It actually looks like they're adapting the manga, into two movies, and they're setting it in New Manhattan (I guess New New York was taken) instead of Neo Tokyo. So, apart from the names, I don't see a huge problem with it.You don't see a problem with it?! Completely regardless of the ethnicity of the main characters everything about this just sounds horrific. Akira in Manhattan!? What the fuck? Ugh.
To some degree, animie characters are "white" - that is, they generally do not have the stereotypical Asian facial characteristics. Coyboy Beboop, Trigun, Scrapped Princess, etc.What the hell are you talking about? Race neutral != white. Japanese people don't see themselves as having "Asian features", they see neutral while they see white people as looking strange and having 'stereotypical' European features. Anime characters tend to have big eyes, but the characters are drawn that way to look cute, not to look European.
This sort of thing just doesn't translate well if you uproot it and move it to 'Neo-New York.' If they are absolutely desperate to put Akira in America and if they have half a brain among them, they should move the setting to the Detroit and try to make parallels to the period right before the Housing Crisis of '08. Even then, though, it's not going to have anywhere near the same resonance.Yeah I was thinking about that too. Manhattan is just geographically small. And how on earth could you have motorcycle gangs on such crowded streets? It just doesn't really make that much sense. As bad as all the movies set in LA are LA would actually work a lot better. They could make the movie a meditation on suburban malaise.
Thanks Narrative Priorities, I had never realized the full extent of Japanese racism and white-idolization in comic books.Yeah, here's the part you quoted with leading and trailing sentances for context:
Such is my argument, but many find it unconvincing. They insist that manga characters are unmistakably ¡°Caucasian,¡± and that the ubiquity of Caucasian characters in manga and Japanese popular culture generally are clear indicators of a desire on the part of Japanese to identify themselves with the European West, rather than the Asian East. Indeed a number of Western scholars have suggested that Japanese today harbor just such a desire, that they deny their ¡°Asianness¡± and try instead to identify themselves with the Western, ¡°white,¡± Center. The curious fact that Chinese characters appearing in manga are often portrayed using the same markers of ¡°Asianness¡± (slanted eyes, straight black hair) common in Western representations may seem to be irrefutable evidence of this assertion. Yet such assertions are rife with flaws.posted by delmoi at 7:46 AM on March 24, 2011 [3 favorites]
Dear nerds,It's called commiserating. Just because you can't change something doesn't mean you can't complain.
If you really hate this idea (or anything like it), then the best thing you could all do is stop talking about it, and not go see it. Not even to just see "how bad it is." It will make no money and be a laughing stock.
It seems that in this re-concepted version of the story, the characters aren't Japanese and aren't in Japan.No, but this is an American movie. The problem people have is that if you say that if you're making an American movie you need white actors, then that means if you're not white you're not a real American. Read your comment again, it doesn't really make that much sense unless Asian Americans don't count as real Americans.
Was there any Turks upset that there were no American actors in their remakes of Superman, The Wizard of Oz, or Star Trek?See above, being 'American' doesn't necessarily mean being white.
Was there a backlash in the 90's from Belgians that Hercule Poirot was going to be played by David Suchet, a London-born British actor?
The point is I did, and it didn't. All the hand-waving in the world won't change the fact that the neutral character design and the white character design is identicalYou see the characters as white because you're used to seeing white people. The neutral character design in Anime is Asian. When people in Asia see those faces they see Asian faces. They don't look white to them, unless they have 'stereotypical European' features.
Besides, that is not how the Japanese draw white or even Chinese people. The otherness of foreigners is clearly marked by physical stereotypes ¨C just as Americans do with people of colour. In anime White Americans are stereotyped as having yellow hair, blue eyes and a long or big nose:posted by delmoi at 8:55 AM on March 24, 2011
I'm kinda wondering what they feel the audience demographic is for this remake. If you are not a manga fan, you have no idea what Akira is (confession: I didn't). If you are, this will make a travesty of the original.I was going to mention this, but Hollywood just wants a brand to stick on their movies. They don't care at all about the source Material. Look at the movie I, Robot The script was done without reference to the source material at all. It was going to be called Hardwired, but the studio had the I, Robot license so they threw in some references to the book (which was actually a collection of short stories spanning many years) and cast Will Smith.
Fuck yes, let's get this script started right now.Okay, Gang Bangers vs. Juggalos in a post-apocalyptic (i.e. pretty much it's current state) Detroit. Except in this version the area has been abandoned due to a radioactive event, and people are afraid to live there unless they're really poor. Of course the abandoned plant wasn't really a nuclear reactor failure, but the self-destruction mechanism at a secret government facility.... The cars are all old beat up old hotrods. That's my take.
And that's what bugs me here--the producers might want to go for "big names" or whatever if these opportunities are never extended to actors of color, how are they ever supposed to become big names?It's easy, just be born in China/Hong Kong. It worked for Zhang Ziyi, Chow Yun fat, Bai Ling, Jackie Chan, Gong Li. etc.
I see the studio once again passed over my adapted screenplay that starred Matthew McConaughey in a New Austin devastated by a horrible SXSW. He plays a lawyer turned surfer, whose girlfriend is Amanda Seyfried, that battles an evil DEA agent that's trying to confiscate all the weed in the city using psychic children. I don't want to give too much away, but the soundtrack is 100% Sammy Hagar.Of course in the Austin version the two gangs would be Hipsters vs. Hipsters who like a slightly different type of indie rock.
Oops! I distractedly forgot to say that the best way to kill this project would be a fake trailer using footage from Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Motorcycles! New York! Helicopters! Scientists! Energy! Computer graphics! People gazing at rapidly updating screens with looks of horror!Title card: AKIRA:NYC
"fuck you Japan, we know what's best and we'll make your shitty little 'animes' into something people actually want to see".I see it more as "let's strip-mine culture for any brands that will get people to see the movie! It doesn't matter how good it is so long as we can cut a good trailer!"
They replace it with Tetsuo using psychic powers against everyone around him, the satellite trying to fry him, Tetsuo using his powers to destroy the satelliteAhem, I think you mean Travis
« Older HTML Phive | Tennis Girl: a face behind the behind. Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by anthill at 5:23 AM on March 24, 2011 [15 favorites]