[Film] There is A Movie God...

[BrikHaus]

You think there is a movie god, but word of Indiana Jones 5 has just surfaced, and proved you wrong.

[Soljer13]

Then that means theres a Movie Satan. You cant have good without the bad, shadow without light, white without the black, etc.

[Gendo'sPapa]

The Movie God is a fickle one.

For every Lord of the Rings there is a Golden Compass.

For every Anchorman there is a Land of the Lost.

For every Pixar there is a Dreamworks Animation.

For every Star Wars Trilogy there is a Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.

Balance must be kept.

[backseatjesus]

Oldboy "remake"(I use it loosely because Chan-wook Park never adapted the manga 100%) seems to be under some legal trouble.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-06-17/old-boy-publisher-sues-korean-studio-over-u.s-film-rights

I've actually been anticipating this release because Will Smith would fit Shinichi Gotō( NOT Oh Dae-su!) like a glove. Steven Spielberg though is a fairly mediocre director who can be hit or miss.

[Orphan Of Darkness]

It's a relief for me seeing the Akira live action project finally dead. It's not Hollywood movie material.

The artistic fortitude to take that on is pretty big I think, not to mention the budget and other red-tape aspects.

I think a live-action AKIRA could kick the shit out of my brain with awesomeness, but it won't ever be done.

What concerns me the most: There are limits with how much CG they could do with the sets and action sequences to truly make it great.

The animated movie is fantastic of course, but even it is just a small taste of the manga.

[Themaninblack]

And that's why Lord of the Rings, Dark Knight, and 90% of all films suck...wait?

Doing a remake of an Asian film has worked before though, and given the scripts average reviews online...it was supposed to rock, despite the 'black gang member' (believe it or not, inter racial gangs are actually very common, and the idea that white people, or black people wouldn't let another criminal in their ranks just because of his skin color is dead wrong...and in itself racist. Sure a lot of gangs are that way, but not all of them. Shows how many of the posters here, and else where on the internet LIVE IN DA HOOD!)

This elitism is self defeating and it has to stop. Sure you don't like Naruto and the idea of LAEM not living up to your exceptions...but if it succeeds even slightly, that's good for all of us Otaku in the long run, as producers will allow more anime films to be made with more flexibility with their directors and such. More importantly, it show anime to be more profitable, so more of the good Japanese exclusive stuff can be ours. Frankly, I want a high quality Eng dub for Monster, if and when it comes out.

[Guyver Spawn]

Yeah their is a movie god since the people who have made Epic Movie and Disater Movie have not made a new movie since Disaster movie bombed.

I don't see the point in remaking Akira as a new animated film.

I hear Ghost in the Shell has been redone in CGI if I stand correct and a Akira remake like that would be cool.

[Incisivis]

TMIB: Yeah, intellectually I agree with you: I feel a little guilty about the flood of internal stereotypes about Dumb Faceless Big Hollywood that pop up every time the notion of a non-Japanese, live-action, anime remake is brought up.

But even if I feel a little guilty, that's still my knee-jerk response; that I can't get rid of it means I feel there's some truth to our fears. What I heard about the Dragonball and Speed Racer films might also confirm those fears.

So I'm glad the Akira live-action movie isn't being made, but I thought it would be a difficult thing to BE made, for various reasons. It's equally hard for me to picture the LAEM getting up off the ground.

[GAP]

Besides the animated movie was good anyway so I don't see a reason for a remake.

[Timstuff]

I suppose a big reason why I think a live action Akira remake is a dumb idea is because half of what made the movie worth watching was the animation. I was never really all that impressed with the story. I mean, it was good enough, but for me it was the animation that made the experience worthwhile. If you took the same story and did it in live action, it just wouldn't be all that interesting.

With Evangelion on the other hand, most of the show's appeal comes through the story. The animation was great for TV standards at the time, but it's the characters and story that keep me coming back. If you move the story into live action, you're marrying it with a surreal sense of eyepopping awe, and an even deeper emotional connection with the characters because you are seeing them as real people. It's a story that I think is worth bringing to the non-anime watching audience.

To sum up, I don't really see the point of doing Akira in live action, since the animation is what I enjoyed most about the original. The original was a dirty gritty gang story, which is something we've already got plenty of in live action (minus the whole psychic powers hook, which is also in a lot of films). Maybe I'm not giving the story enough credit since I only saw the movie, but since from the sounds of it the live action script was basically a remake of it, there's really not much for the project to bring to the table. It'd basically just be another gang movie but with a sci-fi hook, and I don't really see why we need it.

[backseatjesus]

It would still be amazing though to see how they'd pull off all the visuals.

[Shiro]

Well, I'm actually feeling REALLY good about the Cowboy Bebop movie after reading http://www.animevice.com/news/writer-peter-craig-speaks-on-cowboy-bebop-flick/1552/ this interview. Watanabe and Sunrise are very closely involved with it, and the lead script writer actually, you know, likes the show. I think this could be an awesome movie. And I was mad about Keanu at first, but I think the only part of Spike he can't do now that I think about it is Spike's hair.

As for Akira, I'm a bit disappointed because it had excellent potential. But at least now it won't get dicked up.

[Timstuff]

I would be shocked if Keanu Reeves couldn't pull off a decent Spike. That's one of the few roles I'd dare say is well within his range.

[schismatics]

For every Lord of the Rings there is a Golden Compass.

...but I liked the Golden Compass...


...as a book...

[GAP]

Some movies were better off just remaining as books yet Walden Media is looking for something that makes them money due to massive success of the Harry Potter films.

[Timstuff]

Walden had something really good going with the Narnia films, but Disney dropped the ball when they tried to push Prince Caspian as a summer blockbuster instead of a Christmas film. I really hope that Fox doesn't ruin Voyage of the Dawn Treader though... Tom Rothman, keep your slimy tentacles off of this one!

[BrikHaus]

The first three books of the Narnia series are quite good, but after that the remaining books are really terrible. Not to mention unfilmable. Getting hit over the head with the Aslan-Jesus theme gets to be way too much.

[THE Hal E. Burton 9000]

I dunno

did you ever see the BBC miniseries of Narnia? that included The Silver Chair

to my recollection, it didn't suck, though interestingly for obvious reasons, a certain last line was omitted with regard to Aslan's "real name"...

Getting hit over the head with the Aslan-Jesus theme gets to be way too much.

[GoatMan]

A live action Akira movie wouldn't necessarily be bad, presuming that it was based in Japan, and like "Transformers 2" (as much as everyone here thinks Bay's interpretation was lame), hits heavy into the elements of the original source material.

Obviously they shouldn't stage it in New York or any American city, or the Buddhist priests and protests/demonstrations would lose their meaning. Instead, they need to keep it set in Japan, but perhaps take a more Westerner look at it. I mean, if you have to dumb it down because not everyone can get what Gattaca was about, tthey could at least extend it out to a 2.5 hour movie that does a bit of filler for all the "idiot Westerners".

Actually, the best way to pull it off would be a cross between "The Terminator"(1984), and "Black Rain"(1989, where the filler history is all told during the action and character development (like when Reese is talking about what the Terminator is, and about the future). That way, you can avoid dumbing it down, but at the same time, you can cut to the chase fairly quickly.

The thing that annoys me about everyone's perception of foreign films, particularly anime, being so artistic or philosophical is that all they really do is spout words. "Ghost in the Shell", "Princess Mononoke", etc, all just spout the beliefs, throw in a few congruent acts for the protagonist to match what he's preaching, but everything else is portrayed as just normal, screwed up life. If man was really struggling to understand its reality in a world of cyborgs or grasp the concept of environmental awareness during the feudal era as being expressed through their relationship with the old gods, they would not be portrayed in the way they are in those movies.

As I mentioned before in another thread, if you're in the world of Star Trek, where you can travel several hundred times faster than light as though it were as easy as getting on a bus at the local stop, what is the sense in all of the obsolete throwbacks we see in the Star Trek universe. Why, for that matter, is everyone either in Starfleet, or working retail, especially if there's no money in the future?

To really hammer the idea of Akira home, you have to show how the protests and political demonstrations are part of mankind's evolution as a society towards a healthier, more competitive political system. You would also have to show Tetsuo's transformation being one-sided in all of his power or glory as being immediately countered by the acts of evolution as not its own separate entity, but evolution as the interactions of survival strategies of all the contributing players (mankind grabbing the strategic laser satellite to blow his arm off and such).

The theme that needs to be driven home in an Akira remake was one that they didn't get across in the original. Instead, they went the direction of mankind being a being without the mental capacity to handle those powers. They add to this concept that only well-adjusted types (the colonel and Kaneda are two extremes of these guys) are the only ones who are satisfied to progress at a rate acceptable for their evolution.

The better theme to hit at, though, is portraying everything that happens in Neo-Tokyo as action and reaction in the chess game that is evolution. It is not nature that deliberately chooses which mutations outperform others, but instead, the world as a whole (dare they imply all of Neo-Tokyo as a single-celled organism, or all of humanity and Tetsuo as predator/prey in a slowly stabilizing relationship?) as an enclosed system which changes with time due to the random acts which, thanks to the laws of physics, lead to order originating from chaos.

Oh, and there are already guys working on a realistic, shaft-driven Kaneda bike, and not the crappy chain-driven hunk of fiberglass that has been going around the conventions.

[Gendo'sPapa]

Just so you know, when Akira was being produced by it's "Fans" it was set in partially Japan funded New Manhattan.

And Tetsuo was named Travis.

And the motorcycle gang? They didn't go around causing havoc for the fun of it. Actually they teamed up as a gang to....protect their neighborhood.