Akira takes place in Tokyo, decades after it's been completely devastated and eventually rebuilt. The location wasn't picked at random: That specific setting has great significance to the story, which revolves around the brutal, violently changing forms of its protagonist, Tetsuo. It's a movie that explores what people are, what civilization brings with it, how progress changes us, and why that's not always for the better. But it absolutely has to take place in Tokyo, Japan's most iconic and permanent settlement, otherwise it means nothing. You can't just do a line, close your eyes, spin a globe, stop it with your dick, and expect the story to work just fine wherever it lands, jaded Hollywood producers.

Why did you think a race change was even necessary?

Humanity is basically an international culture now. Japan isn't a place so foreign to us that we can't relate to them as human beings. It's where our video games come from. It's where Mario lives. It's a plane ticket or a Skype call away. If you wanted to, you could do a quick Google search right now, and flip over to a webcam dedicated to watching them poop. That's about as intimate as you can get with another society. We're okay with Asians, Hollywood: They're no longer a mysterious and inscrutable society that fills us with fear and wonder. We don't think they feel rage with their feet, or hover when depressed or anything -- we generally assume they have human emotions and human struggles just like everybody else. Chow Yun Fat had a career over here, remember? Lucy Liu? Hell, Ong Bak even did okay in American theaters, and that was a movie about a guy who did feel rage with his feet.

So when you're needlessly remaking movies in the future, remember that you can leave the setting and ethnicity of the characters alone, just so long as you change all of the dialogue to English, lest we spot a subtitle and are forced to flee the theater, slapping at the air like bees are chasing us. (SIDE NOTE: It might also be okay to tone down the weirdness at the end of Akira a little. In general, American audiences won't really get the significance of the whole "teenager can't handle evolving into a higher form and explodes into a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man of cancerous throbbing organs" plot device. That's just not a thing, here. We prefer our ambiguous supernatural endings to be people either becoming or disappearing into amorphous light beams, thanks.)