Ghost in the Shell (live action film)

I think they did a good job of condensing the essence of just about all the anime into a hundred and seven minutes.

And talk about a rational antagonist you can sympathize with. . . .

 

I hardly ever post, but I just need to get it "out in the air" that this movie is great! It borrowed a little something (or in some cases a lot) from just about every incarnation of the franchise, yet still managed to tell its own story, and it was a good one. This franchise always retools a bit when moving from one medium to another, so doing that is fine. I was afraid that they would make the transition to live action film badly, but just the opposite is true. The end of this movie may not be as cerebral as the original, but it is much more human. I actually teared up at a Ghost in the Shell movie. I don't get this Rotten Tomatoes 43% thing. That site is becoming a negative barometer for me. Anyway, highly recommended. I hope it does well and we get a sequel.

 

Seeing it tomorrow and I'm super excited for it.

 

It got me too. Especially the prostitute scene, which was not what we expected from the trailer.

 

A $19m opening for a $110m-budgeted movie... sounds like a spooky "ghost" story to me. (Sorry.) (Okay, not really.) Maybe the US trailers should have explained the title? Not that it's hugely enigmatic or anything, but it's probably an odd one to those unfamiliar with the source. (Giving a sense of an actual story might have helped, too.) Oh, and... The Guardian:

“We had hopes for better results domestically. I think the conversation regarding casting impacted the reviews,” said Kyle Davies, domestic distribution chief for Paramount.

“You’ve got a movie that is very important to the fanboys since it’s based on a Japanese anime movie."​

Somebody should probably tell this asshat that calling your prospective genre audience "fanboys" is not quite the way to win them over.

 

Question: Was anyone who saw the movie affected by the supposed "yellow facing"/"whitewashing" by the movie?

I plan to see this movie here in Tokyo when it opens on Friday. Despite being an Asian-American, I'm not affected by the casting of Scarlett Johansson to play the body of a cyborg in a big-budget SF movie. Some Japanese (or other Asian) actresses might have done as well or better, but I assume she was cast so the movie would do financially well in the US and around the world. Both the Japanese writer of the manga and the director of the original movies say they're not bothered by her either. In what little Japanese anime and manga I've seen, the characters have big round eyes and tiny mouths and look as Japanese as an average Disney character. (On the other hand, King Kong, when he fought Godzilla, looked kind of Asian to me!)

 

It didn't bother me and there is an in-universe adress of it in the movie.

It got to me when we finally hear her name.

 

@Masao
Looked to me to be an unspecified multicultural Asian country.

 

Saw it today. I gave up bothering with the 3D versions of movies a couple of years ago, but wish I had done with this! Fantastic visuals throughout

 

I clapped.

On the other hand, they omitted the lesbian kiss from the trailer, which becomes a sort of uncomfortable reminder of similar minimization of already limited gay content in Star Trek Beyond and Beauty and the Beast.

 

Sounds like the perfect material for a director's cut double-dip. They'll need the extra DVD revenue if last weekend is anything to go by.

 

I thought it was nice that the story wasn't cluttered with romance or sexuality. I didn't notice that aspect until the next day.

 

If they wanted that, perhaps they would have gone with adapting Appleseed instead.

 

I think it mattered to a lot of actresses of Asian descent, because roles in movies like "Ghost in the Shell" would have meant more jobs for them. Let's be honest. If you're not white, but live in the West; your chances of a more successful acting career in Hollywood or even Europe is not as strong as it would if you were white. And having white performers in roles that originated as non white characters does not help matters.

 

Watched it last night, and while I liked it, I also had major issues with it, especially the ending. For clarification, I have not read the original comic or watched any of the other adaptation aside from the 90s film, which I love. So, maybe my problem isn't necessarily with this movie, but with the source material with which I'm unfamiliar.

Spoiler: Since there's no spoiler warning in the thread title, I'll talk about my issues under a spoiler tag:

What I liked about the 90s movie was that it had an open end. Major had transferred into the body looking like a young girl and was now looking for her real past. Every form of authority in that movie is questioned, and in the end only Batou was to be trusted.

This movie told us her true past. But at this point, I was still okay with it. It was the ending that really ticked me off.

So it's not the system that's evil, not the government, not even her chief (who, though terrifically portrayed by Takeshi Kitano, is not nearly as shady as he was in the 90s movie). And not even the company that build her. It was all just this one guy who was the villain, and once the good guys took him down, everything was fine again. In this movie, Major literally ends were she started. All hail the Status quo.

But wait, she is allowed some final words in narration. How not memories define us, but our actions do. Except, of course, that our actions should be informed by our memories. Like her false memories about her non-existing parents being killed by terrorists informed her actions as a hunter of terrorists for the government in the beginning of the movie. And then she finds out that those memories were false and ... continues to hunt terrorists for the government.

This is even more troubling considering her original identity was a revolutionary living outside the system. So while villain of the piece was killed, he still succeeded in conforming the non-conformist.

 

^Poacher turned gamekeeper -- she's now part of a different tribe.

At least it seems no one can object that the original shell wasn't correctly cast in this film.

 

It seems to be that it's mainly bored white people who are making a big deal of this and 'Death Note' by screaming whitewashing. Japan is apathetic to it as are other Asian countries.

 

Social Justice Warriors are all about getting offended on behalf of people who they think might get offended.
That said, and not being a SJW, I wasn't exactly offended, I just thought it was dumb to cast a Scandanavian as a traditionally Japanese character. I did wonder of Japanese people would get offended, but if you say they don't care, then the hell with it.

 

I didn't have to suspend my disbelief that Scar-Jo was the Major. I've noticed there are subtle differences between each iteration's characterizations. The anime movie Major is a little different than the manga Major. The SAC Major is slightly different than those, and the Arise Major has more distinct differences than the rest, and the one I favor. Scarlett appears to embody the Arise and SAC variants the most. She had the combat movements of the SAC Major, and when she was looking down at sleeping Oulette, she had the still creepiness of the Arise Major.

Don't know how Scarlett Johansson was chosen for the role, but I think she nailed it.

Now if they had put in a hologram somewhere of Bill Murry selling whisky. . .

 

The Major more or less as she appears in the first season of "Stand Alone Complex". I used Aiko 3 and pieces from a few different clothing sets inspired by that ensemble. I used editing tools to reshape a generic "bowl cut" hairpiece into her distinctive hairstyle. Rendered in Poser.

BTW, I saw the film last night so I no longer have to worry about stumbling into "spoilers".