OK, I’m a Keanu fan. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’ve enjoyed almost every “whoa” the man has uttered in everything from Bill and Ted to the Lake House, but the only word to describe him being cast in Akira would be: BOGUS!
We’ve gone through all sorts of casting rumors for the cinematic monstrosity that the Akira film is destined to be. Leonardo Dicaprio, James Franco, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Robert Pattinson, Michael Fassbender… The list goes on and on… Sure, they are all good actors in their own right, but seriously… This… for lack of a better term… white washing is just not cool.
This isn’t like having Jayden play the Karate Kid… or even Willow Smith play Annie. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what color the characters are in that story. This is more an issue of abandoning the entire cultural background of a story to make it appeal to a western audience.
The equivalent would be like filming a remake of Slumdog Millionaire in Beverly Hills with the cast of MTV’s “The Hills.”