My wife and I just watched Luc Besson’s Lucy. I had no idea it was basically Akira meets Serial Experiments Lain. The bit at the end with the mutant tentacles and computers… clearly, Luc Besson is a dude who likes his Japanese animes.
But that’s good! It means they can abandon those idiotic plans for a straight adaptation of Akira. This one starred Scarlett Johannson. And anyway, Akira was about ’80s Japan reconciling their anxiety over being victims of the atom bomb at the end of WWII with the compromises involved in becoming the world’s most vibrant economy four decades later. Trying to distill that into a film would be as pointless as, say, a film adaptation of V for Vendetta that has nothing whatsoever to do with the rise of neo-fascism in Thatcher’s England.
Also, I was thrilled to learn that cell phones transmit data via laser-focused beams directly to satellite, which can then be shuffled through like the poster racks at Hot Topic. Who says Hollywood isn’t educational?
Okay, I want to see this now.
If you want another film that might as well be an American take on Akira, check out Chronicle. Don’t know how it measures against Lucy, which didn’t look interesting enough to me, but it’s a worthwhile watch.