developed the term "more toyetic" when describing to Joel Schumacher how Batman &amp Robin should be written. I'm just hoping it isn't those same producers developing AKIRA right now.

And I never really liked Keanu in the first place. He's been in movies that were good movies despite him, but just as an actor I never felt Keanu really delivered. So his acting, plus this awkwardly written draft of the script (which, in all fairness, might have been rewritten since then), means I'm not looking forward to this movie.

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Postby Tarnsman » Wed Jul 20, 2011 11:09 am

Akira is just one of those things that doesn't really work outside of anime. The animation and the style are what works, and both those would be lost in a live-action adaptation.

@White-Guilt Casting: It's an adaptation, the American telling of the story. I expect American actors. Just like I expect Japanese actors when the Japanese adapt a western work.

FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:At the same time, I can't understand why Japanese characters speak the English language in the English dubs of anime.

For the same reason that characters that would normally be speaking English (such as something like Baccano! or anything set in the future) are speaking Japanese in the Japanese dub. How is putting something in the language of the target audience confusing?
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Postby GasmaskAvenger » Wed Jul 20, 2011 12:09 pm

View Original Postdrinian wrote:it's not like Japan doesn't adapt British and American stories into anime and film.


chances are, there probably are Japanese adaptions of British and American stories (perhaps anything not Japanese in general too), they're just either not well documented outside of Japan or are based on lesser known or obscure source material


a very good example of a Japanese adaption of non-Japanese source material is 1980's "Yami no Teiō: Kyūketsuki Dracula" which is an adaption of the Marvel comic book series "The Tomb of Dracula"
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Postby Defectron » Wed Jul 20, 2011 12:29 pm

View Original PostGasmaskAvenger wrote:chances are, there probably are Japanese adaptions of British and American stories (perhaps anything not Japanese in general too), they're just either not well documented outside of Japan or are based on lesser known or obscure source material


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Postby Seele00TextOnly » Wed Jul 20, 2011 1:30 pm

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Postby Tarnsman » Wed Jul 20, 2011 1:59 pm

View Original PostSeele00TextOnly wrote:Are you again confusing 'white' with 'American'? Is it the 1950's in here?


You are again forgetting that the vast majority of America is still Caucasian. It's an American adaptation, the characters are going to be primarily white.
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Postby Mr. Tines » Wed Jul 20, 2011 2:01 pm

View Original PostSeele00TextOnly wrote:Are you again confusing 'white' with 'American'? Is it the 1950's in here?

No -- only whites have anything to feel guilty about. Haven't you had the appropriate sensitivity training?

There was an anime adaptation of the very British story, Chocolate Underground a few years back, though I never looked it out.
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Postby Seele00TextOnly » Wed Jul 20, 2011 2:13 pm

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Postby Shogo-Kun » Wed Jul 20, 2011 2:15 pm

Am I the only one looking forward to this with an open mind? I personally don't care if it's faithful to the original or not. I want to watch a adaptation/reimagining/reinterpretation, NOT a carbon-copy of the original! If I wanted that, I'd just watch the original on Blu-ray or something.
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Postby Tarnsman » Wed Jul 20, 2011 2:24 pm

View Original PostSeele00TextOnly wrote:They don't put white actors in the makeup of other races to avoid hiring them anymore, or to avoid helping to mature the audience; no, instead they just rewrite the character. Discerning minds realize it's the same thing done for the same reason.

:fuyu_facepalm:

If Akira made a big deal out of the character's nationality you would have a point, but it doesn't. They're just Japanese because it was made in Japan. They're supposed to be every day people. The majority of Americans are white, thus if you were to stick your hand in a hat and randomly pull out the ethnicity of the character, you'd most likely come up with white followed by the other minorities that make up a larger portion of the American populous. And when you actually got to people of Asian decent, you'd have to go through Vietnamese and Chinese sub-majorities first.
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Postby The Eva Monkey » Wed Jul 20, 2011 3:04 pm

View Original PostTarnsman wrote:They're just Japanese because it was made in Japan.

Except that (in the film at least) one of the central themes in the story is post-nuclear devastation, something that is (DUN DUN DUN) uniquely Japanese. Do you know of any ofter countries that have been nuked?

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Postby Tarnsman » Wed Jul 20, 2011 3:17 pm

View Original PostThe Eva Monkey wrote:Except that (in the film at least) one of the central themes in the story is post-nuclear devastation, something that is (DUN DUN DUN) uniquely Japanese. Do you know of any ofter countries that have been nuked?


So what you're saying is, the characters are Japanese because the story is Japanese? Because that's exactly what I said.

We're not getting a Japanese story with a live-action Hollywood adaptation unless Japan is directly involved in the project, which they don't seem to be. We're getting the American version of the story, for better or worse. (Most likely worse.)

As for the nuclear holocaust being "unique" to Japan: Japan was the only country to have been nuked, but not at such a level to create a unique form of devastation. Especially when other forms of conventional US bombing in the war killed far more civilians and did far more damage to the country as a whole. No country has ever suffered true post-nuclear devastation as it is depicted in fiction. Nor is that particular form of devastation unique to Japanese fiction.
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Postby The Eva Monkey » Wed Jul 20, 2011 3:44 pm

View Original PostTarnsman wrote:So what you're saying is, the characters are Japanese because the story is Japanese? Because that's exactly what I said.

Nope. It's not.

The themes of that story are the product of a culture that experienced a certain event. The struggle of the society to restore itself is a prevalent thematic element in multiple Japanese manga and anime. You see it in Evangelion too. It's not really something that is part of the American consciousness. So I'm sorry, but you're wrong, the story isn't Japanese simply because of its setting, there are distinct cultural and historical themes that would be compromised by removing it from its setting.

Context is important.


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