Forum - View topicNEWS: Book of Eli's Albert Hughes: Warner Wants PG-13 Akira
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The Xenos
 Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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And suddenly I finally realize I was replying to Zac and not just any odd poster. Whoooops. Huh. I'm trying to remember why I didn't recognize the Skelator icon never mind the name. Yeah, Definitely not your average poster there.
I will admit I have a hair across my butt with Warners. I've become jaded after so many failed adaptation and box office bombs. I was in shock that the rest of the world loved Dark Knight. I'm on the fence on Watchmen. Not just personally, as I was almost neutral when it came out and the movie itself has grown on me even more since first seeing it in that regard. Yet I was surprised to hear that it underperformed in Warner's eyes. For an R rated superhero movie flying in the face of the norm, I thought it did fantastic. Sadly it seems Warners was looking for bigger sales. The recent Marvel movies are fantastic. I'm very happy with how those are going. I'm also insanely jealous because I've always been more into DC characters and DC and Warners just aren't there yet with their stable of characters. Maybe now with DC restructured recently we'll see some good movies. Of course to that list I'd add Frank Miller yarns Sin City and 300. (Frank Miller's The Goddamn Spirit is best left not talked about.) 300 in particular was a hit for Warners. I can't remember the time line in detail, but it showed that maybe some of these R Rated comics might have some mileage as films. Certainly it helped usher in Watchmen. Maybe it could have pushed Akira to be allowed an R, but Watchmen just didn't do 300 numbers or continue the trend Warners was looking for. Still, 300 is there as a beacon of hope for R Rated comic book films. (Oh and I'm still waiting for any movement on the Roinin front. Heh. That book's practically manga too.) Yet I just can't shake the nay saying from my head with this US Akira film. I can't help but be that guy in the action movie that says, "I got a bad feeling about this." And yes, Hollywood does pigpile producers on a film. Different ones are involved to varying degrees. Some for all intents and purposes are there in name only, maybe tossing a check to get their name there. Yet this guy was being interviewed in an article talking about both Jonah Hex and Akira. Yes, also Get Smart 2, but that's rather neither here nor there. That the interview has Akira mentioned as an upcoming project on the eve of his last one taking horrible just seems to be a very bad omen. Plus Jonah Hex is just too big and too fresh of a wound to be ignored. Seeing the same studio take some of the same attitudes toward Akira that I heard early on with Hex, like the rating and tailoring the original concepts to their whims, just bothers me too much to ignore.
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GATSU
Posts: 15295 |
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Xenos: I actually liked Batman Begins more than TDK, but TDK had its moments. As for Hex, it's not like it's the most violent comic out there. [For example, if they did a PG-13 Preacher, then people would be screaming bloody murder.] The real problem with that one is they didn't do a good job on his motivation. He's just a dude with a scar wandering the Old West. Obviously needed more to it. The first Hellboy under-performed, too, but it did alright for itself in the end, because it was able to stand out from the pack.
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Well sure, that's totally understandable. But it's not like R rated movies (even decent budgeted ones) can't be profitable. I don't know if an R rated Akira would be or not. If they don't think an R rated Akira can make money though then I have to wonder why they are even adapting it. It's one thing to tone down a movie where R rated stuff isn't that prevalent. Akira seems like a project that really ought to be R though. |
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The Xenos
Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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True. Jonah Hex certainly could easily be done as a good PG-13. Though fans still complained about the rating. And, ya know what, I think they were wrong. Of course the real problem was the mentality was surely less mature than a PG-13 or that it was a low brow one. (Why not so serious?) Meanwhile, yeah, stuff like Preacher or Akira the fans are spot on about needing that R rating. Plus for Hex there are other things like adding the gadgets and speaking with dead people elements that the studio or someone involved with production tacked onto the character instead of being a straight up western. To me this is similar to wanting to set Akira in the US or simplifying the complex nature of the story. They're trying to turn an apple into an orange because they think oranges are the in thing. Meanwhile.. eh.. Hellboy was okay. It seemed Del Toro tried to mainstream it. I still enjoyed Del Toro's semi-mainstream take on Hellboy and the shining moments of Mignola's tone and story were glorious. So I loved it despite the changes. Being so close to the fanbase and books myself, I can't quite gauge how well it did overall. I got the impression it did just okay. Personally, I don't care for a third. I'd rather see other movie work by Del Toro and more comics work from Mignola. Heh. In some ways, Pan's Labyrinth was closer to the Hellboy comics than the movie was.
I would argue by comparing it to the Karate Kid and how it's a totally different movie very very loosely connected to the original. Yet that awful remake sold like mad the other week. So sometimes the gutting and stuffing and reanimation of a corpse works for these Hollywood Dr Frankensteins. And I do confess that Hollywood generally doesn't care about what fans of the original content want. Sometimes it can bite them in the butt if the movie is teetering on good to bad reception. Yet if a movie has really bad buzz, fans aren't going to save it. Likewise if a movie gets an amazing buzz amongst the public who has never heard of the original, the fans of the original aren't going to sway them otherwise. It's only when the buzz is on a tipping point that the original's fans might make a different. And to be honest, Akira is maybe too early in development to matter. Though a handful of times fan outcry might get some notice, most of the time it sadly does not. Heck, that Last Airbender and its casting is proof positive of that. That went full steam ahead despite a pretty big fan and Asian community group outcry. Also, I don't quite remember if there was any fan outcry, but DiCaprio's prior Asian film remake did amazingly well. Hong Kong film series Internal Affairs was adapted by Scorsese into the Acadamy Award winning hit movie The Departed. They shipping it out from Hong Kong to Bahstahn where everyone talked in a heavy Southie accent and they kept playing local band The Dropkick Murphys. |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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By pretty much all accounts The Karate Kid remake is a perfectly servicable movie that most critics were A-OK with and it did very well. Unless you have some weird fealty to the original, which is frankly just a cheesy ol' 1980s kids movie, what in the world is wrong with taking the concept and the franchise name and remaking it for a new generation? I mean, if the effing Karate Kid is too sacred to ever revisit - the concept of which makes me laugh out loud, it's just the goddamn Karate Kid which is mostly famous for being soaked in 80's cheese - then you must just have a fuming, irrational hatred of ANYTHING ever being revisited or remade. Which is ludicrous. Hollywood's been remaking films since the 1930s, for god's sake. The Wizard of Oz is a remake. Yeesh. |
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The Xenos
Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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Well, my only nitpick is that the original movie was a gateway for a generation of kids into Japanese culture and the experience of Japanese Americans. Now this new one has been subverted into Chinese culture, even going so far as to set the entire movie there. Why even call it by the original Japanese name save for mindless reuse of a name? Hell, in China they are calling it The Kung Fu Kid. Well, actually Kung Fu Dream. Why didn't they do that in the US? Why does Hollywood still have to act as if Japanese and Chinese culture are interchangeable?
Plus it kinda shafts Japan having it again as an outlet for kids today to find out about their culture. Of course I say this knowing full well I'm posting on an anime site and that anime and manga have exploded as a major gateway that kids today. Such a gateway to Japanese culture never was really there when the original Karate Kid came out. Plus again.. I confess I got a hair across my butt. I can't stand that Will Smith tailor made this film remake for his kid. Bad enough when the brat was in the lame Day the Earth Stood Still remake. Now the remake kid is back in this one. Plus, yeah, I do have some nostalgia goggles on for the original. I still have a figure of the late great Mr Miyagi up in my room. It was a cheesy kids sports / martial artist film, but it was my cheesy kids sports / martial artist film. Kids today with their kung fu kids. Back in my day we had to walk to the vhs store to get our Karate Kid movies all while listening to Druan Duran on casette.. uphill.. both ways! |
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GATSU
Posts: 15295 |
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Xenos: The Airbender people tried do a run-around by casting the Indian kid from Slumdog[as the bad guy 'cus he's Asian] to appease those groups. It still looks generic as hell, and Shyamalan's 15 minutes are about up, so it'll probably bomb, anyway. And as for nostalgia, I know how you feel. It was surreal meeting Morita before he died on the set of Only The Brave.
Zac: KK is ok, just not great. It felt like a Disney Channel movie with the Karate Kid name slapped on it. Fine, I understand it's a different generation watching it, but at least make it fun, not average. As for why critics liked it more than I thought they would, that's only because it doesn't suck, not because they think it's one of the better films this year.
*cough* Next Karate Kid *cough*
It's a good remake, though. |
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Keonyn
 Subscriber Posts: 5567 Location: Coon Rapids, MN |
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Cut the soapboxing. Your opinion alone is not a valid basis for an argument. You're welcome to state it, but don't sit here in a long drawn out debate using that opinion as the entirety of your argument.
Your response to Xenos is once again you soapboxing and soaked with opinion regarding something you've never seen. Your comments regarding implied racism only make you look like the racist since you consistently jump on and attack anything related to western society. If you want to accuse people of racism then bring more to the table then your conspiracy theories that are, frankly, racist themselves. For your response to Zac, once again you're soapboxing on opinions. As I said already, you can state your opinion, but stop spamming the thread with argument after argument of soapboxing based on nothing more than your own opinion. |
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rockman nes
 Posts: 271 |
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GATSU
Posts: 15295 |
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I was agreeing with it, 'til I found out Preacher gets to keep its R-rating.
 Although, yeah, you can shoot Preacher cheaper, but still, it'll probably be over-priced and about as appealing as Punisher. At least Akira could do interesting stuff with an R-rating. OTOH, if they crapped on the ending like with Watchmen, maybe keeping Akira PG-13 isn't so bad...
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