Logline: In a post-apocalyptic city members of a bike gang get involved in a battle between the mysterious psychic forces that are connected to the initial destruction of the city, the military government, and rebel forces.
Akira is one of those anime that truly polarises people. On the one hand there are those that see it as a masterpiece of the genre and couldn’t countenance the idea of a remake, and on the other hand there are those, like me, who simply enjoyed it for what it was – another epic manga, butchered to make it palatable for moviegoing audiences – good, but certainly no masterpiece.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those ‘the movies are never as good as the books’ folk. Lots of my favourite novels have been turned into terrific films with major artistic licence to allow for the strengths and weaknesses of the medium (Lord Of The Rings) and equally, some books that I thought were dreadful have made superb films, way beyond expectation (The Bourne Identity). But a book into a film is one thing, a manga, into an anime into a live action film is something else entirely and given the cultural differences, the translation issues and the often dumbing-down or simplification of films by the big studios, I have to admit I approached this screenplay with some trepidation.
Unsurprisingly the story has been switched to America. Manhattan is in ruins following an ‘event’ that destroys New York, killing millions and leaving countless more homeless or orphaned. With it’s financial capital gone the US tumbles into a crippling depression, Japan emerges as the worlds financial powerhouse and China its sole military superpower. In an effort to boost an ailing economy the US government agrees to sell what remains of Manhattan island to the Japanese to house their booming population and from the ashes of the old City rises New Tokyo.
Against this backdrop we meet 11 year old Travis and 14 year old Kaneda, two lads orphaned by the event who become fast friends at a school for displaced children. Skip forward twenty-one years and the two of them have formed a biker gang called The Red Devils, policing their patch of the old city against encroachment from rival gang The Reapers. Kaneda is the cocksure gang leader and Travis his erstwhile younger brother, the one he’s always looking out for, bailing out of trouble, fights, drug addiction and keeping supplied with money and bike spares. Travis though is resentful of the way Kaneda is always trying to rescue him and of how the other gang members rag on him and is sulky and prone to violent outbursts. It’s exactly one of these outbursts that leads to a confrontation with The Reapers and an intense bike chase leads to Travis crashing into a strangely aged child in the middle of the road, but while his bike explodes he is left there, bloodied and broken but alive. Kineda arrives at the scene to find his best friend hurt, the aged boy scurrying away and a young woman nearby. Before he can do anything they are surrounded by the massed ranks of the military and the local police and he is powerless as he watches his friend transported to a hospital, the weird-looking kid taken away in a helicopter and himself and the girl arrested.
The next day, after getting out of the police station, Kineda follows the girl, Kay, and discovers an underground resistance fighting against the Vanguard Corporation, military contractors in league with a corrupt politician called Nellis, who are trying to clandestinely resurrect an old defence program. You see, what the world doesn’t know is that the ‘event’ was caused by a boy called Akira, a participant in a secret military experiment to turn people with latent psycho-kinetic powers into terrifying bio-weapons that can kill with just a thought. Unfortunately his immense power couldn’t be controlled and it was a single thought, by Akira, that devastated New York. However, rather than kill the boy they opt to seal him deep underground, in a secret containment facility, in a state of cryogenic stasis to prevent him unleashing his awesome power again. Meanwhile Travis finds unlocked in him a previously dormant ability to control things with his mind and begins communicating with three similar children, though not as powerful, who are cared for in secure facilities suffering from an advanced ageing disease as a reaction to the experiments.
What follows is a race against time to find Travis by the military man, Shackleton who just wants to contain him and keep the city safe, the politician Nellis who wants him under the control of the Vanguard Corporation for weapons development, the underground who want to rescue Travis and remove him from the program before he harms himself and others and Kineda who just wants to help his friend out of trouble. But Travis is uncontrollably drawn to Akira who is chanelling Travis’ predisposition to violent outbursts and resentment of authority to mount his own plan to escape from his cryogenic prison and return to the real world, and, as Travis grows more accustomed to the enormous power he now yields, his wanton hubris and newly-inflated ego means he doesn’t want to be contained, developed, rescued or helped. Not by anyone. Not anymore.
I’ve got to say right off the bat that this screenplay is unbelievably faithful to the movie it clearly uses as source material. The setting may have changed to the US but introducing a mixed cast of Americans and Japanese (Travis is ‘Tetsuo’ in the anime, Shackleton is ‘Shikishima’) will no doubt make this adaptation more palatable – and more marketable – to all-comers. Some of the scenes have been switched around, there’s a bit of lengthening or shortening in places, and a couple of new ones have been added but none of it is to the detriment of the story; in fact I rather think it works to strengthen the story structure, resulting in a screenplay that flows pretty effortlessly from scene to scene with greatly improved pacing.
You’ll be pleased to know that the iconic scene of the bike chase culminating in Kineda’s broadside against the backdrop of the city at night is in there, but so are many others like the attack on Travis and Kaori by the Reapers (Clowns), the battle on the bridge between Travis and the soldiers, the fight in the sewers – and the bloody and violent dispatching of all and sundry has not been sanitised or glossed over, on the page at least. The dialogue has obviously been westernised and, as a result, can be a little predictable in places and the burgeoning romance between Kineda and Kay is a little more played out in here but I’ll forgive it both of those if what ends up on the screen matches what can be read on the page.
And there’s the rub.
Original estimates for a live action Akira ran to a budget of $300m which is why it’s been shelved for so long. Advances in filmmaking technology and CGI mean that the budget must be much lower now but I would hope that the ambition of all involved, particularly the studio, have not been diluted. Many of the elements of the anime such as a country in financial ruin, massive political and corporate corruption, relentless growth of the military industrial complex and the media scaremongering of terrorism are so relevant today – arguably moreso than in 1988 when the anime was released – that I hope that the powers that be don’t shy away from the subject matter.
You can argue that Whitta hasn’t brought anything new to the table and undoubtedly there is an opportunity, given the transplanting of the story to the US, to do more to make it relevant to modern audiences, but Akira is as much about spectacular visuals as it is about polemic and as long as whoever eventually helms this film doesn’t make a hash of them then what Whitta has done is given us a very authentic take on the anime, and that is as much as the vast majority of people will ever want.
My rating?
[ ] PASS
[ ] CONSIDER
[X] RECOMMEND
Note: Due to the production status of this film, the screenplay is currently unavailable here.