Live-Action Ghost in the Shell

Tbf, people care more about execution than originality. The other characters you spoke of where just poorly written and that was a bigger problem than them not being original or different from others.

Saw it recently.

I was a major fan of the original movie and stand alone complex.

This movie... Is passable. Not really memorable. But I didn't feel ripped off for paying money to see it. The plot is too simple, the villain is too generic. The questions are answered too easily.

I don't mind if they didn't follow the original plot, if they had an equally compelling story to tell. But they didn't.

The original was thought-provoking. It made you question the definition of human. It made you question what identity was. Hell, it made you question what the definition of life was.

This one basically asks, "who do I gotta kill to get my memories back?"

Is it dumbed down for mass appeal? Definitely.

Is it still enjoyable? Kind of. Like, if Ghost in the Shell was an HBO series and this was just one episode in it, that would be fine. As a standalone movie it's pretty weak. Beautiful, not terrible, but weak.

This movie is to the original anime what a Taken knock-off starring Jerry Orbach as Lenny Briscoe would have been to Law and Order.

What?

The original was a police procedural. Law and Order was one. This is an action movie. Taken was an action movie. Involving parent and child. And Lenny Briscoe had a daughter who was always getting into trouble. So it fit.

Ah, the reason I hated this type of dumbing down. The movie is just another silly "Sci-Fi" action flick like DARYL or some 80's B-movie. Given the anime, the live action film was like being given a gas station burrito when you paid for a panini.

While I'm not a fan of Harry Potter, I can see the appeal in the movies. Sure things had to change but the core remained. Blade Runner is a great film that is loosely adapted from a famous novel.

Rupert Sanders just wanted some plot points, cool scenes and cribbed from a much better director.

At first, when I was a little chibi, I wanted live action anime movies with a-list actors.

Now I don't want Hollywood studio execs to touch any anime. We've seen what they do to popular franchises.

I mean, to be honest, I don't know what people were expecting.

Honestly in the right hands and the right anime it could work.

The problem is the most popular anime candidates are high brow movies Hollywood doesn't get or Shōnen shows that they want to dumb down, in both cases the Audience Is Stupid or whatever is in effect.

Perfect Blue imo would be a great Hollywood movie provided they didn't touch anything aside from maybe it's setting translated to LA.

I knew it was going to be a train wreck when it was announced and lead was announced.

Anime movies are in the same place comic book movies were in the 90's. It just takes the right creative team, property and a script that doesn't suck.

We already got that one. It was called Black Swan.

edited 14th Apr '17 9:00:09 AM by Beatman1

Might want to take the "The" out of that. It directs to the wrong page.

Scar Jo was all wrong for a role that requires depth: she has two speeds -boobs or snarky wiseass- neither of which was the Major. Rupert Sanders is just another fluff director who should have never been allowed out of B-movies/commercials/music videos or whatever he was doing before.

Studio Execs tend to want easy money, it's hard to sell high concept science fiction.

I feel like this thread's starting to go in circles.

Honestly with the whole plot of "Getting memories back" and it being done by Scarlett Johansson I feel like this would of just worked better as an over-the-top R rated blockbuster Bayonetta movie. Bayonetta doesn't have much of a story so I would say that would be a fine movie idea.

Given Hollywood's even poorer track record of video game movies, I doubt that would have been better.

I think it says something about me and this movie that after the emotions over the family stuff died down, most of what I remember about it is that club scene where The Major's being tortured while that guy tells her to dance and gives her a techno beat, until she utters that one little line. "I wasn't built to dance." Seriously, how often does this actress need false damsel in distress scenes where she pretends to be scared or broken for the sake of the screen, before turning the tables on her attackers like it was nothing?

proof that this never would have happened if Marvel had just bit the bullet and made a Black Widow film.

Not necessarily. Depends on if the timing worked out. I mean, with Git S, she's been the central force behind TWO action movies already. While I don't think she'd do any better than those in Black Widow, she probably wouldn't do any worse. Meaning if she already had the movie done, or it wasn't scheduled til after this one, her rep wouldn't have been bad enough to stop her being in Git S. Only way a Black Widow movie would block Git S would have been if it was being made at the same time.

I just think it's kind of one-note by now. A little romance, or almost romance, tossed together with false Damsel in Distress syndrome. Mix it with a little action heroine glamazon bs, and you get this stuff. Truthfully it's not any worse than Kathryn Winnick. They're both small women with martial arts training (not sure about Scarjo, that might be stunt doubles. I KNOW Kat Winnick is trained. She was Black Belt and owned dojos BEFORE she became an actress.) I can handle it in small doses, but it really is starting to wear thin.

Alright. My gf and I were traveling somewhere else where the cinema was less expensive and I could also get a student discount, so why the hell not, right?

Watched it, and it isn't that terrible, but it was obviously underwhelming. My gf made an interesting analysis that can be summarized to: "well, it's obviously a Western adaptation of the original movie, so Western tropes and philosophy apply. Unfortunately, it came out in a pretty shallow way. Same old Chosen One and individualist stuff, etc."

Can't say I don't agree

Not buying the Chosen One bit. I mean, between them learning lessons from each failure and genetic variance creating different people suited just enough to different things, someone was bound to be the first success. It just happened to be her. Being the first success, she could have opened the door to others. If the company hadn't been played off as evil. They were, so it'll be a while before there are others. Which does mean she's alone for the time being. Still not the Chosen One. There wasn't even a prophecy for that to work from.

I understood it more - and she clarified later - as if the plot was made so that she was treated as special (the first successful experiment, an asset to be protected), which ties into the individualist part. The original Motoko, having a synthetic brain just like many people, pushes that aside to bring part of the existentialist discussion that was an integral part of the animation.

You may treat the screenplay as the prophecy if it would make more sense in this case, but the point is that she is made "different" and the point is her search for her identity. The original goes a much more nihilistic, "cog in a machine" approach, from my perception. Anyway, the idea was more focused towards the "individualism" part.

Motoko had a synthetic brain, too? I really will have to see the show to understand that. Synthetic brain as well as body screams "I'm a gynoid through and through" to me.

Whoops, lemme correct that. For some reason, I remembered that her brain was synthetic, but the Wiki showed me otherwise.

Even then, my point remains, as they show (fully and partially) synthetic brains in the animation and an AI claiming to be a living being, so Motoko's status as a full cyborg doesn't stand out.

Hollywood has an obsession with heroes and people standing out. Even though that kind of stupidity doesn't work in real life. The whole myth of the Great Man is just that. A myth. About time our entertainment media put it to bed with a morphine overdose.

Yeah, Motoko was fully synthetic and while she was the only one on the team to be that it wasn't anything actually special.