Posted on 02/27/2008 12:57:40 PM PST by RandallFlagg
DiCaprio Bringing Akira To Life
Leonardo DiCaprio is teaming up with Warner Brothers to produce a live-action film based on the Japanese manga and anime film Akira, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Ruairi Robinson has been hired to direct what would ideally be a two-part epic. The film would mark the first full-length feature for Robinson, whose animated SF comedy short Fifty Percent Grey was nominated for an Oscar. Gary Whitta is writing the adaptation, which DiCaprio will produce through his production company, Appian Way.
Akira originated in 1988 as a manga and then as an animated film co-written and directed by Katsuhiro Otomo. The story was set in a neon-lit futuristic post-nuclear-war "New Tokyo" in 2019, where a teen biker-gang member is subjected to a government experiment which unleashes his latent powers. The gang's leader must find a way to stop the ensuing swath of destruction.
Akira has long been in development at the company, with producers Jon Peters and Basil Iwanyk involved at various times, as well as directors Stephen Norrington and Pitof. The rights lapsed but Warner managed to acquire them again for Robinson, who came to the studio with a vision of a two-part adaptation.
The new story moves the action to "New Manhattan," a city rebuilt by the Japanese. The studio is eyeing a summer 2009 release for the first movie.
Wonder how they’ll write global warming into the story.
I enjoyed “Akira” for its visuals even if I couldn’t follow its story. I’ll keep an open mind. But for gosh sakes, the movie need to be cast with Japanese actors, inasmuch as the story is set in Tokyo. (Well. NeoTokyo.)
I have a feeling this won’t be half of what the anime movie was.
I can’t contain my indigestion :)
It’ll be a cartoon anyway.
ALL major sci-fi crud these days is computer animated. No other effects are employed anymore.
Stiff human actors in artifical worlds acting in front from blue screens.
“The new story moves the action to ‘New Manhattan,’ a city rebuilt by the Japanese”
Groannnn .... (good catch)
Other than the agonized speculation of “Gee, I wonder how Hollywood will screw *this* one up?”, I’m interested in the reoccurring motif in Japanese Sci-Fi of Japan destroyed.
That is, a lot of Japanese futurism assumes that modern Japan is going to be either surrealistically “Futurama”, destroyed in a nuclear war, or sunken beneath the sea, with only bits and pieces of mountain tops remaining, or combination thereof.
Makes you wonder about Japanese psychology.
Otherwise, one of the best examples of live action anime that I would highly recommend is the movie “Casshern”, which is an anime based live action visual feast. Truly a movie worth HDTV and a big screen.
This will be the now recurring motif of NYC destroyed.
Japan destroyed reflects back to Hiroshima.
NYC destroyed fiction doesn’t so much reflect back to anything.
Alan Moore’s Watchmen’s “catastrophic event” was written in the mid-1980s, before the 1993 or 2001 WTC attacks.
Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend has been adapted to different cities in different eras.
Stephen King’s The Stand was more across the USA.
Why not Voltron?
Leo's greatest moment...
~snif~
I just love that scene.
In the motif, it is generally not just Japan but the world. I don't believe it is a self destructive psychology but just building on the common scifi motif of a post-apocalyptic world. It allows the writers to build a new world from scratch, and thus, take the reader/viewer out of their comfort zone. It fosters the willing suspension of disbelief by tearing down the familiar.
Don't we all.. any scene in which he finally shuts up for the rest of the film is a great scene.
I've been a fan of anime for going on twenty years now (more if you count growing up on Starblazers, Captain Harlock, and Robotech), and I've wondered about that myself. More recently, I've become a fan of Japanese horror flicks, which are just plain creeper than American horror flicks. I actually do believe that they exhibit a fundamentally different psychology.
American culture, for all of its trying to escape it, is Christian at its core, and therefore has a Christian optimism underlying our root psychology: We honestly believe in a final justice and happy ending at the root of our being.
Japanese culture is Shintoist (animist) and fatalistic at its core. It fundamentally does not rest on the assurance of a benevolent Creator that will make all things right in the end, believes in a variety of spirits that must be placated lest they visit evil on you, and is pessimistic about the human condition. The most popular type of story in Japan is that of a man whose inner self and public face are at odds with each other, usually over a forbidden love, culminating in a situation in which the only escape is an honorable death (i.e., suicide). Even this may not provide an escape, since the untended dead are restless, hungry beings. The man may rail about it, but the universe is fundamentally unfair and doesn't care if he lives or dies. It's almost Lovecraftian.
Consequently, the Japanese can write tragedy that rings more poignantly than most written in the West: In our tragedies, a man's own flaws do him in; in theirs, even innocent children suffer the most terrible fates (think Grave of the Fireflies, if you've ever seen it).
Not only does the universe not care for the fate of any single person, it doesn't care for the fate of cities, nations, or even whole worlds. (In one anime, everyone in the world except for two characters are turned into a sea of yellow, sentient goo; in another, after numerous brutal deaths of most of the main cast the entire universe is destroyed.)
Tokyo, being the center of modern Japanese culture, is consequently frequently targeted for destruction as a microcosm of this fundamental tragedy and unfairness.
The other possibility is that the Japanese secretly really hate Tokyo, and just like blowing it up. ;)
I learned all of my riding skilz from Akira!!!
I once made the mistake of viewing Japanese porn. Its been about 10 years since I did it, and I'm still very very sorry I did.
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