1988's anime classic Akira has been in talks for a live-action remake for a long time now. Many directors have wanted to work on it and a lot of actors have been considered to play the iconic characters of Kaneda and Tetsuo. Involved in controversy and many delays, people wonder if it'll ever escape development hell.
But hey, if a Ghost In The Shell movie was able to get off the ground (granted, with not so stellar results) why couldn't an Akira movie do it. And with a director like Taika Waititi at the helm, it makes the project more intriguing. Now this a remake, but nobody wants a shot-by-shot imitation, so here are some things that should stay in the new movie and some that shouldn't.
10 Include: Kaneda Motorcycle
This iconic piece of machine is one of the most iconic vehicles in the history of anime, science fiction, and animation in general. Just seeing Kaneda and his friends driving through the streets of Neo-Tokyo leaving a trail of light behind them is an image not too many can forget. And it really is a cool looking motorcycle.
This shouldn't be a problem since the two-wheeled vehicle has been reproduced in actual reality. It helps that Katsuhiro Otomo's design of the bike is very realistic and looks like something that can be totally built.
9 Skip: The Ambiguous Nature Of Akira
As a refresher, if you haven't watched the movie in a while, throughout the film the mighty Akira is reference a lot. Well, the freaking movie is called like that because of him! Akira was the true reason behind the destruction of Tokyo and, in a cover-up operation, Japanese citizens called it a singularity. In reality, Akira's power so great that it provoked the cataclysm.
For this reason, the character's body was dismembered and put in different containers, below a military base. Is just only in the end Akira appears, but not much else is shown about the character. This an opportunity for the remake to fix that, and tell something more about the character.
8 Include: Graphic Violence
Watching Akira is not for the faint of heart. Despite being an animation movie, the story is very adult and harsh. In a world devastated by war and overreliance on technologies is not only appropriate but necessary to portray the darkest part of violence in a deteriorating society. The Akira remake should be graphic and violent because of the world its porter.
This is also one of the reasons why the movie was so impactful when it came to the west. Many people thought the animation was just for kids, and when Akira came, it changed that. The experienced can be hard, but it can also cathartic.
7 Skip: The Ending
Let's face it, Akira's ending wasn't the best it could be. For a story with such world-ending scope, it is kind of jarring to end in such an ambiguous note. After Akira is revived and causes another explosion, Kaneda and Tetsuo are transported to another dimension. The audience sees light, a voice-over, and... that's it.
However, it's understandable that director Katsuhiro Otomo tried his best to condensed his monstrous 2000 page manga into a movie. And it's no to say the remake should westernize the plot, nobody wants that. But it will be cool if Waititi is able to craft an ending more impactful and according to the movie's themes.
6 Include: The Gangs
There was something about how the '70s and '80s portrayed gang violence in movies and tv shows. It was, frankly, kind of ridiculous since real gang fighting is nothing like that, is, in fact, brutal, violent, and a real problem. And maybe that's the reason these depictions are so great, since they soften the real-world for a fun story.
So Akira partook in this kind of depictions, reminiscent of cult classic of 1979 The Warriors. In the original anime, Kaneda is the leader of his gang that constantly battles other thematic gangs like The Clowns. They should be definitely in the movie.
5 Skip: Ignoring The Manga
Since Katsuhiro Otomo was the original author of Akira's manga, from where the movie was adapted, he really didn't intend of ignoring his own work to create a new one. Now, everybody knows how Hollywood likes to get with movie remakes, adapting them to better fit a western audience.
So if Waititi wants to get inspired into making his own version of the movie, he should pay close attention to the mange, where a lot of great ideas reside and weren't used in the original film.
4 Include: Social Commentary
The implications of a story like Akira are evident with one of the most iconic images from the manga and the film: the light-dome forming around Tokyo, destroying it. If you haven't caught it yet, this is a reference to Japan's history regarding the drop of two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.
This catastrophic changed many things in Japan forever, affecting its society at its core. Akira explores that: what happens to society when they survive the apocalypse and how they did partake in it. As dense as this topic is, it shouldn't be avoided by the remake.
3 Skip: Convoluted Story
As with the ending, the plot of Akira isn't as smooth as one might think for an animation film. As told before, Otomo tried to condensed Akira's manga into movie length but at the same, he wanted to include as much of the original story as he could. This ended up with a very detail-heavy plot.
We the blessing of perspective, the remake filmmakers should take a step back and try not to condensed, but to unravel the story in a more fluid fashion. It's a daunting puzzle to solve, for sure, but great it was solved.
2 Include: The Visuals
Yeah sure, we are talking about remaking animation into a live-action movie, two very different mediums. But it shouldn't be stated enough that the visual and graphical art of Akira is one of its important aspects. The usage of colors, the way things move because of the animation, the plasticity of the characters, all of these and more have to be in the remake.
Photographic art is very different from drawing and animation, despite its similarities. This why some consider Taika Waititi the best for this job because something he proved with Thor: Ragnarok is that he can replicate the excitement of animation in camera.
1 Skip: The Dialogue
It wouldn't be strange to find out that the first experience many people had when they watch Akira for the first time was through the dubbed version. At the time of the original movie released, watching anime wasn't the rage that is today, and many people weren't used to listening to characters speak Japanese. so it came to the dubbing at it wasn't that great.
Japanese is a very different language from English, so translating dialogue from wouldn't be easy. And, of course, this is an American remake, but the filmmakers involved should be attending to rhythms of dialogue for it not to result in a bunch of nonsensical with a weir hybrid of Japanese and American English rhythms.
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