Americans are taking jobs from the Japanese? What is this, Opposite Day? In the 90s?

[seriousfic]

So, don't know if you've heard about this kerfuffle, but the WB is making a movie out of Akira. In case you couldn't have guessed from the title, it takes place in Japan, but the movie will take place in New York and be about Americans. And if you think that's bad, there's also a movement to remake a lot of other stories, replacing the straight characters with gay ones and changing the plots to be about gay sex.

It's called fandom.

I kid, I kid. But in all seriousness, taking a Japanese story, changing the setting, and making all the characters white will never result in a good film. Now if you'll excuse me, The Magnificent Seven has just arrived from Netflix, and I'm really anxious to see it.

Comments

[shanejayell.livejournal.com]

Conceded, Magnificent Seven is a good film.

But have you seen Battle Beyond the Stars? It's 'SEven Samurai' in SPACE and is so bad it's almost good... but not quite.

[mcity.livejournal.com]

The Prince of Persia almost got away with it, since the Prince himself was adopted, but for everyone else I was going "your star is a Jewish-American, the Jack Sparrow knockoff is played by a Spanish-Italian Englishman, the hero's uncle is played by an Oscar-winning Indian Englishman. Couldn't you have found at least one person of Arab descent for a starring role?"

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

Just a side note: I agree with your overall point, but Arabs and Persians are distinct groups.

[mcity.livejournal.com]

Whoops. Sorry.

[colonel-green.livejournal.com]

As you say, changing the setting/race like this isn't unheard of; it happens all the time, both ways (the Japanese do it all the time, for instance).

The whole issue has gotten mixed up with legitimate complaints about the lack of Asian-American leads in Hollywood; to a certain extent, it's unfair to put the weight of this on any individual project, but it'll happen until the general problem starts to be addressed.

Though if you're going to revamp the setting as drastically as this, why still call it Akira? It's not like the American public has any idea what the original is, anyway, so there's no real marketing cachet outside of Japan. Just change the name and I suspect nobody would be bothered; nobody complained about Scorsese's The Departed.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

People still complained about how Troy was different from The Iliad, even though it... clearly wasn't meant as an adaptation of The Iliad.

[colonel-green.livejournal.com]

The bigger problem with Troy was that it sucked so hard that people weren't wrong in thinking an adaptation of The Iliad could have been much better.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

I don't care about this case. The original has been widely seen by anyone who cares about such material, it's 23 years old, and this is a remake that moves the action to New York, not the original adaptation. I don't mind this any more than the American version of Chloe not being set in France and not starring French people.