Chronicle

has anybody else seen this?

I just finished watching it and absolutely loved it.

It's heavily influenced by Akira, but in my opinion it's infinitely better than Akira.

 

As a movie it does work better than Akira. Although its direction feels much more impersonal at least it didn' t try to fit six phone books worth of pages into a two hours movie. Not to mention its characters and their anxieties are grounded in contemporary US rather than in eighties' Japan, which makes no big difference to me but is much easier to relate to for a mainstream audience (especially for an American audience).

Chronicles was definitely enjoyable to watch, but unfortunately I read Akira years ago and several times so it didn' t feel terribly fresh to me. Also, it doesn' t push its subtext nearly as far, but then it' s perfectly understandable for a two hours movie.

 

One of the reasons I didn't care for Akira that much was because I didn't understand why Tetsuo acted the way he did. Maybe if I knew more about what Japan was like in the 80's it would make more sense? I don't know, I just found the motivations in Akira to be forced. Then again I haven't read Akira, so probably works better there than on screen.

I showed it to my friend and his overall reaction was "meh."

 

Well, the story of Akira begins right after a nuclear disaster and ends with the anarchist society arising from the story ashes telling international help volunteers, especially the American ones, to GTFO. Post WW2 Japan commentary spotted. There' s also a lot of subtext regarding the behavior of military, cops, politicians, religious leaders, scientists and teachers.

Although Chronicles' characters aren' t orphans nor part of a bikers gang (so not nearly as violent and not lacking mother/father figures) they struggle with the same kind of issues to some extent. Basically Andrew is Tetsuo, Matt is Kaneda and Steve is Yamagata.

Tetsuo acted the way he did for the same reasons as Andrew : society keeps telling him that he' s worthless and that it won' t change anytime soon, anything he does to prove them wrong is a very bad idea and/or turns against him (so naturally he ends up not wanting to even be part of it), he and his friends have a lot of miscommunication issues and he' s ashamed of still being a virgin (because of your average teenager alpha male obsession, it' s quite universal), and finally his intoxication for his newfound druggy powers leads to tragic accidents whenever he gets emotional, sending him for good in an egotistical, out of control power spin.

Replace psychic powers with guns and see how well the story works as a commentary of contemporary America.

 

That must be told better in the manga because i didnt get any of that out of the movie.
The movie tells it like the reason Tetsuo goes crazy is because he is tired of Kaneda looking out for him and wants to prove responsibility.

I got the parallels between the Akira and Chronicle characters, but that's about it.
From the way you describe it it seems as though the movie took many liberties, such as psychic powers.

 

Oh, the psychic powers were in the manga too, my gun comment was just a remark as to how such a recipe for disaster would translate irl.

 

O ok, that makes more sense.

 

I enjoyed the movie. I saw it a little bit after it came out, so my memory may be a little fuzzy, but it combined "found footage" with actual movie filming, right?

If i'm wrong, I bet I sound really stupid.

 

yes. this is my first expierence with found footage, so im not sure how its handled in other movies, but the way its handled here is fantastic. its less of a gimmick and more of a plot device to serve andrews characterzation. this kinda falls flat in the final scenes, but that part is so awesome i dont care.

i can only think of one instance where it used standard filming