A new “Astro Boy’’? Why not? If the movies can bring Alvin and the Chipmunks back from the pop-culture dead, what’s wrong with digitally reviving a character who deserves a second career? Especially when the results are as promising, if as bizarrely conflicted, as this.
The movie actually represents the third iteration, more or less, of the superhero rocket-boy. While most Americans of a certain age remember the animated TV episodes that ran in syndication from 1963 until the sprockets wore out in the early 1970s, “Astro Boy’’ originated in a 1951 Japanese comic book by Osamu Tezuka, the founder of the wide-eyed manga style that now overruns the earth. There have been two other TV versions (1980 and 2003) but the original manga (since translated into English and highly recommended) and the black-and-white TV show are Astro Boy’s twin power sources.
