Bloody Disgusting is reporting that the live action Akira remake is dead with no chance of revival. Ruari Robinson, who was set to direct the American bastardization of an iconic Japanese manga, has left the project and the project as a whole is no longer being pushed by the studio. There really must be a film god out there.
Akira was originally a Japanese manga published in 1988 that was then transferred to the silver screen co-written and directed by Katsuhiro Otomo. The story was set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic “New Tokyo” in the year 2019. A teenager in a biker gang is experimented on by the government which results in unleashing his previously unknown powers. The leader of the gang must then try to stop the carnage.
The violence and very mature themes of the story were groundbreaking for the genre. The highly stylized animation and inventive and engaging story helped path the way for when anime broke the east and west cultural barriers to it’s 1990s success in western pop culture.
Akira was an amazing and very powerful film that created the foundation for what we enjoy today as anime film. I am more than pleased that this project finally got what it deserved. There is a frightening trend developing in American cinema. This demon goes by the name of Remake/Reboot. Just because there is a lack of original ideas in Hollywood does not mean that the big studios have a blank check to rape our childhoods and bastardize all the original properties that we love and hold so dearly. Many of these classic properties, like Akira, are interwoven perfectly with cultural undertones and contain intricate details that reached their maximum potential in the snapshot of time that they were created in. Some remakes or reboots can be done correctly. However the chance of that success is very low in comparison to the chance that they will take something that we love very dearly and drain every bit of originality and soul from it until its a horrible depressing shell of a film. Hollywood needs to stop this insanity and luckily this is one for the home team.
You can rest well now Tetsuo.
Are you as glad as I am that this remake died?