Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders)

[TGM]

GHOST IN THE SHELL

Director: Rupert Sanders

imdb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219827/?ref_=nv_sr_1)

[TGM]

Congrats Duke, I didn't like this one either. :p

So it's been a while since I've seen the original anime movie, but I have seen it a number of times, and I never recall being nearly so bored watching that movie as I was watching this. For a movie about finding your true humanity, this really is such a slog of a lifeless movie.

As to the plot, again, it's been a good while since I've seen the original, so I'm not too refreshed on the source material, though I do recall bits and pieces of it. So I want to say that there are definitely changes here, but again, I'm not 100% on just how much (and now I wish I had re-watched the original before going into this). However, there are also quite a few scenes that are certainly ripped straight from the source, and, well, some of them work (when she takes on the spider-tank at the end is probably the highlight of the movie for me), but most of them are honestly just really sorta visually awkward and overly-busy.

It'd be a passable action flick if it weren't so boring, and I'm not really even sure what made this movie as boring for me as it was, because again, I don't recall ever growing bored watching the original. Perhaps it was the lifeless performances (I thought Scarlett Johansson was an uninspired casting decision as soon as it was first announced, and that feeling still remains the same after having seen the movie), or maybe it's just that this material doesn't quite work in live action the way it did in animation? I dunno, I've been trying to think why this movie didn't really work for me, but I haven't really been able to come up with anything, just that it didn't.

The movie does address the whole "white washing" aspect however, and it actually becomes a plot point within the movie itself, which I thought was kinda interesting. Kinda weird, too, but still, kinda interesting. But yeah, this was a bit of a dud. Though, I have seen this getting quite the mixed reaction. Going on twitter afterwards, I saw everything from "this movie was AMAZING! SEE IT IMMEDIATELY!" to "this movie was absolute GARBAGE. FUCK THIS MOVIE." As for me? I'm sorta somewhere in the middle myself, giving it a solid meh/10. *shrug*

[TGM]

So my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to revisit the original Ghost in the Shell. And damn, rewatching the original only highlights just how dumbed down, lifeless, ill-advised, and awkward the new movie actually is. It also showed me just how radically different the 2 versions actually are, despite the movie stealing specific scenes here and there. I've also heard that it borrows from the other movies and TV shows, which I've never seen, so I can't say how much is taken from those, and how much is purely this movie's own original ideas, but I was surprised by how little of this came from the original movie.

And rewatching the original also showed just how terrible Scarlett Johansson actually was here, as she brought absolutely nothing at all to her lifeless performance. But even beyond her character, I thought all the other characters and their various relationship dynamics were far more well defined in the original as compared to the new movie, despite having a significantly shorter runtime to develop them.

But just in terms of the execution of its themes and ideas, this new movie feels like a real stripped down and Americanized blockbuster-ization version of the original, and it really doesn't hold together at all. All told, the original was way ahead of its time, while meanwhile, this new one is already outdated on arrival.

[Ivan Drago]

It starts out promising with a great title sequence, and it has cool visual effects and style choices throughout along with an awesome score....but good lord, is it a slog to get invested in this slow, boring story. It's just too cold for its own good. All style, no substance.

[Stay Puft]

I'm in no rush to see this, but since it's on my mind and some of you were already doing it, I just finished rewatching the 1995 anime. And, wow, I love it even more now as an adult. I definitely could not appreciate this as much when I was younger. That chase scene at the beginning is pretty great, but the part that really grabbed me was the montage immediately following the conversation on the boat ("For now we see through a glass, darkly"), when it's just a couple minutes or whatever of music and random shots of the city at night. Such a beautiful, meditative cinematic passage. It was rapturous. I fell head or heels in love with this thing. I still think it's almost frustratingly short, and would actually benefit from more time to explore some of the themes, but I'm also impressed that it brings so many ideas from the manga into an 80 or so minute film as well as it does, and fuck I just wanted more of it. Aesthetically, this is such a triumph, and such a revelation for me now (so weird, since I've seen it before, but it really has been years and years).

[Dukefrukem]

It bombed at the box office.

[TGM]

I'm in no rush to see this, but since it's on my mind and some of you were already doing it, I just finished rewatching the 1995 anime. And, wow, I love it even more now as an adult. I definitely could not appreciate this as much when I was younger. That chase scene at the beginning is pretty great, but the part that really grabbed me was the montage immediately following the conversation on the boat ("For now we see through a glass, darkly"), when it's just a couple minutes or whatever of music and random shots of the city at night. Such a beautiful, meditative cinematic passage. It was rapturous. I fell head or heels in love with this thing. I still think it's almost frustratingly short, and would actually benefit from more time to explore some of the themes, but I'm also impressed that it brings so many ideas from the manga into an 80 or so minute film as well as it does, and fuck I just wanted more of it. Aesthetically, this is such a triumph, and such a revelation for me now (so weird, since I've seen it before, but it really has been years and years).

I'm so glad you posted this, because your thoughts here honestly do mirror my own reaction to revisiting the movie after such a long time. i always liked it before, but never really loved it, until I saw it again yesterday, and it just struck me in a way that it never had before. And I was also a bit taken aback by how short it was, as I honestly remember it being much longer. But even so, just the fact that it so effectively tackles so much and says as much as it does in such a brief runtime is nothing short of extraordinary. It feels almost fable-like (for lack of a better term) in this regard. This was such a treat to revisit, and honestly has me wanting to seek out at least the other movie(s?). Not sure if I'll jump on board the show, but we'll see. But yeah, this was tremendous, and holds up incredibly well.

[number8]

I'll throw my hat to that same experience, too. I just went to see the original yesterday (and posted a cheeky question (https://www.instagram.com/p/BSY10FCBIRw/)) and couldn't help but wonder while walking out of the theater if the ScarJo version is anywhere near as talky, or moody. I can't imagine that the Hollywood version has extended silent sequences of just the cityscapes breaking up the narrative.

That kind of stuff also makes the movie feels short, I think. It's not just the run time, it's also the fact that there's not a lot different scenes that happen in it. It's content with just milking the hell out of every scene they got and punctuating each one with long conversations.

I think that's why going in, I thought that I don't remember it all that well. Turns out, I recalled every single scene. It's just that I convinced myself that there must be a bunch of other scenes between them that I just forgot about. I remember thinking that I'd completely forgotten how it ends because I only remembered up until the Major got switched into a child's body. Ha.

[Spinal]

It cracks me up that more of us have watched the original film in the past week than have actually gone out to see the new movie.

[number8]

Maybe there should be two polls in this thread, heh.

[Irish]

Shoutout to today's hip, young crix who treat the original as some obscure, subculture artifact when in it was originally released into major U.S. markets and reviewed nationally (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il2l3hEEtdk).

[number8]

That clip made me realize I've never seen the dubbed version. Sounds like they changed a bunch of the dialogue. The Major never said, "Aww, out of ammo?" in the original. That actually would seem pretty out of character for her.

This prompted me to google some of the changes. The dub cut out the "I'm on my period" joke from the opening? Terrible.

[[ETM]]

I yayed this. I'm not head over heels but it's a solid, good looking action flick. It was damned from the start precisely because of what it is, and the whole idiotic, pointless "whitewashing" argument. It is a Hollywoodized version of the original, which remakes most of the key sequences from the anime, borrows from the Stand Alone Complex show and movies, and, as is, boils down to a female "Robocop". I still think it deserves credit for what it got right.

BTW, guys - stay away from "Ghost in the Shell 2.0". It's the "improved" BluRay release from 2008 which "augments" the original's computer effects with brand new CGI, and brings it visually in line with "Innocence". And it's complete GARBAGE. The new CGI is terrible and doesn't work with the original 2D sequences, and from the credits on it's as if its main purpose was to oversexualize Motoko (the text in the credits is now written over closeups of her naked body) and not much else. It's worse than the Star Wars re-releases. Even Kenji Kawai remade the soundtrack and made it WORSE.

[Stay Puft]

That clip made me realize I've never seen the dubbed version. Sounds like they changed a bunch of the dialogue. The Major never said, "Aww, out of ammo?" in the original. That actually would seem pretty out of character for her.

This prompted me to google some of the changes. The dub cut out the "I'm on my period" joke from the opening? Terrible.

Yeah, I watched a bit of the dub afterwards and turned it off after about 10 minutes. I got whiplash from how sharply it changes the tone of the whole thing, from the dialogue itself to the line readings of the voice actors. I ain't fucking with that.

Question regarding 2.0: Brian Eno? y/n (the copy I got replaces the "Reincarnation" song on the original audio track as well as the dub. weird.)

[Skitch]

2.0 no, for me. It looks gross.

http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=825158

[TGM]

2.0 no, for me. It looks gross.

http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=825158

Yikes. Why, why would they do that? :\

[Irish]

This prompted me to google some of the changes. The dub cut out the "I'm on my period" joke from the opening? Terrible.

The English translation is bloated.

The dialogue goes from "There's a lot of noise in your brain" to "What's with all the noise in your brain today?"

Her response goes from "It's my time of the month" to "It must be a loose wire."

Which, yeah. Lame.

[Stay Puft]

2.0 no, for me. It looks gross.

http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=825158

Nuke it from orbit.

[Skitch]

Yikes. Why, why would they do that? :\

I believe one reason was to more align it with the orange-y color palette of the sequel. Again, eww. I love the blues and greens.

[Peng]

Blunt dialogue and an unsatisfying final set-piece asides, I am surprisingly rather sucked in by this film, thanks largely to Scarlett Johansson (half of it is her performance, half of it is her baggage as the cinematic purveyor of human-vulnerability-mixed-inhuman-perfection portrayal) and the supreme production design. Both of them reflect the general 'unfinished' feeling that seems to permeat all of the film's DNA, to often frustrating effect (In the case of how the theme aligns with its whitewashing controversy, having that feel 'unfinished' is the last thing you should be too), but also to some intriguing and haunting one as well: all different parts of disparate origin, put together to create a seemingly beautiful surface, but still in search of actual meaning and/or soul. And Johansson's not-quite-fully-affected, not-quite-fully-emotional performance helps cohere all those contradictions for me, mostly. 7/10

[megladon8]

The rest of the world: "This is whitewashing! ScarJo as a Japanese character is offensive! This is terrible!"

Japan: "Cool movie. She was really good."

[Peng]

Difference between Asian Americans who are not getting enough representations in American movies, and Asians who are the majority and represent almost 100% in movies in their own countries anyway. (and we can easily be more starstruck by western actors too)

[Spinal]

Difference between Asian Americans who are not getting enough representations in American movies, and Asians who are the majority and represent almost 100% in movies in their own countries anyway.

This, exactly. It's not about what the Japanese think. It's about Americans of Japanese descent having legitimate opportunities. When someone who's already an Avenger also takes away one of the rare opportunities a Japanese-American actress might have had to take on a challenging, showy role in a big-budget mainstream movie, I think it's OK to have a discussion about what's going on and why that might be.

I'm torn because, viewed solely on its own merits, Johannson's performance is quite good. Her altered physicality is impressive and she effectively captures an individual whose inner life is not quite in sync with the reality of her body. And yet her presence just feels like an elephant in the room, made all the more strange by the plot reveal in which we learn that her character is literally someone that has had their racial identity erased and planted into the body of a white woman by a powerful corporation. I'm not entirely sure if I'm supposed to view that as an acknowledgement by the filmmakers of the tricky politics of their casting, or indeed how it matters if I do, since Johannson is still the one with an opportunity to play the role. It seems to me, in this situation, that the objectors have a strong case, and that this seems like a glaring example of inequity.

Anyway, it's a mild nay for me. Enough of the original survives for it to be somewhat engaging on the level of an action-film of above-average intelligence. Visually, it's full of nifty details and copious effects. And yet, it suffers in comparison to its predecessor, providing to-the-point explanation, as opposed to provocative intellectual stimulation, as well as a disappointing ending in which the moral ambiguity of the original is turned into a more black-and-white good vs. evil showdown.

[number8]

I'm not entirely sure if I'm supposed to view that as an acknowledgement by the filmmakers of the tricky politics of their casting, or indeed how it matters if I do, since Johannson is still the one with an opportunity to play the role.

I don't think it matters. The plot twist gives the story an extra layer that's nice to think about as a piece of fiction, but it really doesn't--or shouldn't--have anything to do with the discussions around the casting, because the former didn't inform the latter. It's not like they had a story about ethnic erasure and cast a white woman appropriately. They wanted to cast a white woman and retooled an existing story into a story about ethnic erasure. I don't believe that should diminish the story itself, because when it comes to art I believe in the coherence of the final product over intent, so I think the movie still deserves to be judged on its own merit as a story about asians being co-opted by white people. The production, however, deserves all the shit it got.

[Spinal]

It's not like they had a story about ethnic erasure and cast a white woman appropriately. They wanted to cast a white woman and retooled an existing story into a story about ethnic erasure.

It's only now occurred to me that if they really embraced the implications of their plot, that they could have gone all-out and offered up an interesting sister film to Get Out. Of course, the filmmakers' motivations and interests are clearly in a much different place.

[Sycophant]

Casting Johansson as the Major would have garnered a lot less criticism (still some, but a lot less I'm sure) if there were enough parts and opportunities in mainstream American film and television to represent the population we have in the US. Many Japanese moviegoers not grasping issues of minority representation in an American context really doesn't amount to much.

[Spinal]

This round-table discussion (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/ghost-shell-4-japanese-actresses-dissect-movie-whitewashing-twist-990956) with four Japanese-American actresses is a really good read. They discuss their reactions to the film with insight and humor. There are spoilers for the film (and yes, these are different spoilers than the plot of the original animated film).


That was so weird. Everybody in this world understands Japanese. Only one person speaks it!

[TGM]

Ah, I actually forgot about the fact only one person speaks Japanese, but yeah, I found that to be a pretty odd choice too.

Also weird, that the title is shown twice during the opening credits. Surely that had to be a flub. o.O

[number8]

I will bet you money that they tried to get Takeshi Kitano to speak English and he said, "Nah," and they relented.

[Spinal]

Maybe all the other characters were able to see the words popping up around his face, just like we were. In the future, all Japanese people are installed with English subtitles at birth. DYSTOPIA!

[number8]

Speaking of, I tried the Google Translate AR app for the first time the other day. Bought a Japanese brand of hotcake mix and all the instructions and measurements on the packet was in Japanese. So I just hovered my phone over it, and voila, the packaging turned into English. So cool.

[Skitch]

Wow that rules. I will no longer be swayed by the unreadable Indonesian foods at my local surplus store.

[[ETM]]

I've been using it for years. It keeps getting better.

[Philip J. Fry]

I'm just gonna say that I had more fun catching all the shout-outs to the movies and SAC than watching the movie itself.

And this Motoko is not Motoko, at all (and I'm not saying it for ScarJo, would've been the same with any other actress).

[Dukefrukem]

I'm just gonna say that I had more fun catching all the shout-outs to the movies and SAC than watching the movie itself.


This is kind of how I felt watching this.

I also was a little bit unimpressed with how sloppy Major was. She get's injured too much in this. Way too many scenes ripped straight from the anime. The opening, the fight in the shallow water and the showdown against the Spider-Tank.

Mild yay I suppose.

[TGM]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi7lXUv4lgA

[Philip J. Fry]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2soHxEN79c

[Stay Puft]

This round-table discussion (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/ghost-shell-4-japanese-actresses-dissect-movie-whitewashing-twist-990956) with four Japanese-American actresses is a really good read. They discuss their reactions to the film with insight and humor.


Where was the shame in this movie?! There should have been a lot more shame.

That about sums it up! :D

I finally watched this, and, yeah... I fully regretted it. What an abysmal waste of time. There's tone deaf, and then there's the plot of this remake. Yikes.

[Skitch]

Oh, didn't I get around to posting my thoughts on this? Here we go.

First off, I would like to look at the film purely from a surface level. It looks pretty. It pays a lot of homage to visuals from the original. It has a really slick look that I was fairly impressed with. Okay, positives done.

Negatives. Going down just one layer below surface, the complete reversal of the philosophy of the plot was shocking. It was as though the writers only ever watched the original film on mute and never understood or maybe even heard the dialogue and conversations that drove the Major's motivations. More than enough to give it a thumbs down as a remake. They removed all depth of the characters and made a brain dead actiony thing that I don't even remember the plot of at this point.

The next level of criticism would be to address the whitewashing, which somehow was even more despicable (if thats even possible) because of the extreme plot reversal. On the surface it was obviously a bad choice, but gutting the character and whitewashing it just...ugh...just wow. What the fuck were they thinking?? I say this all the time with these kinds of things, but how hard is it just follow the blueprint you already know works? Okay, you did for a couple action scenes, but why on earth would you turn the plot inverted like that? Maybe one day studio execs will learn.

Until then, expect more DragonBall: Evolutions and Japanese Ghosts in White Shells. Please Lord, let them get over their stubbornness before they attempt an Akira.

[Stay Puft]

Japanese Ghosts in White Shells

ayy