I got all confused about Steven McQueen being too young because I was like, "isn't he dead?"

So glad it wasn't just me.

So Akira is being made, and it's set in Neo New York, and it's going to star Garrett Hedlund.

And I'm not mad at it.

I feel like I should be up in arms, but I'm not. You take a movie, you translate it into your culture, and you retell it. So, yeah, it turns out to have the racial demographics of your culture. Now, it probably won't have true American representation, but casting the lead as a white guy? I don't think that an American production has a responsibility to make a Japanese movie.

For reasons I can't properly articulate, this doesn't strike me as an Avatar: The Last Airbender situation, which wasn't translating shit, just whitening the characters in place.

This is an interesting link of overpaid actors based on who gets the lowest box office return on their salary dollars. It's pretty much clearly divided into people I'm screamingly not surprised to see on there (Eddie Murphy (animation isn't counted) and Nic Cage, and Reese Witherspoon and Denzel Washington).

The list is some of the worst pageview whoring I've seen in a while, but the article is worth reading and gives away the top four or five positions, fwiw.

For reasons I can't properly articulate, this doesn't strike me as an Avatar: The Last Airbender situation, which wasn't translating shit, just whitening the characters in place.

I think it's because of this:

You take a movie, you translate it into your culture, and you retell it.

If the movie was set in Japan, but starring white people, that would be a problem. Remaking a Japanese movie as an American movie may be a bad idea, but it doesn't seem like the same kind of whitewashing. Like you said, probably a different kind of whitewashing, but still.

Remaking a Japanese movie as an American movie may be a bad idea, but it doesn't seem like the same kind of whitewashing.

At the time they were made, I doubt it was brought up, but I do have to wonder if "A Fist Full of Dollars" and "The Magnificent Seven" were made today, if they would trigger the same kind of discussion that the Akira remake has.

Yeah, I'm glad, at least, that they're moving the setting since they're casting as they are.

That being said - I wonder what a Japanese movie of it would look like.

What about The Departed/Infernal Affairs? I think it's bacause even so many Americans think Akira is a masterpiece, no?

Didn't as many think Infernal Affairs is a masterpiece? Maybe it's because you're crossing media lines? So they want one medium to be true to the previous? Whereas it would be dumb for an American to make a Japanese adaptation of a Japanese movie.

I actually have no idea, really.

Oh! Saw Harold and Kumar 3. Admittedly, I missed 2, and, duh, I just worked out which one is Daneel Ackles. I am the worst Supernatural fan EVER. It was so way beyond wrong, and really stupid, which was what I needed to see, and quite funny. The 3D is all pretty obvious--there's not a subtle thing about the movie, but that's not why you go see Harold or Kumar, is it?

Jordan Hinson is in this, and I am totally freaked out at the idea of Colin's TV daughter in a stoner comedy. Then again, if I knew the triplets that played...Ava? I'd be even more traumatised.