Meet the New Face of Kaneda…

It's a bit difficult to say how this would turn out. On the one hand, this could turn out very badly due to the amount of changes they're making, or it could turn out decent if they do it right.

Of all the western movie adaptations I've seen, Speed Racer was a pleasant surprise to me in that it was actually enjoyable.

I understood going in that there would be changes. A lot of them. But the thing about Speed Racer was that despite the changes, they managed to somehow keep the spirit of the show intact.

Insane races, family of racers and mechanics fighting an evil organization that wants to take over the world by racing, evil ninjas, how the good-guys and family-values will always win in the end, etc. They even kept the fucking kid and chimp sneaking all over the place.

There was no way to do a Speed Racer movie as a serious film, so they they instead went wild with it while still keeping it smart and somehow making it relevant to today's society.

The Akira movie can be good, IF, and I do mean IF, they get the right people with the right mindset to do it. There will be a lot of changes, but the most important thing is that they preserve the spirit of the original film.

If they can do that, then they would have succeeded.

Truth to be told, the story in the anime sucked donkey ass.
While it deserves to be called a classic due to its technical excellence for its time and its role in getting the anime market rolling in the USA and UK and a bit later in a few european countries as well, the story wasn`t exactly a high point.

But that`s mostly because the manga presents enough material for a tv series, so even when the movie only contained a certain part of the story it was still too convoluted for its running time.
The manga is a whole other experience and goes a lot more into detail as well as continuing the story after the part the movie presented.
It`s only 6 volumes long, but that fact kinda belies its length since each volume has about the size of a telephone book and it really pays off story- and logic-wise.

Splitting the content into two parts might be the only rational decision hollywood will ever make on this project.

While I don`t have much hope for this, at least DiCaprio was rumored to be somewhat of an anime fan in his childhood, so the rape might not be as bloody as most people expect.
Still leaves all others involved to screw up, since a hollywood movie involves so many people the actual director or scenario writer usually have way less influence on a mvie than they should.

I for one hope Japan made them pay up enough for the movie license to possibly finance an Akira-TV-series anime that follows the manga, then something good would come out of this regardless what hollywood does.

i guess it depends on your mindset, if you're mature enough to be watching it or not. i certainly wouldn't let my 10yr old nephew watch it, even nowdays with all the violent shit he does watch on tv simply because he wouldn't understand what was going on...

the manga is very political, something that you do see shine through in the movie of course, but there is something more of a human side to the books that you just don't have the time to put into 2 hours. it took me a good 10 days to really read the books, not just glance at them, but really take the images in, savour them as the story telling devices that they are, see all the fine details... hell, if i re-read them today i would probably read it as a whole different story, mainly due to the fact that i read them almost 8 years ago, i don't think the same as i did back then and the world has shifted over to all new political views entirely, even in this short a time.

that being said, i don't think the story is any less relative nowadays than when it was originally written, or even introduced to the cinema, both in japan and abroard. there was alot of political tension back then, and the threat of nuclear strikes from foreign countries was very real in some parts of the world and japan as a disarmed nation was at the mercy of those that would be it's protectors or destroyers.

i feel it mirrors how japan felt as a nation back in the eighties, just starting to find it's feet in the economic market and where the world might head if nuclear war did break out between america and russia. as a nation it had plenty of hero's and monsters, but i feel this is the first non-mainstream movie from japan to hit the world that didn't require some dude to wear a rubber lizard suit or a giant fire breathing turtle (i love gamera by the way) and that is where it gained popularity in the western world; people could take in a more mature film from japan with a plausable story line that made you think something more than "holy shit, did you just see what the fricking dinosaur did to that city!"

It was quite a good story, especially for the time, but even now it still holds up. The intention though behind it is a little convoluted even to me. I need to re-watch it so I can piece together the parts I DIDN'T understand when I was younger.

really, never read the manga, i just thought that the movie was an adaptation of it like so many manga to movies were back than, either a synapses or a full adaption to cash in.

ill admit that the animation was fucking great for it, but was the story really that good?