'Ghost in the Shell' Live Action(?) Hollywood Edition

[Liver and Onions]

Now I'm thinking I may have to see the film just for Batou and Aramaki. I'll wait for Netflix. 

With regards to the whitewashing, I find it funny that Scarlet Johannson seems to have the star power for a GITS adaption, a film with a built-in but perhaps niche audience, and yet there's no Black Widow movie on the line. (My brother actually thought the Lucy trailer was a Black Widow film at first.) 

[williamjm]

9 minutes ago, Liver and Onions said:

With regards to the whitewashing, I find it funny that Scarlet Johannson seems to have the star power for a GITS adaption, a film with a built-in but perhaps niche audience, and yet there's no Black Widow movie on the line. (My brother actually thought the Lucy trailer was a Black Widow film at first.) 

I agree the lack of Black Widow film does seem a bit weird, I can see why they maybe didn't introduce the character with her own film but now that she's so well established you would think they could do something.

Speaking of Lucy, it does seem a bit of a shame that GitS is doing so much worse than that at the box office, while I might not think the plot or script is GitS's strongest point, it is far better than the incoherent mess that is the Lucy screenplay.

[Calibandar]

12 hours ago, Liver and Onions said:

Now I'm thinking I may have to see the film just for Batou and Aramaki. I'll wait for Netflix. 

With regards to the whitewashing, I find it funny that Scarlet Johannson seems to have the star power for a GITS adaption, a film with a built-in but perhaps niche audience, and yet there's no Black Widow movie on the line. (My brother actually thought the Lucy trailer was a Black Widow film at first.) 

Black Widow is the least interesting character on The Avengers alongside Hawk-Eye.

It's possibly not deemed to be interesting enough to be given a shot.

 

[red snow]

4 minutes ago, Calibandar said:

Black Widow is the least interesting character on The Avengers alongside Hawk-Eye.

It's possibly not deemed to be interesting enough to be given a shot.

 

And they've plugged Captain America into the spy role making it trickier to make a film that's doing something different. Even though all the films have the same template they do tend to explore different genres.

That said if Ant man can have a film, Black Widow can.

[Leofric]

I watched it on Sunday and thought it was pretty good.  However, I never watched any of original Ghost in the Shell movies or shows, so it was all new to me.  

The whitewashing is almost explained in the movie.  A bunch of white scientists led by a white CEO are building a synthetic body and trying to get it to fuse with a human brain.   They discard the original bodies and try to purge brains of their original memories, so why would they try to match the race of the victim's old body to the new synthetic one.  They tried 98 times before they created the Major.   I doubt they would  create unique bodies for each attempt to match each person, just use male and female templates.  So Scarlett Johannson was the female template and Michael Pitt was the male template, so it didn't matter that Motoko and Hideo were originally Japanese, the Hanka scientists didn't care.

 

 

 

[Lord Varys]

6 hours ago, Leofric said:

The whitewashing is almost explained in the movie.  A bunch of white scientists led by a white CEO are building a synthetic body and trying to get it to fuse with a human brain.   They discard the original bodies and try to purge brains of their original memories, so why would they try to match the race of the victim's old body to the new synthetic one.  They tried 98 times before they created the Major.   I doubt they would  create unique bodies for each attempt to match each person, just use male and female templates.  So Scarlett Johannson was the female template and Michael Pitt was the male template, so it didn't matter that Motoko and Hideo were originally Japanese, the Hanka scientists didn't care.

It is not a good explanation in the context of the story, though. This is a dystopian future where history put the colonies back into place (the US have had another civil war and fractured into at least two nations). Japan is instead on the rise, and it is very - let's say unlikely - that the government there would allow some arrogant prick like the evil CEO to build their new bodies not in the image of the people for whom they were making those (the Japanese).

It is also weird that only one guy in Japan would actually speak Japanese. English isn't that popular a language.

But in general this whole 'Let's make a cyborg body' thing is part of crap plot. The story here has cyberbrains and cyberization as already part of established (popular) culture. Motoko is just one of many people who have a full cyborg body (and, in fact, also a large part of her brain replaced by cyber implants). That is part of the background of the original animé movies and series (as well as the original manga) on which the actual interesting plots and stories take place.

This is not about evil corporations but the merging of and differences between humans and machines.

[Red Tiger]

10 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

It is not a good explanation in the context of the story, though. This is a dystopian future where history put the colonies back into place (the US have had another civil war and fractured into at least two nations). Japan is instead on the rise, and it is very - let's say unlikely - that the government there would allow some arrogant prick like the evil CEO to build their new bodies not in the image of the people for whom they were making those (the Japanese).

It is also weird that only one guy in Japan would actually speak Japanese. English isn't that popular a language.

But in general this whole 'Let's make a cyborg body' thing is part of crap plot. The story here has cyberbrains and cyberization as already part of established (popular) culture. Motoko is just one of many people who have a full cyborg body (and, in fact, also a large part of her brain replaced by cyber implants). That is part of the background of the original animé movies and series (as well as the original manga) on which the actual interesting plots and stories take place.

This is not about evil corporations but the merging of and differences between humans and machines.

The fact that Miria being Motoko is played as some vast revelation only makes the movie that much dumber.

[Pliskin]

20 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

It is also weird that only one guy in Japan would actually speak Japanese. English isn't that popular a language.

Do we even know it takes place in Japan? I never got it from the film. They just say "this country". Did I miss it?
The fact that only Kitano spoke Japanese was a nice touch, and added to the charisma of the character. What bothered me more is the casting of Togusa. He looks typically not-Japanese, they couldn't have picked someone more offending in the "Asians all look the same" trope. Batou was great though, and I still can't believe it's the same actor as Euron. The transformation for the film is impressive.

I liked it by the way. My only quibble is with Kuze. I just can't, for the sake of me, understand why they called him that. Why not just keep the Puppet Master? Going from an admirable and decent Kuze to a despicable piece of shit who hacks people and throws them off when he's done felt like an insult for a character that I like so much in the show.

I'm not as critical as most people to the cliché evil corporation story they added.  I mean, the original movie didn't even have what I would call a story, so they had to make something up. And it's not that bad.

I think it's a good homage, more so with the pleasant surprise that they kept the iconic scenes identical.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Pliskin said:

Do we even know it takes place in Japan? I never got it from the film. They just say "this country". Did I miss it?

Well, the fact that the mother was Japanese, apparently living in a very traditional Japanese way sort of suggest this. Not to mention the fact that they have a Prime Minister and a lot of Asian people running around.

1 hour ago, Pliskin said:

The fact that only Kitano spoke Japanese was a nice touch, and added to the charisma of the character. What bothered me more is the casting of Togusa. He looks typically not-Japanese, they couldn't have picked someone more offending in the "Asians all look the same" trope. Batou was great though, and I still can't believe it's the same actor as Euron. The transformation for the film is impressive.

Batou isn't Japanese. He is actually American, at least in the animé series. I did not recognize that he was Euron at all. But then, I only watched season 6 once.

1 hour ago, Pliskin said:

I liked it by the way. My only quibble is with Kuze. I just can't, for the sake of me, understand why they called him that. Why not just keep the Puppet Master? Going from an admirable and decent Kuze to a despicable piece of shit who hacks people and throws them off when he's done felt like an insult for a character that I like so much in the show.

I guess because the guy from the movie was definitely not the Puppet Master. He had neither the same goals nor the same origin story. If I remember correctly the Puppet Master was an artificially created KI which had developed the ability to hack and take over cyberbrains. The movie had nothing to do with that.

1 hour ago, Pliskin said:

I'm not as critical as most people to the cliché evil corporation story they added.  I mean, the original movie didn't even have what I would call a story, so they had to make something up. And it's not that bad.

The animé movie is slow-going but they could easily enough have made a proper remake of that by exploring on the philosophical questions, the characters, as well as the world-building. They did some of that in the latter department but not in the former.

[Pliskin]

49 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, the fact that the mother was Japanese, apparently living in a very traditional Japanese way sort of suggest this. Not to mention the fact that they have a Prime Minister and a lot of Asian people running around.

It's a cosmopolite society. Lot of white and black people running around too, you know. And refugees coming from everywhere.

50 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Batou isn't Japanese. He is actually American, at least in the animé series. I did not recognize that he was Euron at all. But then, I only watched season 6 once.

Never said he was. I was talking about Togusa (a bit disappointed that they never showed the family man aspect of the character, btw). And yes, Euron wasn't recognizable as Batou, that was my second point.

52 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

I guess because the guy from the movie was definitely not the Puppet Master. He had neither the same goals nor the same origin story. If I remember correctly the Puppet Master was an artificially created KI which had developed the ability to hack and take over cyberbrains. The movie had nothing to do with that.

It wouldn't have hurt to call him The Puppet Master. He still uses puppets. It's just a title. But taking the name of an established character, for a completely different beast, is just... off-putting, for someone who knows the franchise. It really bothered me to see Hideo Kuze lowered to this level.

[Liver and Onions]

It has occurred to me that switching Motoko Kusanagi to Mira Killian is pretty much what companies were doing to anime they wanted to get on TV, since, what, Astro Boy? GIgantor? Hikaru Ichijo becomes Rick Hunter, Usagi Tsukino becomes Serena, Satoshi becomes Ash Ketchum, and now Motoko is Mira. Imagine, had they tried to get GITS: SAC on TV in the early nineties, that might have well happened!  

 

[The Anti-Targ]

5 hours ago, Pliskin said:

Do we even know it takes place in Japan? I never got it from the film. They just say "this country". Did I miss it?
The fact that only Kitano spoke Japanese was a nice touch, and added to the charisma of the character. What bothered me more is the casting of Togusa. He looks typically not-Japanese, they couldn't have picked someone more offending in the "Asians all look the same" trope. Batou was great though, and I still can't believe it's the same actor as Euron. The transformation for the film is impressive.

I liked it by the way. My only quibble is with Kuze. I just can't, for the sake of me, understand why they called him that. Why not just keep the Puppet Master? Going from an admirable and decent Kuze to a despicable piece of shit who hacks people and throws them off when he's done felt like an insult for a character that I like so much in the show.

I'm not as critical as most people to the cliché evil corporation story they added.  I mean, the original movie didn't even have what I would call a story, so they had to make something up. And it's not that bad.

I think it's a good homage, more so with the pleasant surprise that they kept the iconic scenes identical.

Technically it takes place in Wellington. Apparently there are identifiable bits of Wellington in some scenes, which for those of us capable of recognising it might be a bit jarring given the kind of stylised/otherworldly setting for the movie. But then again, we could just imagine that the setting really is a dystopian, sci-fi imaging of a future Wellington.

ScarJo was here, and she particularly liked the chocolate cake.

[Aemon Stark]

I don't expect I'll get around to seeing this, but it strikes me that the source material itself was always going to be challenging to adapt (whitewashing aside). 

The original movie is visually arresting and consistently thoughtful. I'd call it elegiac at times. But it's also slow, talky, with characters who rarely "come to life" and with dialogue delving into far too much dry existentialism. It's interesting, to be sure, but also inaccessible. 

[Rippounet]

Finally saw it a few days ago. Exactly what I expected. Excellent visuals overall but the scenario is a complete massacre of the source material.

The one redeeming quality of the movie is the way that it reproduces some of the iconic scenes from the manga/movies and keeps the characters relatively faithful to the originals (Batou and his love for dogs was a nice touch imo)... Except for the most important one of course.

The actors do a decent job all in all, but it's hard to project excellent characters in a shitty plot.

[The Anti-Targ]

it had 2 chances of making its money back after the USA turned out to be a flop. China, which probably doesn't particularly dig Japanese stories unless told really well (cf Warcraft and The Great Wall), and Japan.

Looks like the verdict is in from both of these markets, And while it didn't do horribly in China, it didn't do anywhere near good enough for China to save the movie financially. And it totally bombed in Japan, the Japanese audience has rejected this movie hard. Depending on how the year goes for movies in Japan it will probably fall someone between 50 and 60 for the top grossing movies of 2017.

What does this mean for ambitions for similar adaptations? Harder to get green lit? lower budgets? Continue to make disappointing adaptations that miss the mark and fail financially? Probably all of those things.