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Takeshi Miike Makes Possibly the Best Action Movie Shot on iPhone

Takeshi Miike directed Midnight from a manga by Tezuka Osuma, possibly the best action movie shot on an iPhone 15 Pro

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Article Summary

  • Takeshi Miike directs 'Midnight', an iPhone 15 Pro-shot action film.
  • The movie adapts a lesser-known manga by 'Astro Boy' creator Osamu Tezuka.
  • 'Midnight' showcases iPhone 15 Pro's capabilities with Miike's dynamic filmmaking.
  • Miike's love for Tezuka shines in this 20-minute, action-packed story.

You never know what Takeshi Miike will do next as a movie, much less make a 20-minute action movie called Midnight on an iPhone 15 Pro. Well, that's what he and Apple suddenly sprang on us out of nowhere. The other surprise? It's from one of the most little-known manga by God of Manga Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro Boy, which has was recreated in the gritty award-winning reboot Pluto by Naoki Urusawa, which just got a faithful anime adaptation on Netflix.

Takeshi Miike Does Not "Phone" it In

Midnight is about a psychic taxi driver with a souped-up car full of fancy gadgets that would make James Bond and Batman drool with envy. He comes across a teenage girl who took over her murdered father's trucking company and reluctantly helps her fight Yakuza hitmen out to grab his company, as you do when you're a cool, laconic loner with a fancy car. It's the code, bro. One of the vicious hitmen has a glove puppet who's his equally vicious partner and brother, as you do. Shenanigans ensue as a Takeshi Miike movie always requires. That's his thing.

Takeshi Miike Makes Possibly the Best Action Movie Shot on iPhone
"Midnight," directed by Takeshi Miike, still courtesy of Apple

Filmmaking on an iPhone Can be the Complete Package

Midnight is one of the nuttiest short films Apple has sponsored to show off what the latest iPhone Pro is capable of. It's a marketing ploy but a fun one, and Takeshi Miike has made possibly the best action movie ever shot on an iPhone. It's there to show off everything the new iPhone 15 Pro is capable of in terms of movement, capturing colours, frantic action, and image stabilisation like it's a full-fledged movie camera and mini-studio. It also displays all the trademarks of a Miike movie: two young lovers on the run from the Yakuza, frantic action, goofy but dangerous bad guys, beautiful camerawork and editing, and these days, a seamless merging of deliberately goofy CGI with live-action. Of course, Apple is happy to supply a making-of video – also shot on the iPhone 15 Pro – to show exactly how Miike made the short. At 20 minutes, it tells a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end better than most two-and-a-half-hour Hollywood blockbusters do.

The Passion of Takeshi Miike

You might think Miike, the director of horror classic Audition, the superhero-horror dark comedy Ichi the Killer, and the brilliant remake of the classic Samurai epic 13 Assassins, might be slumming it, but in the making-of, he can barely contain his excitement at adapting the manga as he cites Tezuka as one of his idols. Miike is a director for whom no project is too small or trivial, and you can tell from Midnight that he made it as a labour of love as much as he was making a blockbuster.

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Adi TantimedhAbout Adi Tantimedh

Adi Tantimedh is a filmmaker, screenwriter and novelist. He wrote radio plays for the BBC Radio, “JLA: Age of Wonder” for DC Comics, “Blackshirt” for Moonstone Books, and “La Muse” for Big Head Press. Most recently, he wrote “Her Nightly Embrace”, “Her Beautiful Monster” and “Her Fugitive Heart”, a trilogy of novels featuring a British-Indian private eye published by Atria Books, a division Simon & Schuster.
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