I was recently watching the movie Akira which turns 30 this year. I’d seen it a handful of times before and have read the manga the film is based on, but watching it this time brought a kind of new light to me with the modern superhero movie.
Both Akira and the modern superhero film are similar in terms of story and structure. In each there are people who posses some fantastical abilities living in a modern day world. I think the difference is that whereas the stakes of the superhero movie is low — the stakes of Akira are high.
In Akira, it’s 2019 and the world is recovering from a third world war. Tokyo, destroyed at the start of the conflict, is now a megapolis and is getting ready to host the next Olympics. (Which is actually happening, the 2020 Olympics are really going to be in Tokyo.) The city is rife with revolution, corruption and gangs battling it out on the freeways, one of which is led by Kaneda with his right-hand-man Tetsuo. As a motorcycle battle is taking place between Kaneda’s gang and another, Tetsuo crashes into a boy that has all the features of an elderly adult and somehow gains immense powers.
As government agents try and stop Tetsuo while revolutionaries in Tokyo begin to rally around him, the only question is whether or not the even more powerful Akira who was the reason the third world war started in the first place will arrive and bring peace to the planet or will return and wipe everything out this time?
Admittedly, from my western sensibilities the story of Akira is bit odd, especially with Tetsuo gaining these powers after an accident and such. Then again, is that really any more weird than getting superpowers via being bitten by a radioactive spider or being exposed to a gamma-ray bomb?
Regardless of how anyone gets their powers, in Akira the stakes of the story are high. The threat of Akira isn’t just that he’s powerful enough to end the world, the real threat is that he’d change the power structure of the planet too. Gone would be all the democracies, republics and communist regimes, instead replaced with Akira and his godlike powers. It’s not so much the death and destruction the governments fear from him, they can deal with that, it’s Akira’s absolute rule of the planet being revered as a walking deity that scares them.
In superhero movies there’s almost always the threat of a world-ending apocalypse too. But it’s usually just that, if the superhero fail then the world ends and we all die. But story-wise, once the superheroes save the planet once, where else can the next movie go since stories really can’t get bigger than the planet being in peril?
Marvel movies are especially guilty of this. The first Iron Man was the title character versus the Iron Monger, another dude in a metal suit. In The Incredible Hulk, the next Marvel film chronologically, it was him verses the Abomination. Another hulking beast. But ever since the stories of the movies have become about world ending threats again and again and again with the heroes pulling victory out of the jaws of defeat every time.
Almost more importantly than these world ending scenarios in Akira there are consequences to the violence depicted on-screen. Characters die bloody deaths, sometimes major characters too. Whereas in most superhero movies there may be deaths but they’re relatively bloodless secondary-characters that happen to move the story along. In Akira death and destruction sometimes just suddenly happen out of the blue just like in real life.
I hate comparing Akira and the modern superhero movie since they’re almost two different beasts. For the most part modern superhero movies are fun, yet very expensive, action films directed at a family audience. On the other hand Akira is a heavy movie that’s not meant for the PG–13 crowd. Still, there are enough similarities between the two that made me think they might be more similar than dissimilar.
I do wonder in a few years what will happen when all the kids who grew up with the modern superhero movie, are teens and headed towards adulthood? What will they seek out when tame superhero movies aren’t enough for them? Will superhero movies evolve with them into something new? Something more adult? Or will the creators of those films continue doing what they’ve been successfully doing the last decade and ride their success right into the ground?
