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zebeckras
2011-10-22 02:27 pm UTC (link)

Are they... actually still calling it "Akira"? I mean, there's nothing to indicate yet whether they're keeping the names Tetsuo and Kaneda, but - if they set it in America, and they use an all-white cast, does it not occur to them that... maybe using the name "Akira" for no apparent reason would... make no sense? Even be, um, really really stupid?

What am I saying this is Hollywood. :P

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	elektra3 2011-10-22 05:31 pm UTC (link)
	Well, it's not as if the fact that it's set in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo is massively relevant to the story or anything. OH, WAIT. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	jaseroque 2011-10-22 09:10 pm UTC (link)
	They called a movie without any karate in it "The Karate Kid". My hopes for sanity prevailing are not high. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	dark_puck 2011-10-22 10:12 pm UTC (link)
	Wasn't that marketed overseas as "The Kung-Fu Kid", or am I making shit up again? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	rosehiptea 2011-10-23 04:37 am UTC (link)
	That's what I heard. IMDB seems to agree. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	jaseroque 2011-10-23 12:29 pm UTC (link)
	In Japan it is called "Best Kid", but fortunately so was the original. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	silrana 2011-10-23 08:45 pm UTC (link)
	I foresee a day when someone asks me why my Akira T-shirt says "Neo-Tokyo is about to explode." (Reply to this)

	grrliz 2011-10-23 11:46 pm UTC (link)
	Gary Oldman and Helena Bonham Carter have apparently been offered roles: http://twitchfilm.com/news/2011/10/breaking-gary-oldman-and-helena-bonham-carter-offered-akira.php Step away, Gary, step away. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	j_crew_guy 2011-10-24 03:01 am UTC (link)
	Really? Really? Ugh. Thanks for the heads up, I'll edit the post with the new info. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	kumquat_of_doom 2011-10-25 01:02 am UTC (link)
	D: NO, GARY OLDMAN, DON'T YOU DARE. I LOVE YOU TOO MUCH FOR YOU TO DO THIS TO ME. (Incidentally, does anyone else want to talk about how awesome Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was? Please?) (Reply to this)(Parent)

enrythe8th
2011-10-25 09:03 am UTC (link)

I guess the most baffling thing to me is that this thing has a budget of more than $5. Didn't they do this with DBZ and all those fighting games?

Maybe I'm under-reacting, but I never expect American adaptations of any kind of nerd culture that isn't comics (and even that's a bit iffy) to be of any value. It's sad but true. I guess that they at least have a couple of good actors lined up? (Aside from Garrett)

Oh woe, oh woe, Andrew Garfield! You can do so much better than this!

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bishounenhideto
2011-10-29 12:30 pm UTC (link)

I'm just wondering if anyone spoke up when Memoirs of a Geisha was cast with three major Japanese characters being played by Chinese actresses, or when Thor was cast with a fairly major Nordic character being played by a black actor.

All the above mentioned actor/actresses did a great job in their roles. I'm not saying anyone didn't. I'm also not saying that it's ok to change the races of characters by using actors/actresses that are from entirely different races. I just want to be sure that if we're going to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war, that all culprits are equally tarred. We shouldn't pick and choose who gets defended and who gets pilloried if everyone is committing the same crime.

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	lied_ohne_worte 2011-10-29 03:38 pm UTC (link)
	It is not "the same crime". There is no decades-long Hollywood history in which roles that were originally written for white people or modeled on white people were constantly given to people of other ethnicities. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bishounenhideto 2011-10-29 07:42 pm UTC (link)
	I thought the issue at hand was that a character of one specifically-designated race was cast with a person of another race entirely. Am I wrong? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lied_ohne_worte 2011-10-29 07:48 pm UTC (link)
	Yes, you are. The issue is not that this is one individual case where this happened, but rather that things like this happen very often, and they tend to happen in one particular way - white actors playing roles that are originally written as non-white. It's an issue of racism. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bishounenhideto 2011-10-30 12:48 am UTC (link)
	So it's completely ok that a black actor played a canonically-white character because it doesn't happen that often compared to the other way around? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lied_ohne_worte 2011-10-30 12:50 am UTC (link)
	Yes, it is. One thing is a symptom of marginalisation and racism, the other isn't. I don't know how I can make this any clearer. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

bishounenhideto
2011-10-30 01:23 am UTC (link)

I just wanted to be 100% sure because it was sounding like the issue isn't really about staying accurate to the original canon source as I had thought, but about minority rights to be cast in any role in any movie. Thanks for making that perfectly clear. I understand now.

Would it be ok if Koreans played all the Japanese characters? I don't mean mixed Korean/Japanese descent. I mean full Korean descent.

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lied_ohne_worte
2011-10-30 08:42 am UTC (link)

minority rights to be cast in any role in any movie

No, it's not really that. Rather, it is about the fact that people from minorities already have very few roles available to them which are not somewhat stereotypical and often have trouble being cast in roles that do not say anywhere the people playing them has to be white, and that therefore it is highly unfair if roles that were written as minorities are also given to white people. It's not about a privilege for minorities, but rather about white privilege still being highly entrenched in the movie industry.

As I am white and not even from the US, I am likely not the best person to explain this. There is lots of material available online on this issue, including things written by people who themselves belong to minorities and have first-hand experience. Just google "hollywood racism" or "hollywood whitewashing", and you will find many articles and interviews.

I'm sure it is not my place to say whether it would be OK for Koreans to play Japanese. But if something were cast like this, many people would likely see it as a sign of Hollywood insensitivity, as in "all Asian people being the same". And given Korean/Japanese history, I suspect that there might also be a negative reaction in these countries. As you mentioned "Memoirs of a Geisha": There was indeed some negative reaction to the casting; on that, too, material is easy to google.

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bishounenhideto
2011-10-30 10:50 am UTC (link)

Thank you for such a wonderfully polite and thoughtful response. :) I really do appreciate it. I guess my point was, if the real argument is about minorities getting a fair shot at portraying their own ethnicities in movies instead of a badly-made-up white person or only being allow to be the "Chinese food delivery guy", then we shouldn't be saying, "We want to keep the movie culturally accurate." because none of the Norse gods are black. I'm all for minority actors being given less dehumanizing roles or seeing minority characters being played/cast with more ethnic sensitivity. Fu Manchu, anyone?

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quietladybirman
2011-10-30 07:02 am UTC (link)

I'm so late on this, but this gives me such a sad.

Anecdote time, sorry. I love Akira and have done since I was eleven. It was the movie that got me into manga and anime fandom back when manga and anime were still relatively unheard-of.

I spent a few days with my parents about a month back specifically because the film society near where they lived was showing Akira and my father thought I might want to go see it. I'd never had the chance to see it at the cinema before. The cinema in question was in a small university town in England, and the audience must have been at least 95% white. I have never been to a movie where the audience were that rapt. Normally people talk, or they fidget, or they generally show signs that someone, somewhere, is Not Really Paying Attention - didn't happen there. People applauded at the end of the screening. I have only been to one other film in my life where that happened.

This is the world Hollywood apparently thinks that audiences won't get, the characters they believe that white audiences are too culturally blinkered to relate to. I - and my father, and most likely damn near everyone else in that auditorium a month back - would respectfully like to disagree. Thank you.

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	bishounenhideto 2011-10-30 08:20 am UTC (link)
	Beautifully said. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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