Live-Action Ghost in the Shell

I think one thing the producers could have done is to cast big name actors in a supporting/co-lead roles like in Donner's Superman and Burton's Batman and give Motoko's role to a relatively unknown actress.

Belatedly cross-posting a New York Times article from the Diversity thread, which addresses the idea that casting A-list (white) actors in big-budget movies is the only financially sound move.

I imagine that part of it is probably just "well we always did things this way". Hollywood execs, from what I understand, are very slow to adapt or take what they perceive to be risky moves. They've obviously taken chances on unknowns before and not even that long ago, but I think the rationale is probably "it's less risky to cast an unknown white person than an unknown non-white person".

I do have to wonder though if they'll stay true to the visuals of the anime.

Speed Racer did that, and it was all the better for it.

Aside from the tanks the Ghost In The Shell visuals were not that unique so probably.

Have some very pleasant casting news, everyone: Rila Fukushima (i.e. the best thing about The Wolverine) has been cast in an undisclosed role.

Some new photos of Scarletoko and Batou, apparently fans of the first movie will find them familiar I haven't seen it in a decade I really need to fix that.

I just watched it for the first time an hour ago, actually. I rather liked it. Definitely going to be using some of the concepts it brings up in some of my stories, should I ever get around to actually writing them.

The Major's Mother Has Been Cast: http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/japanese-star-kaori-momoi-to-play-mother-of-johanssons-ghost-in-the-shell-character

She must be a pretty great actress to be able to convincingly play Scarlet Johansson's mother.

No amount of acting talent in the world can make an Asian woman a believable mother of a white woman, unless she's adopted.

Or being that the character in-universe is literally nothing more than a brain in a robot body, there's a level of suspension of disbelief. Hell, Idris Elba could probably pull off the Major without a hitch.

That's what I was alluding to. Probably should have used an emoji or a Sarcasm Mode blue link.

That is probably the direction they are going which is interesting but is still partly an excuse for whitewashing.

Also, although this is an inconsistency in the original work itself (which states she supposedly looks like a standard gynoid) but Makoto in flashbacks look like a younger version of her adult "body", including the blue hair.

edited 7th Jul '16 12:40:52 PM by Hodor2

I don't think we ever saw the major before the accident that made them put her mind in the kid gynoid body, most of the flashbacks were about her having problems controlling the new body hence the shattered doll in her hands in the GITS's OP.

The blue hair was the big symbol that she was completely artificial unlike Batou.

edited 7th Jul '16 1:18:42 PM by Memers

Yeah, the only time GITS:SAC shows her flesh body is when she's buried in hospital machinery and we can't really see any identifying features. She does say that she's willing to use any body needed for a case but displays a noted preference for the same hair and face as her first prosthetic.

Arise on the other hand just has her go prosthetic straight from the womb.

Hmm, I guess I wasn't recalling correctly. I thought in the one episode that shows her with her Forgotten Childhood Friend Kuze, that it was pre-plane crash, implying that their robot bodies were modeled after their human ones.

That being said, even if I was remembering correctly it could just be a stylistic choice so that the audience knew who those children were.

edited 7th Jul '16 8:29:14 PM by Hodor2

Nah, its possible that Kaze's body was modeled after his flesh, since he was given a choice and wasn't in life threatening condition; but Motoko was an emergency operation after slipping into a coma, and Kuze pointedly did not recognize her when she came to visit him two years later.

The ARISE anime takes Motoko's willingness to use alternate prosthetic bodies to a whole new level: she played the role of a MALE resistance leader for over a year, and turned out to be pretty damned good at the job too. Said performance was good enough that "he" developed a small following, with others praising his work and using him as an example to follow. Oh, and one of the resistance followers didn't even know about it until the very end, and said follower happened to be her most recent boyfriend.

edited 8th Jul '16 9:57:12 PM by SgtRicko

That must've been awkward.

Okay, apparently no one was talking about this but...

Mamoru Oshii (director of the 1995 GITS movie), Kenji Kamiyama (the head director of GITS: SAC), and Kenji Kawai (the composer to GITS 1 and 2: Innocence) visited the live-action GITS film set earlier this month.

I guess this counts as something good? Nobody looks like they want to tear the other apart...

edited 10th Jul '16 8:26:20 PM by TargetmasterJoe

Well Japan doesn't have the issue we have with the movie so that's not really a surprise.

Yeah, the main reason people are pissed at this is because of the blatant whitewashing. Japanese people have no real reason to care about that.

I'm somewhat scared to ask, but what do y'all think of the argument that (paraphrased) "she can choose any body she wants, so this isn't much of a big deal" I've seen in some places?

-braces self for the incoming backdraft-

Personally, I think it's excusable in a narrative context, but not so much in a "bigger picture"... thing.

edited 11th Jul '16 7:02:09 PM by PhysicalStamina

There' s been a bit of discussion of that over the last few pages. I think your last sentence is basically the conclusion reached.

The problem with the "however she wants to look" idea though is why that isn't a Japanese person. Because although no one in the show really looks Japanese, the idea is that she supposedly looks like a common variety of gynoid, and there's no mention of her appearance/that gynoid type being Caucasian.

I'd also comment that if the idea is looking however she wants, then they might as well have had Johannson have her natural hair and played up the non-Japanese angle, rather than trying to make her look like Makoto.

Ehh, it's really an in-universe Hand Wave at best. It explains how, theoretically, given the right set of circumstances, Kusanagi could appear to be white. But it does nothing for the real question: why on earth should she be white? Why is casting her as white a good idea? Even putting aside the slightly unfortunate implications of an Asian person in a white body (which is in many ways the ultimate whitewashing), all it does is offer an explanation for how her appearing white could make some vague sense from a purely Watsonian perspective, which isn't really what concerns the critics. Most of them aren't making a stink over how it confuses the in-universe lore - they're making a stink over the way it just further erases and marginalizes Asian people in Western media.

Even uglier implications could be drawn if we choose to go a little deeper, in fact - mainly the perception of white being the "default" state of being. "See, she could look like literally anyone on the entire planet, therefore she looks white." Sure, she could look like anyone, but the decision to make her look like a white American woman is no accident. That was a very deliberate choice on the part of the creators, and I think their motives are pretty clear at this point.

It's actually similar to the Doctor Strange situation in many ways. "Why'd you make the Ancient One white?"

"We altered canon so that this character is actually just the latest of many to hold the title of Ancient One!"

"Okay...not what we asked. Why'd you make the Ancient One white?"

Let's not forget, too, about their charming little "digital yellowface" tests. It's not unreasonable to infer that those were meant for Scarlett Johansson - which would mean that they don't care about her being/looking Japanese so long as they don't have to cast a Japanese actor.

They claim that Ghost in the Shell is a very "international" story - which is a funny way to describe a story that's set in (and to my knowledge never leaves) Japan, inspired heavily by Japanese culture, about Japanese characters. In Hollywood, "international" means "white leads, maybe with a few POC support characters grudgingly added under pressure." Again, it just reinforces the idea of the "white default." Especially when, hey Hollywood? Roughly two-thirds of the "international" population lives in Asia.

And to the people who try to claim that Kusanagi was "white all along," I say this: do you actually think that a guy named Masamune Shirow wrote a story set in Japan, inspired heavily by Japanese culture and society, about a character named Motoko Kusanagi...and intended her to be white?

So, as you say, when taken in a complete vacuum it's technically excusable within the structure of the universe as it's set up. But when viewed in a wider cultural and societal context - as these things always should be - it's just another damn whitewashing.