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Old 12-20-2014, 11:45 PM   #1
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George Takei slams Hollywood's Akira

Have at it, gladiators. I'll share my thoughts in a bit.
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Old 12-21-2014, 08:34 AM   #2
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Mixed feelings. On the one hand, I'd rather have a team of talented veteran actors than one of possibly-talented novices, and Takei himself insinuates that we would be receiving the latter were we to go with an all-Asian cast. On the other hand, the fact that Hollywood seems to make no effort to match casted actors with their characters' races is annoying and, in this day and age, feels like a shortcoming we should no longer be chained to.

One problem I have with Takei's side of the fence is that it seems to have no problem grouping entire skin colors together even though the characters in question are more narrowly typified by their ethnicity. For example, Star Trek has notably cast a number of Chinese actors in roles where they portray Japanese or Korean men and women. (Examples include Rosalind Chao, cast as Japanese woman Keiko O'Brien, and Garrett Wang, cast as Korean man Harry Kim.) Why doesn't Takei profess outrage over these mismatches? Why is it okay for a Chinese or Korean man to play Tetsuo but not a Russian or a white American? Don't get me wrong: I agree that the one is at least a better fit than the other given the similar physical appearance. I'm just questioning why it's satisfactory that we stop at skin color and don't go the full ethnic mile.

Another thing for me is, I don't mind it when a foreign country adapts a story to suit their own people -- but if you're going to do that, then you've got to go the full mile. If you're doing it to make the film more accessible to Americans, then telling the story of Akira with an all-white cast is fine. (And telling it with a multiethnic cast is even better.) But if you're going to do that, then you need to change the names of the characters and places as well. It looks and sounds stupid when you have a bunch of clearly Caucasian actors referring to one another as Tetsuo, Kaneda, Kei, Masaru, Takashi, and Kiyoko. This is the same reason why fans tease Capcom's localization of Phoenix Wright games: no changes are made to the patently Japanese culture on display yet the character names, place names, and in some cases item names have been whitewashed. It's also the same reason why American adaptations of Japanese horror films weren't received super poorly: you took a Japanese story, cast white and black actors in the main roles, and then you changed the names to match the characters' new American ethnicity.

I've written in the past about how I feel that Kaiji is ideally suited for a live-action adaptation. (A proper one. Forget the embarrassing, cheesy Japanese films.) The same American audience that enjoyed Prison Break and 24 would absolutely devour Kaiji. But I've also said: if they're to bring it stateside, then I acknowledge the sad-but-true need for them to whitewash the cast. Maybe you could get away with leaving Kaiji Japanese (and rewriting him as a Japanese American), but near about everyone else would need to be given white and black (and so on) actors with American-sounding names. No longer Furuhata but Chauncey, no longer Andou but Phillips, no longer Hyoudou but Stoneway. The games can largely be left intact. The plot likewise can be preserved. But the character and place names would need to be Americaninzed. Why? Because most Americans, I'm sorry to say but this is just the way it is, would not want to watch a television series filled with Asian actors sporting exotic, difficult-to-pronounce-or-remember names.

And it isn't just America. You see this phenomenon everywhere. Taiwanese adaptations of Japanese stories relocate the story to Taiwan and change the characters to be all ethnically Taiwanese. (Example: Hana Yori Dango --> Meteor Garden.) Colombian adaptations of American stories do the same thing for Colombia. (Example: Breaking Bad --> Metastasis.) Chinese adaptations of American stories do the same thing for China. (Example: Friends --> Planet Homebuddies.) Anyone who has ever tried to read Dostoevsky and failed for the overwhelming number of Russian names knows the frustration that comes with trying to read or watch a story that uses nothing but foreign names, names foreign to you specifically. Indeed, I think one of the barriers to entry with watching anime is keeping straight the never-ending list of Japanese names. (It doesn't help newcomers when the names can be so similar too. Miyazawa vs. Miyazaki vs. Miyamoto, Tamura vs. Kimura, Tanaka vs. Tanabe, and so on.)

So if they had wanted to adapt Akira for an American cinema audience, I wouldn't necessarily have minded (or even now mind) the decision to cast established stars over wild card Asian actors -- but then they should have retooled the names and the setting as well. And maybe they still plan to! But yeah, don't cast Chris Pines and call him Kaneda. Don't cast Robert Pattinson and call him Tetsuo. It's distracting.

Last edited by Talon87; 12-21-2014 at 08:40 AM.
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Old 12-21-2014, 06:20 PM   #3
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Takei's attitude, from what I gleaned when Star Trek came out in 2009, was that John Cho was alright to portray Sulu even though he's Korean, not because "Americans can't tell the difference between Asians" (which has been levied as a kind of racism in support of white-washing casts) but that any major motion picture penetration by Asians is good. Even as a general group they're still fairly under-represented in films, and Akira is a case in point as to why that's the case.

Legendary Pictures didn't have a tough time putting Japanese actors/actresses in Godzilla, but it would be accurate to say there are no Japanese A-list stars in Hollywood today. If there were a bunch of prominent Japanese or Japanese American actors/actresses, and they still chose to white-wash it, I think Takei is 100% in the right to bash the movie.

As is, he's maybe 60% right, because while I'm not opposed to white-washing, producers have to do it all the way. Having white guys with Japanese names is awkward as fudge.
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Old 12-21-2014, 06:24 PM   #4
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I don't think Takei is wrong. It's a fairly valid point he makes that Asian roles are replaced with white actors.

Talon mentions how we'd have to take a chance with a wild card. The problem is, if more roles were made available for Asian actors, maybe that actor wouldn't be a wild card. Maybe if Tom Cruise wasn't cast for the lead role of Edge of Tomorrow, we could have discovered a new Asian American actor to take the role in Akira. Don't get me wrong, Tom Cruise isn't a terrible actor (just a terrible person), but his role didn't make it necessary for only a white person. Any ethnicity could have taken his role in that film.

And don't get me wrong. If a role calls for an actor of a specific ethnicity to make sense, then it should be. Like when Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson was playing Hercules in his last flop. A Black Samoan playing a greek? It's weird. I had lots of friends tell me outright that they felt it was awkward and decided not to see it despite being fans of The Rock.

And while the argument can be made that Taiwan and China and wherever hires their own people for localized adaptations, those countries are not as ethnically diverse as the United States. We have Asian actors. None are even being placed into consideration.
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Old 01-10-2015, 07:21 AM   #5
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If they go for the, "Cast white actors, change names to be more Western" it would work out well since Akira isn't actually a character in the movie, it's just an organism or something. So they wouldn't have to rename the whole movie to "STEVE".
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Old 01-12-2015, 04:25 AM   #6
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Spoilery, but Akira was definitely a person, just not during the events of the film.

Spoiler: show
Akira was a boy who developed uncontrollable psychic powers and accidentally destroyed Tokyo with a psychokinetic explosion. By the time of the movie, he had been vivisected by the government to understand his powers, which they could not. He only returns at the very end as a kind ascended psychic spirit.
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