Live-Action Ghost in the Shell

I have the suspicion that a human/machine war just wouldn't happen in Ghost in the Shell. That if a machine gets smart enough to disobey rules or alter its own programming, it's more likely to navel-gaze or Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence than to go genocidal.

Generally it's humans, not robots, that you have to worry about in the various Ghost in the Shell continuities. The Tachikomas and Puppet Master, for example, are a far cry from the squiddies and Agent Smith. The humans are already in control, and the threats they represent are the same as they've ever been— greed, paranoia, exploitation.Conspiracies, but not elegant, long-term conspiracies like in the X-Files— just crooked politicians and executives who'll do anything to silence their enemies.

The Matrix is a very different animal, in some ways opposite to Ghost in the Shell, particularly in how each franchise views authority.

I mean, that's pretty much what the Tachikomas do throughout all of SAC. They spend the entire series trying to determine if they qualify for some definition of "life," and the climax of 2nd Gig is literally the Major ordering them to do last second preperations for a desperate mass ascension, and then they say screw that and instead sacrifice themselves to stop Japan from getting nuked, preventing the need for said ascension; and in doing so, enabling themselves to experience "death" and fulfilling their last requirement for "life".

edited 28th Mar '17 9:57:23 AM by TheAirman

I think what this movie and, say, the latter half of the Killing Joke movie (the part after all the prologue stuff that didn't really do much other than make Barbra's fridging worse) proves that just because an adaptation is faithful, in the sense that it looks like its source material and hits the "bullet points" of its source material doesn't really mean the resulting product will be any good, really.

Again, not really familiar with this franchise but the general reception I'm getting from early impressions are "it's not horrible and doesn't ruin the franchise Dragonball Evolution style, but it's just a mediocre ass version of it like GITS Arise"

I kinda doubt the general audience appeal too. Like, they showed one of the previews when I saw Kong: Skull Island and I had to explain to my Dad what the whole premise was "to the best of my ability" In addition, like lets not kid ourselves Ghost In the Shell (or at the very least it's aesthetics) has already been thoroughly mined by Hollywood for like two decades now, and the only way they would avert Seinfeld Is Unfunny is if they honed in on all the freshman philosophy course stuff most of the other things that it inspired didn't bother getting around too.

edited 28th Mar '17 10:00:29 AM by RoboZombie

Right now the moving is sitting at 71% at RT.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ghost_in_the_shell_2017/

As for the more...problematic elements?

https://mobile.twitter.com/i/moments/846753296073342977?m=1

Spoilers.

Jesus Christ that's a terrible twist if that's true. Not just racist but really stupid writing too.

That's a weak ass excuse to have a white woman play the Major.

These Robocop reboots keep getting dumber and dumber...

Yikes if true. And yeah the trailers were designed to show scenes from the anime movie, not shocked that most of them are not in the actual film.

Honestly I feel like they were trying to like, be critical of whitewashing in the movie but they fucked up it really badly.

Especially since Get Out! was basically about white people quite literally stealing black bodies for their own use, and you know, did that plot in a way that wasn't trying to have their cake and eat it too

Pretty much. It's like they even expected the whitewashed race in question to appreciate the gesture and give them a hug for it. It's one thing to ditch the original theme - maybe the producers thought cyber-existentialism was more of a nineties trend that wasn't fashionable anymore. But what they replaced it with looks to be a generic anti-corporate fantasy, which has become so fashionable these days, it's outright trite. And that's on top of an attitude that makes cultural appropriation look like a costume party. You know you dun goofed when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot has a better understanding of how to honor a foreign culture.

I'm surprised anyone's shocked by this.

The main character's a cyborg with a japanese name played by a white person. This twist is more like a forgone conclusion.

I'll say this though if the movie had been more of a thoughtful meditation on what ethnicity even means when you can just get a new body this casting might have been justified. But from the sound of it it's not.

Still fresh at 67%.

So they cut the scene from the trailers where the Major kissed a woman, there's a transphobic joke, and they may have cut a lot of Togusa's scenes?

Way to go, Hollywood. Way to go. *slow clap*

x3 Shocked? Nah, not shocked. The thing about stuff like this is that you want to be proven wrong. Then you get something like this, and it's just a little extra salt in the wound.

When you're adapting something that I think is great, like Ghost In The Shell, serviceable and adequate are almost worse than if it were just outright bad. It's not swept under the rug and forgotten as easily. If it's successful, it changes the face of the franchise in a way that I won't be likely to enjoy (like Transformers— not that the originals were so great, but same basic idea). But if it only does average box office or worse, then we won't be as likely to see as many other sci-fi movies in a similar vein get greenlit, whether that's more Ghost In The Shell or something else, cyberpunk or any other SF subgenre. It's just part of the feedback loop Hollywood's stuck in, and that's the part that actually bothers me.

edited 29th Mar '17 2:55:51 PM by Unsung

So general consensus by the critics is that it's a good film, but it falls well below the standards set by the source material. Whether that's a make or break result is up to the viewer to decide.

I'll still go see it, but my expectations are low. And again, I'll probably just end up watching The Matrix for the true live action GITS film.:

Quite. What's interesting is how the first Matrix film appears far different in tone, with only Smith's disdain for his own existence implying the Machines are not so different from the humans. The sequels however do explore the facets of artificial intelligence as being close to our own, even on the emotional level. Meanwhile, the new GITS (made by gits) seems to ditch that for the traditional Robocop routine of remaining human in a *gasp* machine body.

(I'm profoundly flabbergasted by how pop-culture fetishizes the inherent abilities of superheroes and urban fantasy mages and whatnot, but deliberate enhancement is treated as some sort of cardinal sin against nature. Talk about double standards.)

Metal is gross, man. I only want to inject nature's best glowing magical mutagenic ooze into these veins. The body is a temple, after all.

And only if it's an experimental formula known to one guy that's gonna get dead moments after the operation. Mass production is evil, I tell ya!

Another thing I've gathered about this film is that it has more in common with Robocop than the original GITS film. And even that movie feels more like GITS than this movie does in terms of themes:

I think part of that can be traced to how corporations and technology are viewed in different media. In Japanese media they tend to be viewed more neutrally, tools for good or for evil. In America, since we have no faith in any of our systems anymore (some would say with good reason) technology and industry are viewed as the enemy, going all the way back to freaking John Henry and the steam engine. AM from "I have no mouth and I must scream", Magnus Robot Fighter, Terminator, Blade Runner, generally speaking high technology and those who profit from it are story antagonists. So any adaptation of a story about technology radically altering someone via a Western lens will portray this as "bad, mmkay?"

The other half of it is that the people behind this film are hacks and think that making 1:1 recreations of scenes from the anime will disguise their hackneyed script.

I'm surprised that people here are surprised by the Major being a Japanese "spirit" in a Western shell. Considering, you know, she's been a Japanese spirit in a Western shell before. In the source material. It's not even a twist. Isn't that literally the character's origin in Stand Alone Complex?

This is a non-controversy.

edited 30th Mar '17 12:18:42 PM by Lennik

No it isn't, and the only comment the manga gives on her shell is that it's an old, very common model tricked out for the military/police action she'll be doing.

Her backstory in SAC is a 7-year-old Japanese girl who barely survives a plane crash and has to be made a full body cyborg or else she dies. She does say that she is willing to use other models if cases require it (which is also a plot point in the Arise), but for her personal and everyday use she goes out of her way to use the same model line to maintain some form of consistency in her life, the most unique being a young/teenage version with longer hair. This implies that "Japanese woman" is her default. And considering that her skin tone is only just slightly more pale than Togusa's^* who most definitely is Japanese, and very pointedly has the bare minimum of prosthetic enhancements - which can most easily be chalked up to Asian beauty standards - no, her shell is not white.

This not a non-controversy. This is whitewashing.

edited 30th Mar '17 12:51:19 PM by TheAirman

Cite your reference, please. A lot of people seem to think that, but it's not the case during most of the anime or manga, and the controversy is less about a one-off case of racelifting and more because this has become something of a Hollywood trend. The problem isn't simply whether or not the character is Asian, but rather the fact that when there are already so few opportunities for Asian actors, losing any of them sucks.

edited 30th Mar '17 12:48:11 PM by Unsung

Yeah. It is kind of weird and contradictory that in the GITS show that Makoto's actual human body looks a lot like her robot body, given that statement that it's a common model (and IIRC I think there was some indication it was kind of a "sexbot" model in appearance). Although I think the similarity in appearance is probably an art style thing coupled with not being subtle about making sure the audience knows that the girl in the flashback/story was The Major.

So despite some contradictions/fridge logic, it seems reasonably clear that Makoto's "shell" is that of a Japanese woman- who may or may not look reasonably like her actual appearance would have been if she still had a human body- and has some measure of a Ms. Fanservice visual design.

It doesn't seem reasonably clear, though.