Watched the 1995 original with wife last night. I hadn't seen it in years, was first time for her. Also first time she had given any thought to the concepts raised (man machine interface, cyberethics, body having, false memories, bodyless soul, etc...). She loved it. When it first started she was like, "this feels a bit derrivative of stuff like the Matrix, wait, when was this made again?".
We both want to see the new one, but have set Hollywood version expectations low.
I know the elephant in the room is the whitewashing, but we don't need to spend page after page discussing it; to be honest, whitewashing was the least of this film's problems. I will say this, though - if Ghost in the Shell were a great film, I could probably look over the whitewashing as a contrivance to appeal to western audiences, but that as it stands, it's basically the peak of Shit Mountain.
I will say overall it was one of the stronger anime adaptions, though that isn't saying much considering the competition are films like DragonBall: Evolution.
Batou's actor's performance was stellar, as well as Togusa's (what little we see of him), Aramaki was interesting though too little to leave a big impression and Kuze was an inspirational take. Kuze spoilers
His performance as a malfunctioning robot was on point, except he really had nothing in common with Kuze from the anime aside from being a terrorist who hated cyborg tech. In the film his character was by far the most creatively executed and managed to steal every scene. Too bad he was in a few scenes, and in the finale all he did was sit there during the tank fight, as if the movie completely forgot he was there.
If the movie had more stuff like they achieved with Kuze I'd have graded it higher.
edit: One of highlights in the film is a scene where Section 9 are altogether early on, that was really engaging. An entire film like that would feel like watching a live action SAC episode, it's disappointing we didn't get that.
I'd be very interested in seeing what the Russo's would do with this IP. They're producing miracles over at Marvel (they made Civil War into a coherent, amazing movie which had numerous moving parts!) - Marvel (or another Disney film division) should buy the rights for the next movie, start from scratch.
edit: Though if by some chance they do do this they should hire an Asian actress for Motoko. Learn from this movie's mistakes, people.
The movie felt like a very pretty mess to me. Interesting design, poorly shot and incoherent action, plot that felt like it left a lot of things underresolved for no reason.
"He's build his own network of human minds!"
...and then that thread is never mentioned again.
It did play a part in the end.
He did try to convince Major to come with him (to the network) and when that failed he went there alone leaving his body to be destroyed.
Personally I'm hoping for a sequel, where disembodied minds like him are explored more.
That might actually make a worse movie.
It's not an uncommon sentiment that the manga version of the sequel which follows the Major post Puppetmaster is pretty terrible. The manga version of the Puppetmaster arc is different than the movie mostly because of the different characterization of the Major. It's less a serious philosophical discussion of what the self is and instead the Major just laughs and says the internet is vast and she's probably not going back to Section 9. Man-Machine Interface then is so different in tone and art design than Ghost in the Shell that many other fans I've talked to couldn't finish it and didn't like it at all.
If they were to go with something like adapting Innocence it would probably bomb as well.
The movie felt like a very pretty mess to me. Interesting design, poorly shot and incoherent action, plot that felt like it left a lot of things underresolved for no reason.
"He's build his own network of human minds!"
...and then that thread is never mentioned again.
It did play a part in the end.
He did try to convince Major to come with him (to the network) and when that failed he went there alone leaving his body to be destroyed.
Personally I'm hoping for a sequel, where disembodied minds like him are explored more.
That might actually make a worse movie.
It's not an uncommon sentiment that the manga version of the sequel which follows the Major post Puppetmaster is pretty terrible. The manga version of the Puppetmaster arc is different than the movie mostly because of the different characterization of the Major. It's less a serious philosophical discussion of what the self is and instead the Major just laughs and says the internet is vast and she's probably not going back to Section 9. Man-Machine Interface then is so different in tone and art design than Ghost in the Shell that many other fans I've talked to couldn't finish it and didn't like it at all.
If they were to go with something like adapting Innocence it would probably bomb as well.
That's why if they want to mine new stories for existing material for inspiration about GiTS they should go to SAC. Until something else comes along that's my definitive version for GiTS franchise, I prefer it over the original manga and '95 film.
edit: For reference about what Rand's talking about with MMI, that's like GiTS's Dark Knight Strikes Back.
The movie felt like a very pretty mess to me. Interesting design, poorly shot and incoherent action, plot that felt like it left a lot of things underresolved for no reason.
"He's build his own network of human minds!"
...and then that thread is never mentioned again.
It did play a part in the end.
He did try to convince Major to come with him (to the network) and when that failed he went there alone leaving his body to be destroyed.
Personally I'm hoping for a sequel, where disembodied minds like him are explored more.
That might actually make a worse movie.
It's not an uncommon sentiment that the manga version of the sequel which follows the Major post Puppetmaster is pretty terrible. The manga version of the Puppetmaster arc is different than the movie mostly because of the different characterization of the Major. It's less a serious philosophical discussion of what the self is and instead the Major just laughs and says the internet is vast and she's probably not going back to Section 9. Man-Machine Interface then is so different in tone and art design than Ghost in the Shell that many other fans I've talked to couldn't finish it and didn't like it at all.
If they were to go with something like adapting Innocence it would probably bomb as well.
That's why if they want to mine new stories for existing material for inspiration about GiTS they should go to SAC. Until something else comes along that's my definitive version for GiTS franchise, I prefer it over the original manga and '95 film.
There are stories in the manga that could be turned into a movie. They could almost take each chapter, flesh them out a bit, and make individual movies.
SAC would be good as well but I think audiences would feel like they're getting a political science lesson depending on what episodes they adapted.
The movie felt like a very pretty mess to me. Interesting design, poorly shot and incoherent action, plot that felt like it left a lot of things underresolved for no reason.
"He's build his own network of human minds!"
...and then that thread is never mentioned again.
It did play a part in the end.
He did try to convince Major to come with him (to the network) and when that failed he went there alone leaving his body to be destroyed.
Personally I'm hoping for a sequel, where disembodied minds like him are explored more.
That might actually make a worse movie.
It's not an uncommon sentiment that the manga version of the sequel which follows the Major post Puppetmaster is pretty terrible. The manga version of the Puppetmaster arc is different than the movie mostly because of the different characterization of the Major. It's less a serious philosophical discussion of what the self is and instead the Major just laughs and says the internet is vast and she's probably not going back to Section 9. Man-Machine Interface then is so different in tone and art design than Ghost in the Shell that many other fans I've talked to couldn't finish it and didn't like it at all.
If they were to go with something like adapting Innocence it would probably bomb as well.
That's why if they want to mine new stories for existing material for inspiration about GiTS they should go to SAC. Until something else comes along that's my definitive version for GiTS franchise, I prefer it over the original manga and '95 film.
There are stories in the manga that could be turned into a movie. They could almost take each chapter, flesh them out a bit, and make individual movies.
SAC would be good as well but I think audiences would feel like they're getting a political science lesson depending on what episodes they adapted.
That's true, I loved those little stories in the manga.
Yeah, for the SAC formula to work they'd have to modify it, dumb it down severely, avoid the really complex stuff about robotics and espionage, pare down the team to the bare bones (personally I'd keep Togusa, Aramaki, the new female character from this movie so it's not all dudes and Batou. Have the rest rotate or guest ar when appreciate to logistics and dump the extras when they can't fit in with the production). They should be able to do the typical spy/espionage stuff like a smarter Mission: Impossible/James Bond vehicle in future Japan with killer cyborgs, rather than what they did here.
edit: They can also do gimmick movies which are fun little one offs with smaller budgets, in the vein of Dredd and The Raid. More expensive than those movies, of course but maybe cheaper than the movie like they made.
The context of "who was lying" is that MANAA accused Ms. Johansson of lying. Not of accepting a role 'destined' for an Asian actor, but lying. On one level, it's a cheap shot at an actor that demonstrates ignorance about acting - what comes to mind when you think of playing a person of a different race? Hint: it's not called whitewashing.
On another level, the group seems to cling to the argument that Asian people should be hired on their looks and genetic background. That's the only argument I see from them - the star trek argument of embracing stereotypes. Maybe if they actually did show any knowledge of the material at all in their explanation, I would buy it a bit more, but they don't care about Ghost in the Shell. They just want to raise a ruckus to further their agenda.
The Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) has blasted the casting choice of Scarlett Johansson in “Ghost in the Shell” just ahead of the film’s opening weekend.
In a statement released Friday, the group condemned the movie’s “whitewashing” of Johansson’s character Motoku Kusanagi who first appeared in the Japanese manga of the same name.
The organization also criticized Johansson’s recent interview on “Good Morning America,” in which the actress said she “would never attempt to play a person of a different race, obviously.” MANAA responded by writing that “she was lying.”
Additionally, the group denounced the casting of Michael Pitt in the role of Kuze in the film, which MANAA said “is revealed to have originally been named Hideo, meaning he too was Japanese.”
“Apparently, in Hollywood, Japanese people can’t play Japanese people anymore,” MANAA President Robert Chan said. “There’s no reason why either Motoku or Hideo could not have been portrayed by Japanese or Asian actors instead of Scarlett Johansson and Michael Pitt. We don’t even get to see what they looked like in their original human identities — a further white-wash.”
I honestly can't see anything here that was incorrect, the context for the Motoko role was that she's a Japanese woman in the IP and when Scarlett said that she never would play another race flies in the face of that fact when she accepted the role.
With roles like this it's not simply just acting - it comes with all the racial baggage that comes with the part. She's not playing an ordinary white woman like Black Widow here. She's doing this figuratively GiTS spoilers
and literally.
She's certainly not playing a character who is heavily influenced by Japanese society like Motoko does in every other piece of the franchise, so she's not playing another race culturally, either.
This is just from my perspective, and I'd like to of to their site but my computer says they may be hacked so that's out of the question temporarily, but I think they're doing that (at first) because right now Asians in America are having trouble even getting that much in opportunities for work. They need to walk before they can run. I'm sure they'd like Asians to have roles in all sorts of roles, who wouldn't? But if they can't get a Japanese role like Motoko to an Asian actor they don't really have the time for a more nuanced conversation since Hollywood doesn't respect them enough to let them in the door. Once that's begun, yeah they probably would expand. I'm just a layman in these matters, though, if anyone else has any insight I'd like to hear it, especially from an Asian perspective. If they truly didn't care about GiTS they wouldn't have bothered using it as an example. It is an amazing opportunity they're given but they'd be folks not do act. They won't get attention to their cause by not giving anyone examples, and GiTS is perfect for that. Using it politically doesn't mean some people in the group don't care about it or aren't fans. Not to mention before now GiTS was an obscure franchise to the American public.
I mean, yeah, they want to cause some noise on this issue. That's how things change, especially in Hollywood. Talking nice to execs only go so far, businesses require tremendous pressure and shame to move in the right direction - otherwise they don't give a shit about how they're screwing with people's livelihoods and cultures for the almighty dollar and their own agendas. Which don't include Asian leads or giving the Asian community the same opportunities as the white actors, in America or abroad.
I appreciate that you use spoilers, but you don't really have to since this is an open spoiler thread and the plot twist is central to almost all relevant discussion.
What feels insulting to me is that since the only similarity between the main character and her race is her brain. When I think of a white person playing a Japanese person, I think of 007 in You Only Live Twice or Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. The former is forgivable (though stupid) since it's essential to the plot.
But the main character is not pretending to be a Japanese person. What is the identity of an amnesiac in a robot body? If you never see Murphy before he became Robocop, could you say that he played a white male? What if they removed the front half of his face too, what race would he be then?
She's not embedded in Japanese culture, she's not viewed as Japanese, she doesn't have a Japanese name, she doesn't even speak Japanese for 99% of the movie. Why is that?
I think the writers responded to the backlash by making it so casting her as a Japanese person would be impossible. Heck, if they started earlier, before all the Japan assets were made, I bet they would have Americanized the setting too.
That's what you get when you simply say that the role is Japanese while ignoring that Ghost in the Shell always had an out. What's the difference between a Japanese brain in a robot body and a Caucasian brain in a robot body if they have no memories and are treated the same? What, is a Japanese brain different from a Caucasian brain? What exactly is being said here?
I think MANAA is accusing her of yellowface, which is a crime she didn't commit because the movie at least had enough depth not to be able to say "well, she's a Japanese person."
By the way,
Big Hero 6 had great Asian American representation for a voice acted animated feature. Even though we never see the person who plays Hiro, that casting makes sense to me. Hiro is an Asian American living in an Asian American city, and he faces problems and influences familiar to Asian Americans. The Asian American actor playing him has something to work with. This isn't really an argument against you, but against people who say that voice acting gets a pass in terms of whitewashing. This casting decision wasn't meaningless and it created work for Asian Americans.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
The movie felt like a very pretty mess to me. Interesting design, poorly shot and incoherent action, plot that felt like it left a lot of things underresolved for no reason.
"He's build his own network of human minds!"
...and then that thread is never mentioned again.
It did play a part in the end.
He did try to convince Major to come with him (to the network) and when that failed he went there alone leaving his body to be destroyed.
Personally I'm hoping for a sequel, where disembodied minds like him are explored more.
That might actually make a worse movie.
<snip>
If they were to go with something like adapting Innocence it would probably bomb as well.
My taste must run opposite of majority.
My favourite GitS adaptation is Innocence and I really didn't care much about SAC 1st season. I haven't seen any of the later stuff.
Manga's were mostly ok, although one of them (2nd one?) had gringeworthy cgi-style graphics, instead of properly drawn ones.
Watched the 1995 original with wife last night. I hadn't seen it in years, was first time for her. Also first time she had given any thought to the concepts raised (man machine interface, cyberethics, body having, false memories, bodyless soul, etc...). She loved it. When it first started she was like, "this feels a bit derrivative of stuff like the Matrix, wait, when was this made again?".
Everyone using the Matrix as their go-to comparison confuses me a bit. Matrix cribs some cyber punk style, and once it gets up its own ass philosophical later in the trilogy maybe it starts to touch on some of the same themes, but Blade Runner always struck me as way more akin to Ghost in the Shell from the word go.
Jon Tsuei, (link to whole series of tweets) a comic book writer, argued on twitter that GitS is an inherently Japanese story, and westernizing it destroys it:
He didn't so much argue it as he just claimed it without support.
Let me make it clear. I don't support the casting of Scarjo as the Major. Representation is important.
However, "representation is important" is a different mindset than "this story is intrinsically Japanese." I've seen a lot of people retweet or embed Tsuei's claim without any exegesis. I've asked folks to explain it ("what makes GitS intrinsically Japanese?") and I've never gotten an actual explanation. I've received responses like (paraphrased):
"You'd understand if you were Japanese"
"I'd like to explain it to you but I'm
"Do your own research" (if you google the relevant keywords you just get the Jon Tsuei quote over and over again. Limiting the search parameters to articles posted prior to the tweet doesn't help much either.)
So I am genuinely curious about the influence of Japanese culture and history on GitS. What makes it more intrinsically Japanese than Western cyberpunk stories? What cultural nuances am I missing? This knowledge would enhance my enjoyment of it a lot.
This is from a few pages back but we had a thread on this a year ago that actually had a lot of good discussion in it. A few of my responses from that thread work here:
"The problem is, when you drop the cultural context then yes, stories can be translated across many forms of media and retain some of the themes. But when you excise the character's race and only the race, while keeping the setting in future Japan, have them retain a Japanese name, and the story is specifically about Japanese values and the rise of technology, you destroy and detract from the original work. Like, the Sailor Scouts uniforms are based directly on school girl outfits in Japanese schools. Taken out of context, and they are just goofy outfits they put on for ??? Context matters, and when these stories are written by Japanese people and viewed through the cultural lense of the Japanese, you have to wonder why they needed to change the main character and leave the rest intact. It's why whitewashing is so fundamentally stupid, as it shows a lack of respect and a disregard for the source material in favor of selling more tickets and DVDs.
Basically, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is most likely a friggin' duck."
or
"To boil it down, it's that the story unfolds in an undeniably Japanese way. They have long, lingering shots to mimic the manga artform, they show consecutive world building shots to emphasise what kind of place this Future Japan looks like. "Aspect-to-Aspect" transitions are used to abandon time in favor of exploring the space and world around them. It's to create a tangible atmosphere.
The themes of city and the people who occupy it are a mirror to the themes of Ghosts and their Shells, and wondering about the relationship between them. The city is based off of Japan, and also Hong Kong; these stories reflect the conflict they felt after being under rule by a foreign nation. Like post WW2 Japan, or how Hong Kong was long under British rule, and in that way embodies the identity problems a cyborg would have; how do they shape identity when you were made by someone who came before? Are you who you are by free will, when you know you are also a manufactured machine? The same questions we have of religion and existence itself... cyborgs would feel the same- but in a more definitive way; they only exist as they are now by the actions of others.
Every shot in this movie is meticulously placed and for a reason. The shots of the decrepit and overgrown city, it is one of the best themes in cyberpunk: it shows the mix of technology and culture can mirror the mix of technology and mankind. We make the spaces we live, but they also shape ourselves. The dynamic of ourselves and the spaces we occupy, are one and the same..."
Interestingly, sailor uniforms may have been based on the attire of children in royal western european families, so tit for tat. Westernization was a cultural Japanese appropriation of white culture and is part of the reason Japanese media appeals to the West. Japan is actually really good at appropriating other cultures, by the way.
What, then, is Japanese culture but a sort of illegitimate amalgam akin to US culture? What historical rights do we mutts have to our ancestral cultures?
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Of course cultures end up influencing one another, it's par for the course. I mean Romeo and Juliet has been adapted for just about every culture on earth. It's when the nuances and integral points of the art gets lost in favor of money, that's I think where a lot of the ire is drawn from. And obviously, no adaptation is perfect. The original GitS movie was kind of a mishmash of several stories from the manga. The subsequent shows, plays, and comics spun out of it also add layers to the mythos. Other franchises from around the globe gave inspiration to and drew from the original film.
The whole point of an adaptation is to bring the story to a wider audience. We shouldn't be stoked when they get the fundamental purpose of the story wrong. I heard the argument upthread that like Watchmen, this movie is un-adaptable. I disagree. I think had they given the movie a good writer, director and producers that loved and understood the source material, it could have been amazing. Even with a ScarJo as lead, they could have used it to make a poignant point about identity. But they didn't. It's worthy of criticism, if they just lift the cool aesthetic and tone of the original but still portray the Major completely wrong.
Adaptations happen and they can be done right. But if you lose some aspect of the film by changing the setting (which would have happened) why bother?
Watched the 1995 original with wife last night. I hadn't seen it in years, was first time for her. Also first time she had given any thought to the concepts raised (man machine interface, cyberethics, body having, false memories, bodyless soul, etc...). She loved it. When it first started she was like, "this feels a bit derrivative of stuff like the Matrix, wait, when was this made again?".
We both want to see the new one, but have set Hollywood version expectations low.
Akira and GiTS are usually my go to examples of what engaging interesting future punk means to me. It's odd because they're both 20+ years old at this point and Hollywood hasn't caught up to the vision yet.
The movie felt like a very pretty mess to me. Interesting design, poorly shot and incoherent action, plot that felt like it left a lot of things underresolved for no reason.
"He's build his own network of human minds!"
...and then that thread is never mentioned again.
It did play a part in the end.
He did try to convince Major to come with him (to the network) and when that failed he went there alone leaving his body to be destroyed.
Personally I'm hoping for a sequel, where disembodied minds like him are explored more.
That might actually make a worse movie.
<snip>
If they were to go with something like adapting Innocence it would probably bomb as well.
My taste must run opposite of majority.
My favourite GitS adaptation is Innocence and I really didn't care much about SAC 1st season. I haven't seen any of the later stuff.
Manga's were mostly ok, although one of them (2nd one?) had gringeworthy cgi-style graphics, instead of properly drawn ones.
That was Man-Machine Interface.
I don't know how it was received in Japan but I get the impression it was not liked by fans here in the US in general. The change in art direction being one of the reasons.
The 95 movie and Innocence likely have far less mass appeal than a straight action movie adaptation of GitS. Even SAC would require some modification to have mass appeal because not everyone is interested in a story involving real and realistic political interactions.
We haven't had a movie about realistic military operations in a while. Mission Impossible comes close but is more about wacky stunts. The american movie that most reminds me of a Section 9 operation is probably Heat. An ensemble cast that all know how to use guns and work together, like if John Wick didn't work alone.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
0
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
ok so sort of random thoughts because i forgot to do it this morning
this is an example of one of those films where the people asked to write it were awful at their job. having a cheeky look at the scriptwriters makes for uninspiring reading; transformers, spectral street kings. they were not up to the task, and the dialogue was... dire. show not tell violated every 15 seconds, with scarlett blurting out I FEEL SO DISCONNECTED so that we knew she felt disconnected, and characters commenting repeatedly right at the beginning about oh ho ho isnt it good we have a GHOST in this SHELL friends smileyface
the genesis of her name is also fucking stupid - they call her a "miracle" in the first 3 minutes, then about 2 seconds later go HER NAME IS MIRA KILLIAN. oh its "mira cle" u geniuses and she gets to keep her mk initials
the concept artists working on this film were full of inspiration and brilliant ideas, but they were constrained and ruined by the fundamentally insipid artistic vision from the top. they had been instructed to slavishly ape generic blue cyberpunk, with a few shots pretty much ripped exactly from the various series/films, but within that context the detail is mostly excellent. theres one particular girl doing insanely heavy squats with the barbell appearing and disappearing as one of the adverts that caught my eye, but also details like the design on the inside of the geishabots head, inlaid and filigree pseudowatchmaker stuff, that was excellently done
this film was purely a rehash of the film and series. almost nothing was taken from the manga. especially notable is the lack of the rhizome-inspired oshii cyberspace. in general his entire organic mechanical aesthetic is notably lacking, most visibly in the ball joints of things like the tachikomas
the soundtrack is ok, but simply not a patch on either SAC or the oshii film. they knew the history and they were afraid of moving either too far away from it or too close to it, so we end up with a middle ground that is forgettable without having any particular quality of its own
kuze was an effective performance. he was also entirely misconceived; in many ways the thrust of what they were drawing from was positioning forces brought about by the technological change of society as their primary opposition. in that context kuze would be The Bad Guy - but instead he is simply a redeemed character who gets to die heroically. in place of opposition from the impersonal or possibly overpersonal technological forces of the future we have exciting Bad Capitalism Man, with the power of Being a Douche
this coupled with the slavish ripping out of whole set pieces from the oshii movie made the contrast especially hard to bear; the contrast between the animal-like spider tank and the relatively emotionless kusanagi (animal like things and thing like animals) is here rendered as robot controlled by bad guy versus generic action girl who has Feelings and Facial Expressions HOW DARE THEY
in fact this scene contains so many levels of failure
1) the music is generic action movie fare. there is no space. there is no ambience. there isnt even the recognition of the water as being a great way to show where she is - instead they just let her phase in so you can see her rather than letting the footsteps be the guide
2) rather than having her move to tear the top of the tank be an insane attempt to achieve an objective that she should have no investment in and could easily have run away from (she could have just stealthed and wandered off in the original), they have a character who needs to be protected. thus instead of being something that allows us to infer Weird Shit about her mental state it becomes a generic desperation play
3) THE ATTEMPT SUCCEEDS
4) SHE KEEPS A WHOLE ARM!!!!!!!! A WHOLE ARM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5) the space they decide to shoot it in has none of the pleasingly placed visual silliness of the original, such as the map of all species which gets chewed up by its autocannon.
there is a similar conceptual failure in how they characterise kusanagi. in the conception theyve gone with, her state is a bad thing inflicted upon her by an outside agent. it is something for which people should be punished; it is a CRIME and there must be JUSTICE (oh god that ending monologue). in the originals her state isnt a single event which can be "got over" - it is simply the way things are. she cant feel bitter about it; its the best outcome she could have had given her circumstances. it is a state of being rather than an injury, and it doesnt neatly resolve into like THIS IS MY SUPERHERO ORIGIN. shes fucking weird, such is life
i like that aramaki got to fucking blast people
o ye the design of the action set pieces was in general very bland, barring the opening fight. they never really play with the fact that shes a, you know, robot
if you were to say "how would a stereotype of the west fuck this up" its pretty much this, from the individualist take on the character to the CORPORATIONS R BAD stuff. on the other hand, it is very technically well executed so yolo
buckle up, because there's talk being made about Akira being adapted into a live action movie.
Hollywood is about done with comics because anything after this first civil war/infinite crisis/whatever its called in the paperback universe has been pretty drek.
So my guess is they are looking at anime now and completely missing the point.
Not to be grump mchyperbole grump pants, but movies have been getting pretty generic lately. The only ones I remember at all in the last few years are Mad Max and Dredd and that's because they were directed and acted by people that knew the source material and what those universes were about.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It's crazy to me that the ripped some of the coolest set pieces from the original and still made them boring because the context wasn't as engaging. The ending to the old film blew my mind as a kid, it wasn't a movie that laid the premise at your feet.
Also, an Americanized Akira would only have more issues than GitS, for a myriad of reasons. Same reason why American Godzilla films continue to disappoint.
Akira seems like a particularly bizarre choice for a Hollywood adaptation. It feels weird to describe it as an art house movie, but in many ways it kind of is, it's much less concerned with the overall movement of its plot than about exploring its weird futuristic city and some various concepts within it.
Like, you could certainly rework it into a more conventional story, but at that point why bother? Beyond a couple of visual elements it mostly just leaves you with weird baggage. Why even invite the comparison?
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
The movie felt like a very pretty mess to me. Interesting design, poorly shot and incoherent action, plot that felt like it left a lot of things underresolved for no reason.
"He's build his own network of human minds!"
...and then that thread is never mentioned again.
It did play a part in the end.
He did try to convince Major to come with him (to the network) and when that failed he went there alone leaving his body to be destroyed.
Personally I'm hoping for a sequel, where disembodied minds like him are explored more.
That might actually make a worse movie.
It's not an uncommon sentiment that the manga version of the sequel which follows the Major post Puppetmaster is pretty terrible. The manga version of the Puppetmaster arc is different than the movie mostly because of the different characterization of the Major. It's less a serious philosophical discussion of what the self is and instead the Major just laughs and says the internet is vast and she's probably not going back to Section 9. Man-Machine Interface then is so different in tone and art design than Ghost in the Shell that many other fans I've talked to couldn't finish it and didn't like it at all.
If they were to go with something like adapting Innocence it would probably bomb as well.
That's why if they want to mine new stories for existing material for inspiration about GiTS they should go to SAC. Until something else comes along that's my definitive version for GiTS franchise, I prefer it over the original manga and '95 film.
There are stories in the manga that could be turned into a movie. They could almost take each chapter, flesh them out a bit, and make individual movies.
SAC would be good as well but I think audiences would feel like they're getting a political science lesson depending on what episodes they adapted.
I could see Netflix doing a localized treatment of the Laughing Man Case--as pertaining to American privatized healthcare, the worsening health of a (gradually aging) population and those trends after cyberization, and a conspiracy to cover it up.
In fact, that would probably be the easiest Ghost in the Shell Hollywood adaptation to do--a one-season miniseries focusing exclusively on the Laughing Man Case. It'd be paint-by-numbers, it would have some depth, it'd be missing a lot of the charm and chemistry that SAC builds up over twenty-six episodes (the equivalent of 13 hour-long episodes instead of 5 to 10), but it would probably be the least likely to suck in the way that every anime adaptation done by Hollywood as sucked so far.
But I'm also of the opinion that there is absolutely no need for such a thing--which is absolutely not scientific in any way, but purely artistic. I generally dislike direct same-language remakes (or sequels that are functionally remakes, which explains some of my personal feelings about The Force Awakens), and aside from "making a truckload of money via merchandising", I don't see the need for localized remakes unless they actually add something substantial, like The Departed to Infernal Affairs or Star Wars to The Hidden Fortress--which is stretching the definition of a "remake" at a time to the point you could consider it "an homage". I suspect a large part of the reason I like Mad Max: Fury Road is because I've never seen the original because of just how totally incomprehensible the core concept--post-apocalyptic car civilization--sounds to me personally, and I don't particularly like Mel Gibson. If people want to experience a political conspiracy-driven crime procedural action drama in a transhuman age, they can watch Stand Alone Complex with subtitles (or an audio track) in a language they understand. They don't need to have a remake set in their homeland, in their epoch. I like Stranger Things a whole bunch, but, surprise, I don't need a Chinese language version of it set in a Taiwanese mountain town in 1980.
But....that's the easiest, safest, and least terrible way to do it, I suspect.
Big Hero 6 had great Asian American representation for a voice acted animated feature. Even though we never see the person who plays Hiro, that casting makes sense to me. Hiro is an Asian American living in an Asian American city, and he faces problems and influences familiar to Asian Americans. The Asian American actor playing him has something to work with. This isn't really an argument against you, but against people who say that voice acting gets a pass in terms of whitewashing. This casting decision wasn't meaningless and it created work for Asian Americans.
Blockbuster movies are very different from TV animation.
TV animation tends to have very limited budget, so they focus on hiring actors who have amazing range and who are capable of playing multiple roles. I don't know what the auditions process is like on an animated show, but I'm guessing that it's absolutely nothing like the audition process for live action. Voice actors on TV are paid less and will typically do many different TV shows simultaneously. They're also easier to replace if the actor is unavailable.
OTOH, blockbuster movies are treated more like traditional cinema. Part of this is budget, part of this is marketing, and part of this is because they have a strict shooting schedule in mind and they don't intend to go beyond that (where as TV animations are always subject to renewal/cancellation).
DreamWorks is known for hiring A-list talent to push their movies. "AntZ" was basically pushed as a Woody Allen vehicle. Shark Tale prominently highlighted their cast in the trailer. The actors are basically playing themselves.
Pixar doesn't have to rely on those types of gimmicks to sell their movie, but like DreamWorks, they don't rely on casting voice acting specialists. Sometimes, they'll hold an open auditions process to cast an unknown.
In the case of Russell from "Up," they didn't cast a traditional actor. Or even a person with any acting training at all. Instead, they just found an Asian kid who seemed genuine for the role.
I wonder if the CGI process itself makes it easier to cast non-specialists, due to syncing/dubbing issues.
Big Hero 6 had great Asian American representation for a voice acted animated feature. Even though we never see the person who plays Hiro, that casting makes sense to me. Hiro is an Asian American living in an Asian American city, and he faces problems and influences familiar to Asian Americans. The Asian American actor playing him has something to work with. This isn't really an argument against you, but against people who say that voice acting gets a pass in terms of whitewashing. This casting decision wasn't meaningless and it created work for Asian Americans.
Blockbuster movies are very different from TV animation.
TV animation tends to have very limited budget, so they focus on hiring actors who have amazing range and who are capable of playing multiple roles. I don't know what the auditions process is like on an animated show, but I'm guessing that it's absolutely nothing like the audition process for live action. Voice actors on TV are paid less and will typically do many different TV shows simultaneously. They're also easier to replace if the actor is unavailable.
OTOH, blockbuster movies are treated more like traditional cinema. Part of this is budget, part of this is marketing, and part of this is because they have a strict shooting schedule in mind and they don't intend to go beyond that (where as TV animations are always subject to renewal/cancellation).
DreamWorks is known for hiring A-list talent to push their movies. "AntZ" was basically pushed as a Woody Allen vehicle. Shark Tale prominently highlighted their cast in the trailer. The actors are basically playing themselves.
Pixar doesn't have to rely on those types of gimmicks to sell their movie, but like DreamWorks, they don't rely on casting voice acting specialists. Sometimes, they'll hold an open auditions process to cast an unknown.
In the case of Russell from "Up," they didn't cast a traditional actor. Or even a person with any acting training at all. Instead, they just found an Asian kid who seemed genuine for the role.
I wonder if the CGI process itself makes it easier to cast non-specialists, due to syncing/dubbing issues.
Why do TV shows cast voice actors like Hollywood celebrities and why does Hollywood cast diverse voice actors like a live action TV show? It seems like Hollywood is doing right by casting in the realm of animation.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
ok so sort of random thoughts because i forgot to do it this morning
this is an example of one of those films where the people asked to write it were awful at their job. having a cheeky look at the scriptwriters makes for uninspiring reading; transformers, spectral street kings. they were not up to the task, and the dialogue was... dire. show not tell violated every 15 seconds, with scarlett blurting out I FEEL SO DISCONNECTED so that we knew she felt disconnected, and characters commenting repeatedly right at the beginning about oh ho ho isnt it good we have a GHOST in this SHELL friends smileyface
the genesis of her name is also fucking stupid - they call her a "miracle" in the first 3 minutes, then about 2 seconds later go HER NAME IS MIRA KILLIAN. oh its "mira cle" u geniuses and she gets to keep her mk initials
the concept artists working on this film were full of inspiration and brilliant ideas, but they were constrained and ruined by the fundamentally insipid artistic vision from the top. they had been instructed to slavishly ape generic blue cyberpunk, with a few shots pretty much ripped exactly from the various series/films, but within that context the detail is mostly excellent. theres one particular girl doing insanely heavy squats with the barbell appearing and disappearing as one of the adverts that caught my eye, but also details like the design on the inside of the geishabots head, inlaid and filigree pseudowatchmaker stuff, that was excellently done
this film was purely a rehash of the film and series. almost nothing was taken from the manga. especially notable is the lack of the rhizome-inspired oshii cyberspace. in general his entire organic mechanical aesthetic is notably lacking, most visibly in the ball joints of things like the tachikomas
the soundtrack is ok, but simply not a patch on either SAC or the oshii film. they knew the history and they were afraid of moving either too far away from it or too close to it, so we end up with a middle ground that is forgettable without having any particular quality of its own
kuze was an effective performance. he was also entirely misconceived; in many ways the thrust of what they were drawing from was positioning forces brought about by the technological change of society as their primary opposition. in that context kuze would be The Bad Guy - but instead he is simply a redeemed character who gets to die heroically. in place of opposition from the impersonal or possibly overpersonal technological forces of the future we have exciting Bad Capitalism Man, with the power of Being a Douche
this coupled with the slavish ripping out of whole set pieces from the oshii movie made the contrast especially hard to bear; the contrast between the animal-like spider tank and the relatively emotionless kusanagi (animal like things and thing like animals) is here rendered as robot controlled by bad guy versus generic action girl who has Feelings and Facial Expressions HOW DARE THEY
in fact this scene contains so many levels of failure
1) the music is generic action movie fare. there is no space. there is no ambience. there isnt even the recognition of the water as being a great way to show where she is - instead they just let her phase in so you can see her rather than letting the footsteps be the guide
2) rather than having her move to tear the top of the tank be an insane attempt to achieve an objective that she should have no investment in and could easily have run away from (she could have just stealthed and wandered off in the original), they have a character who needs to be protected. thus instead of being something that allows us to infer Weird Shit about her mental state it becomes a generic desperation play
3) THE ATTEMPT SUCCEEDS
4) SHE KEEPS A WHOLE ARM!!!!!!!! A WHOLE ARM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5) the space they decide to shoot it in has none of the pleasingly placed visual silliness of the original, such as the map of all species which gets chewed up by its autocannon.
there is a similar conceptual failure in how they characterise kusanagi. in the conception theyve gone with, her state is a bad thing inflicted upon her by an outside agent. it is something for which people should be punished; it is a CRIME and there must be JUSTICE (oh god that ending monologue). in the originals her state isnt a single event which can be "got over" - it is simply the way things are. she cant feel bitter about it; its the best outcome she could have had given her circumstances. it is a state of being rather than an injury, and it doesnt neatly resolve into like THIS IS MY SUPERHERO ORIGIN. shes fucking weird, such is life
i like that aramaki got to fucking blast people
o ye the design of the action set pieces was in general very bland, barring the opening fight. they never really play with the fact that shes a, you know, robot
if you were to say "how would a stereotype of the west fuck this up" its pretty much this, from the individualist take on the character to the CORPORATIONS R BAD stuff. on the other hand, it is very technically well executed so yolo
First, the important thing.
Second, this has some interesting consequences considering the portrayals really do scream: "SHOT FOR SHOT REMAKE OF OSHII'S GREATEST HITS"...or "Ghost in the Shell-themed music video staring Black Widow," as was already pointed out.
That puts me in an odd position because, as heretical as it may sound to the anime and cyberpunk fandom in 21st century America, I actually don't particularly like the Oshii interpretation's aesthetic. I understand why it's like that, and I don't doubt its cultural cache, but what worked later in Jin Roh is less effective. That goes right back to the protagonist.
That's from Wikipedia's article on the TV series.
This is a shot from a later chapter in the 1989 manga, in effect "original" Kusanagi, or pretty close to it. Few of the early panels are colorized, which is typical for manga.
For the benefit of the unfamiliar, they're obviously pretty different portrayals (in both cases, these are outfits the character wears on multiple occasion, particularly the optical camouflage "ninja" suit that's the single most common outfit across two seasons of SAC). Johansson's pretty clearly borrowing from a combination of the Oshii film and Arise, which itself borrowed from the 1996 film. It's maybe worth noting that both the manga and TV series, for a variety reasons, have less nudity vs. overall screen time than Oshii's film did (and you can probably guess why, especially since SAC Kusanagi uses a civilian cyberbody and thus, is implied to be anatomically correct). SAC also has a leotard-like getup over a FONZIE(TM) jacket which is great.
The clothes, and the character itself, carry a lot of weight. The fact that Oshii went with a more plainly androgynous facial design for the Major, while simultaneously making her a lot more nude, than Masamune Shiro was a deliberate move--and not a bad one, even though I have a childhood affection for the goofy, coquettish Major in 80's bodysuits. I'm still surprised by Sanders' unflinching desire to reproduce so much of the Oshii film, shot for shot, even acknowledging it as what Ghost in the Shell is in America (at least for audiences who didn't watch the TV series decade-long run on the Adult Swim programming bloc). It smacks of corporate interference ("SHE HAS TO FIGHT THE FUCKING SPIDER TANK! WHY WOULD WE EVEN HAVE IT OTHERWISE?"), but honestly there could be something else completely behind it.
Well, it's unfair for me to critique the aesthetic choice too much--they made their choice, even if it seems a little misguided at times.
Interesting that da Chief gets to shoot someone. That's a consistency across the manga and TV series--the closest Aramaki ever comes to that is threatening another official with a pocket revolver in the manga, where he's somewhat less poised than in the TV series. In there, particularly the London episode demonstrates Aramaki is all brains and heart (and even becomes the damsel-in-distress on one occasion), and has unshakable poise.
This does confirm their adherence to the source material that I suspected, thanks Surreality-sensei.
Plus, Stand Alone Complex's soundtrack is far better than it has any right to be--courtesy of Origa, Yoko Kano, and to a lesser extent Tim Jensen, etc., but with Olga Vitalevna Yakovleva's passing in 2015, I wonder if you could ever hope to recreate it even if that was your aim. Couldn't hold that against the film.
Synthesis on
+3
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
I know the elephant in the room is the whitewashing, but we don't need to spend page after page discussing it; to be honest, whitewashing was the least of this film's problems. I will say this, though - if Ghost in the Shell were a great film, I could probably look over the whitewashing as a contrivance to appeal to western audiences, but that as it stands, it's basically the peak of Shit Mountain.
Aside from being culturally insensitive, the other major problem with whitewashing is that it generally comes from a place of artistic laziness. It's a canary in the coal mine. There are several variations of how this laziness can manifest:
"I want to create a movie with Asian themes, but I'm too lazy to research what that entails, so I'm going to rely on tropes from other movies.
"I want to have my main character in an Asian setting, but I'm too lazy to research the Asian life experience, so instead I'm going to feature a white guy in the lead because that's easier."
"I want the audience to relate to the main character, but I'm too lazy to figure out how to make an Asian person relatable, so I'm going to make the main character a white person."
"I want this main character to be considered an outsider within an Asian setting. But I'm too lazy to think about nuance and conflicting viewpoints within the Asian community itself, so instead I'm going to make the the main character a white person."
"I want the movie to sell well, but I'm too lazy to write a compelling script, so instead I'm going to hire an a-lister (who happens to be white) and focus entirely on their star power to drive ticket sales."
"I want to cast someone who I know is talented, so I'm going to go with an actor I'm already familiar with, because I'm too lazy to take a chance on someone else."
"I want to cast the best person for the role I have in my head. But the role I have in my head is based on my own white experiences and preconceptions, because I'm too lazy to imagine how the role could be done in any other way."
Imagine if a director has a role in mind for a character in loafers, but he doesn't mention that in the casting call. And then when the actors show up, the ones who don't wear loafers are immediately rejected because they don't look "right" for the role. And that's the problem that most Asian actors are facing right now. But the problem isn't simply that you're rejecting actors who are otherwise qualified for the role.
You might think I'm exaggerating. But here's the casting call for extras who want to be in Last Airbender:
“We want you to dress in traditional cultural ethnic attire,” she said. “If you’re Korean, wear a kimono. If you’re from Belgium, wear lederhosen.”
Another way to stand out is to demonstrate skills such as basket weaving, hair braiding, making clay pots, puppeteering, knitting, looming – “any artisan craft,” Rickets said.
She said the set and cast will reflect the alternate world of the film, and not the streets of Philadelphia.
This is just... wrong. On every level. Kimonos aren't Korean. And despite the statement of "if you're from Belgium...", I seriously doubt that any of the white actors in the cast had to jump through similar hoops to demonstrate their ethnicity.
Kana did an excellent analysis about how the themes from the original GiTS were completely abandoned in favor of more stereotypical Western themes. Once again, the central problem behind all of this boils down to laziness. And laziness rarely results in good filmmaking.
If you've never read it, you're in for a treat sensei--Ghost in the Shell manga is like an homage to bad what-if speculation of 1980s high fashion.
What is this? What does it even mean? Why is it white? So when you get shot, they can see your cyberbody bleed? So you have to wear it under white battle kit? Wait, there's no further kit under that? How is the mass-produced robot pilot/secretary the most normal looking one in the panel? And is this why Batou, who wears the same outfit, is given a military cyberbody with no discernible junk? So we don't have to stare at his package outlined in white? Don't they know this is Penny Arcade?
Wait, when did this turn into The Young and the Restless? What the book lacks in tight-pants optional FONIZE(TM) jacket Kusanagi, it makes up with giving her a different wardrobe in every single chapter. And just wait till you get to big-shouldered blazers and MC Hammer Pants Kusanagi.
Akira seems like a particularly bizarre choice for a Hollywood adaptation. It feels weird to describe it as an art house movie, but in many ways it kind of is, it's much less concerned with the overall movement of its plot than about exploring its weird futuristic city and some various concepts within it.
Like, you could certainly rework it into a more conventional story, but at that point why bother? Beyond a couple of visual elements it mostly just leaves you with weird baggage. Why even invite the comparison?
Apparently, as of the 29th, rumor is WB is trying to get Jordan Peele to direct it now
Akira seems like a particularly bizarre choice for a Hollywood adaptation. It feels weird to describe it as an art house movie, but in many ways it kind of is, it's much less concerned with the overall movement of its plot than about exploring its weird futuristic city and some various concepts within it.
Like, you could certainly rework it into a more conventional story, but at that point why bother? Beyond a couple of visual elements it mostly just leaves you with weird baggage. Why even invite the comparison?
Apparently, as of the 29th, rumor is WB is trying to get Jordan Peele to direct it now
Akira is a very long movie in the original anime version, but the political climate and such really never seemed specific to Japan so I'm hopeful with some freedom of interpretation they can move it towards something a bit more "Children of Men" levels of holy what the fuck is wrong with this place. I think they could probably do a good deal with Venus Wars, too.
I have feeling though, that if GiTS is a commercial success, even if not a critical one it will get many manga/cartoons converted into live action and ruin the genre pretty quickly. Kind of like how Found Footage horror films were such a saturated market they were old hat within 8 months or so. Which would be a shame.
Akira seems like a particularly bizarre choice for a Hollywood adaptation. It feels weird to describe it as an art house movie, but in many ways it kind of is, it's much less concerned with the overall movement of its plot than about exploring its weird futuristic city and some various concepts within it.
Like, you could certainly rework it into a more conventional story, but at that point why bother? Beyond a couple of visual elements it mostly just leaves you with weird baggage. Why even invite the comparison?
Apparently, as of the 29th, rumor is WB is trying to get Jordan Peele to direct it now
I want this to happen. Not because I want an Akira movie, but because I really like Peele, but still want it to crash and burn so he has a hilarious story to relate about it.
Akira seems like a particularly bizarre choice for a Hollywood adaptation. It feels weird to describe it as an art house movie, but in many ways it kind of is, it's much less concerned with the overall movement of its plot than about exploring its weird futuristic city and some various concepts within it.
Like, you could certainly rework it into a more conventional story, but at that point why bother? Beyond a couple of visual elements it mostly just leaves you with weird baggage. Why even invite the comparison?
Apparently, as of the 29th, rumor is WB is trying to get Jordan Peele to direct it now
I want this to happen. Not because I want an Akira movie, but because I really like Peele, but still want it to crash and burn so he has a hilarious story to relate about it.
I'm just really curious just what Jordan Peele would do with the concept. Like, it's completely unlike anything he's done before to my knowledge, but at the same time that presents an interesting blank slate of possibility for a director who has a strong sense of perspective and is able to execute on it.
Of course, there's the potential I suppose that, even after the success of Get Out, WB may see him as still early enough in his career that they can still throw their weight around as the studio and he won't have as much pull to rein them in.
But I don't know if I'm getting things too off track here, though I suppose it still counts given the cultural translation/localization aspects that have surrounded Hollywood Akira forever now?
Akira seems like a particularly bizarre choice for a Hollywood adaptation. It feels weird to describe it as an art house movie, but in many ways it kind of is, it's much less concerned with the overall movement of its plot than about exploring its weird futuristic city and some various concepts within it.
Like, you could certainly rework it into a more conventional story, but at that point why bother? Beyond a couple of visual elements it mostly just leaves you with weird baggage. Why even invite the comparison?
Apparently, as of the 29th, rumor is WB is trying to get Jordan Peele to direct it now
Akira is a very long movie in the original anime version, but the political climate and such really never seemed specific to Japan so I'm hopeful with some freedom of interpretation they can move it towards something a bit more "Children of Men" levels of holy what the fuck is wrong with this place. I think they could probably do a good deal with Venus Wars, too.
I have feeling though, that if GiTS is a commercial success, even if not a critical one it will get many manga/cartoons converted into live action and ruin the genre pretty quickly. Kind of like how Found Footage horror films were such a saturated market they were old hat within 8 months or so. Which would be a shame.
there kinda a lot of content in the manga, and it's not as though the anime is all that faithful to it.
I'm sort of wondering if you could stay pretty loyal to the manga, and just tell the entire story, of Neo Tokyo, from an American point of view. The government has fallen, and thet have to send in a rag tag band if whatevers to figure out what is going on.
Turns out, Akira is more or less going on.
I am, like, 85% sure this is a plotline in that manga. would be kinda neat if they did that.
Akira is pretty 80s Japanese politics. I don't see how you westernize it. if it still takes place in Japan, it has some specific things to say about the character of that government. I don't think a Hollywood studio is going to want to touch those things.
we'll get a bad remake if the movie with the themes adapted for us audiences.
The thing is like, the film version of Akira is only a fraction of the full story present in the manga.
It's a fantastic visual feast, but it's... kind of lacking in the story department.
Right. There's so much plot, why bother trying to remake the anime, when you could do a different part of the story. There's parts that would maybe work better for film and us audiences.
I'd rather see a small new part of Akira done well than what expect a remake of the movie would wind up like.
and i love that movie. they're are bits about it that are basically bad, there's a lot that is confusing, and there's stuff like the biker gang stuff...
Kanada's song, and the opening chase/fight thing with the clowns. i worry about a remake being a little too NeoTokyo Drift.
Akira seems like a particularly bizarre choice for a Hollywood adaptation. It feels weird to describe it as an art house movie, but in many ways it kind of is, it's much less concerned with the overall movement of its plot than about exploring its weird futuristic city and some various concepts within it.
Like, you could certainly rework it into a more conventional story, but at that point why bother? Beyond a couple of visual elements it mostly just leaves you with weird baggage. Why even invite the comparison?
Apparently, as of the 29th, rumor is WB is trying to get Jordan Peele to direct it now
Akira is a very long movie in the original anime version, but the political climate and such really never seemed specific to Japan so I'm hopeful with some freedom of interpretation they can move it towards something a bit more "Children of Men" levels of holy what the fuck is wrong with this place. I think they could probably do a good deal with Venus Wars, too.
I have feeling though, that if GiTS is a commercial success, even if not a critical one it will get many manga/cartoons converted into live action and ruin the genre pretty quickly. Kind of like how Found Footage horror films were such a saturated market they were old hat within 8 months or so. Which would be a shame.
there kinda a lot of content in the manga, and it's not as though the anime is all that faithful to it.
I'm sort of wondering if you could stay pretty loyal to the manga, and just tell the entire story, of Neo Tokyo, from an American point of view. The government has fallen, and thet have to send in a rag tag band if whatevers to figure out what is going on.
Turns out, Akira is more or less going on.
I am, like, 85% sure this is a plotline in that manga. would be kinda neat if they did that.
Akira is pretty 80s Japanese politics. I don't see how you westernize it. if it still takes place in Japan, it has some specific things to say about the character of that government. I don't think a Hollywood studio is going to want to touch those things.
we'll get a bad remake if the movie with the themes adapted for us audiences.
Our culture has more in common with Akira than Ghost In the Shell. Akira's technology and government are dystopian and nihilistic, whereas GITS Japan is a post-scarcity society.
However, the rebellious youth that shaped the future in an anarchy of technology do not exist here. And Hollywood will never ever try to stir up trouble in society even if it would pay out mad loads.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Akira seems like a particularly bizarre choice for a Hollywood adaptation. It feels weird to describe it as an art house movie, but in many ways it kind of is, it's much less concerned with the overall movement of its plot than about exploring its weird futuristic city and some various concepts within it.
Like, you could certainly rework it into a more conventional story, but at that point why bother? Beyond a couple of visual elements it mostly just leaves you with weird baggage. Why even invite the comparison?
Apparently, as of the 29th, rumor is WB is trying to get Jordan Peele to direct it now
Akira is a very long movie in the original anime version, but the political climate and such really never seemed specific to Japan so I'm hopeful with some freedom of interpretation they can move it towards something a bit more "Children of Men" levels of holy what the fuck is wrong with this place. I think they could probably do a good deal with Venus Wars, too.
I have feeling though, that if GiTS is a commercial success, even if not a critical one it will get many manga/cartoons converted into live action and ruin the genre pretty quickly. Kind of like how Found Footage horror films were such a saturated market they were old hat within 8 months or so. Which would be a shame.
On reverse, a GitS failure will prevent other Anime derived movies getting green lit.
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We both want to see the new one, but have set Hollywood version expectations low.
I will say overall it was one of the stronger anime adaptions, though that isn't saying much considering the competition are films like DragonBall: Evolution.
Batou's actor's performance was stellar, as well as Togusa's (what little we see of him), Aramaki was interesting though too little to leave a big impression and Kuze was an inspirational take. Kuze spoilers
edit: One of highlights in the film is a scene where Section 9 are altogether early on, that was really engaging. An entire film like that would feel like watching a live action SAC episode, it's disappointing we didn't get that.
edit: Though if by some chance they do do this they should hire an Asian actress for Motoko. Learn from this movie's mistakes, people.
That might actually make a worse movie.
It's not an uncommon sentiment that the manga version of the sequel which follows the Major post Puppetmaster is pretty terrible. The manga version of the Puppetmaster arc is different than the movie mostly because of the different characterization of the Major. It's less a serious philosophical discussion of what the self is and instead the Major just laughs and says the internet is vast and she's probably not going back to Section 9. Man-Machine Interface then is so different in tone and art design than Ghost in the Shell that many other fans I've talked to couldn't finish it and didn't like it at all.
If they were to go with something like adapting Innocence it would probably bomb as well.
That's why if they want to mine new stories for existing material for inspiration about GiTS they should go to SAC. Until something else comes along that's my definitive version for GiTS franchise, I prefer it over the original manga and '95 film.
edit: For reference about what Rand's talking about with MMI, that's like GiTS's Dark Knight Strikes Back.
There are stories in the manga that could be turned into a movie. They could almost take each chapter, flesh them out a bit, and make individual movies.
SAC would be good as well but I think audiences would feel like they're getting a political science lesson depending on what episodes they adapted.
That's true, I loved those little stories in the manga.
Yeah, for the SAC formula to work they'd have to modify it, dumb it down severely, avoid the really complex stuff about robotics and espionage, pare down the team to the bare bones (personally I'd keep Togusa, Aramaki, the new female character from this movie so it's not all dudes and Batou. Have the rest rotate or guest ar when appreciate to logistics and dump the extras when they can't fit in with the production). They should be able to do the typical spy/espionage stuff like a smarter Mission: Impossible/James Bond vehicle in future Japan with killer cyborgs, rather than what they did here.
edit: They can also do gimmick movies which are fun little one offs with smaller budgets, in the vein of Dredd and The Raid. More expensive than those movies, of course but maybe cheaper than the movie like they made.
I appreciate that you use spoilers, but you don't really have to since this is an open spoiler thread and the plot twist is central to almost all relevant discussion.
What feels insulting to me is that since the only similarity between the main character and her race is her brain. When I think of a white person playing a Japanese person, I think of 007 in You Only Live Twice or Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. The former is forgivable (though stupid) since it's essential to the plot.
But the main character is not pretending to be a Japanese person. What is the identity of an amnesiac in a robot body? If you never see Murphy before he became Robocop, could you say that he played a white male? What if they removed the front half of his face too, what race would he be then?
She's not embedded in Japanese culture, she's not viewed as Japanese, she doesn't have a Japanese name, she doesn't even speak Japanese for 99% of the movie. Why is that?
I think the writers responded to the backlash by making it so casting her as a Japanese person would be impossible. Heck, if they started earlier, before all the Japan assets were made, I bet they would have Americanized the setting too.
That's what you get when you simply say that the role is Japanese while ignoring that Ghost in the Shell always had an out. What's the difference between a Japanese brain in a robot body and a Caucasian brain in a robot body if they have no memories and are treated the same? What, is a Japanese brain different from a Caucasian brain? What exactly is being said here?
I think MANAA is accusing her of yellowface, which is a crime she didn't commit because the movie at least had enough depth not to be able to say "well, she's a Japanese person."
By the way,
Big Hero 6 had great Asian American representation for a voice acted animated feature. Even though we never see the person who plays Hiro, that casting makes sense to me. Hiro is an Asian American living in an Asian American city, and he faces problems and influences familiar to Asian Americans. The Asian American actor playing him has something to work with. This isn't really an argument against you, but against people who say that voice acting gets a pass in terms of whitewashing. This casting decision wasn't meaningless and it created work for Asian Americans.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
My favourite GitS adaptation is Innocence and I really didn't care much about SAC 1st season. I haven't seen any of the later stuff.
Manga's were mostly ok, although one of them (2nd one?) had gringeworthy cgi-style graphics, instead of properly drawn ones.
Everyone using the Matrix as their go-to comparison confuses me a bit. Matrix cribs some cyber punk style, and once it gets up its own ass philosophical later in the trilogy maybe it starts to touch on some of the same themes, but Blade Runner always struck me as way more akin to Ghost in the Shell from the word go.
This is from a few pages back but we had a thread on this a year ago that actually had a lot of good discussion in it. A few of my responses from that thread work here:
"The problem is, when you drop the cultural context then yes, stories can be translated across many forms of media and retain some of the themes. But when you excise the character's race and only the race, while keeping the setting in future Japan, have them retain a Japanese name, and the story is specifically about Japanese values and the rise of technology, you destroy and detract from the original work. Like, the Sailor Scouts uniforms are based directly on school girl outfits in Japanese schools. Taken out of context, and they are just goofy outfits they put on for ??? Context matters, and when these stories are written by Japanese people and viewed through the cultural lense of the Japanese, you have to wonder why they needed to change the main character and leave the rest intact. It's why whitewashing is so fundamentally stupid, as it shows a lack of respect and a disregard for the source material in favor of selling more tickets and DVDs.
Basically, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is most likely a friggin' duck."
or
"To boil it down, it's that the story unfolds in an undeniably Japanese way. They have long, lingering shots to mimic the manga artform, they show consecutive world building shots to emphasise what kind of place this Future Japan looks like. "Aspect-to-Aspect" transitions are used to abandon time in favor of exploring the space and world around them. It's to create a tangible atmosphere.
The themes of city and the people who occupy it are a mirror to the themes of Ghosts and their Shells, and wondering about the relationship between them. The city is based off of Japan, and also Hong Kong; these stories reflect the conflict they felt after being under rule by a foreign nation. Like post WW2 Japan, or how Hong Kong was long under British rule, and in that way embodies the identity problems a cyborg would have; how do they shape identity when you were made by someone who came before? Are you who you are by free will, when you know you are also a manufactured machine? The same questions we have of religion and existence itself... cyborgs would feel the same- but in a more definitive way; they only exist as they are now by the actions of others.
Every shot in this movie is meticulously placed and for a reason. The shots of the decrepit and overgrown city, it is one of the best themes in cyberpunk: it shows the mix of technology and culture can mirror the mix of technology and mankind. We make the spaces we live, but they also shape ourselves. The dynamic of ourselves and the spaces we occupy, are one and the same..."
What, then, is Japanese culture but a sort of illegitimate amalgam akin to US culture? What historical rights do we mutts have to our ancestral cultures?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
The whole point of an adaptation is to bring the story to a wider audience. We shouldn't be stoked when they get the fundamental purpose of the story wrong. I heard the argument upthread that like Watchmen, this movie is un-adaptable. I disagree. I think had they given the movie a good writer, director and producers that loved and understood the source material, it could have been amazing. Even with a ScarJo as lead, they could have used it to make a poignant point about identity. But they didn't. It's worthy of criticism, if they just lift the cool aesthetic and tone of the original but still portray the Major completely wrong.
Adaptations happen and they can be done right. But if you lose some aspect of the film by changing the setting (which would have happened) why bother?
Akira and GiTS are usually my go to examples of what engaging interesting future punk means to me. It's odd because they're both 20+ years old at this point and Hollywood hasn't caught up to the vision yet.
That was Man-Machine Interface.
I don't know how it was received in Japan but I get the impression it was not liked by fans here in the US in general. The change in art direction being one of the reasons.
The 95 movie and Innocence likely have far less mass appeal than a straight action movie adaptation of GitS. Even SAC would require some modification to have mass appeal because not everyone is interested in a story involving real and realistic political interactions.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
this is an example of one of those films where the people asked to write it were awful at their job. having a cheeky look at the scriptwriters makes for uninspiring reading; transformers, spectral street kings. they were not up to the task, and the dialogue was... dire. show not tell violated every 15 seconds, with scarlett blurting out I FEEL SO DISCONNECTED so that we knew she felt disconnected, and characters commenting repeatedly right at the beginning about oh ho ho isnt it good we have a GHOST in this SHELL friends smileyface
the genesis of her name is also fucking stupid - they call her a "miracle" in the first 3 minutes, then about 2 seconds later go HER NAME IS MIRA KILLIAN. oh its "mira cle" u geniuses and she gets to keep her mk initials
the concept artists working on this film were full of inspiration and brilliant ideas, but they were constrained and ruined by the fundamentally insipid artistic vision from the top. they had been instructed to slavishly ape generic blue cyberpunk, with a few shots pretty much ripped exactly from the various series/films, but within that context the detail is mostly excellent. theres one particular girl doing insanely heavy squats with the barbell appearing and disappearing as one of the adverts that caught my eye, but also details like the design on the inside of the geishabots head, inlaid and filigree pseudowatchmaker stuff, that was excellently done
this film was purely a rehash of the film and series. almost nothing was taken from the manga. especially notable is the lack of the rhizome-inspired oshii cyberspace. in general his entire organic mechanical aesthetic is notably lacking, most visibly in the ball joints of things like the tachikomas
the soundtrack is ok, but simply not a patch on either SAC or the oshii film. they knew the history and they were afraid of moving either too far away from it or too close to it, so we end up with a middle ground that is forgettable without having any particular quality of its own
kuze was an effective performance. he was also entirely misconceived; in many ways the thrust of what they were drawing from was positioning forces brought about by the technological change of society as their primary opposition. in that context kuze would be The Bad Guy - but instead he is simply a redeemed character who gets to die heroically. in place of opposition from the impersonal or possibly overpersonal technological forces of the future we have exciting Bad Capitalism Man, with the power of Being a Douche
this coupled with the slavish ripping out of whole set pieces from the oshii movie made the contrast especially hard to bear; the contrast between the animal-like spider tank and the relatively emotionless kusanagi (animal like things and thing like animals) is here rendered as robot controlled by bad guy versus generic action girl who has Feelings and Facial Expressions HOW DARE THEY
in fact this scene contains so many levels of failure
1) the music is generic action movie fare. there is no space. there is no ambience. there isnt even the recognition of the water as being a great way to show where she is - instead they just let her phase in so you can see her rather than letting the footsteps be the guide
2) rather than having her move to tear the top of the tank be an insane attempt to achieve an objective that she should have no investment in and could easily have run away from (she could have just stealthed and wandered off in the original), they have a character who needs to be protected. thus instead of being something that allows us to infer Weird Shit about her mental state it becomes a generic desperation play
3) THE ATTEMPT SUCCEEDS
4) SHE KEEPS A WHOLE ARM!!!!!!!! A WHOLE ARM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5) the space they decide to shoot it in has none of the pleasingly placed visual silliness of the original, such as the map of all species which gets chewed up by its autocannon.
there is a similar conceptual failure in how they characterise kusanagi. in the conception theyve gone with, her state is a bad thing inflicted upon her by an outside agent. it is something for which people should be punished; it is a CRIME and there must be JUSTICE (oh god that ending monologue). in the originals her state isnt a single event which can be "got over" - it is simply the way things are. she cant feel bitter about it; its the best outcome she could have had given her circumstances. it is a state of being rather than an injury, and it doesnt neatly resolve into like THIS IS MY SUPERHERO ORIGIN. shes fucking weird, such is life
i like that aramaki got to fucking blast people
o ye the design of the action set pieces was in general very bland, barring the opening fight. they never really play with the fact that shes a, you know, robot
if you were to say "how would a stereotype of the west fuck this up" its pretty much this, from the individualist take on the character to the CORPORATIONS R BAD stuff. on the other hand, it is very technically well executed so yolo
buckle up, because there's talk being made about Akira being adapted into a live action movie.
Hollywood is about done with comics because anything after this first civil war/infinite crisis/whatever its called in the paperback universe has been pretty drek.
So my guess is they are looking at anime now and completely missing the point.
Not to be grump mchyperbole grump pants, but movies have been getting pretty generic lately. The only ones I remember at all in the last few years are Mad Max and Dredd and that's because they were directed and acted by people that knew the source material and what those universes were about.
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Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Also, an Americanized Akira would only have more issues than GitS, for a myriad of reasons. Same reason why American Godzilla films continue to disappoint.
Like, you could certainly rework it into a more conventional story, but at that point why bother? Beyond a couple of visual elements it mostly just leaves you with weird baggage. Why even invite the comparison?
I could see Netflix doing a localized treatment of the Laughing Man Case--as pertaining to American privatized healthcare, the worsening health of a (gradually aging) population and those trends after cyberization, and a conspiracy to cover it up.
In fact, that would probably be the easiest Ghost in the Shell Hollywood adaptation to do--a one-season miniseries focusing exclusively on the Laughing Man Case. It'd be paint-by-numbers, it would have some depth, it'd be missing a lot of the charm and chemistry that SAC builds up over twenty-six episodes (the equivalent of 13 hour-long episodes instead of 5 to 10), but it would probably be the least likely to suck in the way that every anime adaptation done by Hollywood as sucked so far.
But I'm also of the opinion that there is absolutely no need for such a thing--which is absolutely not scientific in any way, but purely artistic. I generally dislike direct same-language remakes (or sequels that are functionally remakes, which explains some of my personal feelings about The Force Awakens), and aside from "making a truckload of money via merchandising", I don't see the need for localized remakes unless they actually add something substantial, like The Departed to Infernal Affairs or Star Wars to The Hidden Fortress--which is stretching the definition of a "remake" at a time to the point you could consider it "an homage". I suspect a large part of the reason I like Mad Max: Fury Road is because I've never seen the original because of just how totally incomprehensible the core concept--post-apocalyptic car civilization--sounds to me personally, and I don't particularly like Mel Gibson. If people want to experience a political conspiracy-driven crime procedural action drama in a transhuman age, they can watch Stand Alone Complex with subtitles (or an audio track) in a language they understand. They don't need to have a remake set in their homeland, in their epoch. I like Stranger Things a whole bunch, but, surprise, I don't need a Chinese language version of it set in a Taiwanese mountain town in 1980.
But....that's the easiest, safest, and least terrible way to do it, I suspect.
Blockbuster movies are very different from TV animation.
TV animation tends to have very limited budget, so they focus on hiring actors who have amazing range and who are capable of playing multiple roles. I don't know what the auditions process is like on an animated show, but I'm guessing that it's absolutely nothing like the audition process for live action. Voice actors on TV are paid less and will typically do many different TV shows simultaneously. They're also easier to replace if the actor is unavailable.
OTOH, blockbuster movies are treated more like traditional cinema. Part of this is budget, part of this is marketing, and part of this is because they have a strict shooting schedule in mind and they don't intend to go beyond that (where as TV animations are always subject to renewal/cancellation).
DreamWorks is known for hiring A-list talent to push their movies. "AntZ" was basically pushed as a Woody Allen vehicle. Shark Tale prominently highlighted their cast in the trailer. The actors are basically playing themselves.
Pixar doesn't have to rely on those types of gimmicks to sell their movie, but like DreamWorks, they don't rely on casting voice acting specialists. Sometimes, they'll hold an open auditions process to cast an unknown.
In the case of Russell from "Up," they didn't cast a traditional actor. Or even a person with any acting training at all. Instead, they just found an Asian kid who seemed genuine for the role.
I wonder if the CGI process itself makes it easier to cast non-specialists, due to syncing/dubbing issues.
Why do TV shows cast voice actors like Hollywood celebrities and why does Hollywood cast diverse voice actors like a live action TV show? It seems like Hollywood is doing right by casting in the realm of animation.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
First, the important thing.
Second, this has some interesting consequences considering the portrayals really do scream: "SHOT FOR SHOT REMAKE OF OSHII'S GREATEST HITS"...or "Ghost in the Shell-themed music video staring Black Widow," as was already pointed out.
That puts me in an odd position because, as heretical as it may sound to the anime and cyberpunk fandom in 21st century America, I actually don't particularly like the Oshii interpretation's aesthetic. I understand why it's like that, and I don't doubt its cultural cache, but what worked later in Jin Roh is less effective. That goes right back to the protagonist.
That's from Wikipedia's article on the TV series.
This is a shot from a later chapter in the 1989 manga, in effect "original" Kusanagi, or pretty close to it. Few of the early panels are colorized, which is typical for manga.
For the benefit of the unfamiliar, they're obviously pretty different portrayals (in both cases, these are outfits the character wears on multiple occasion, particularly the optical camouflage "ninja" suit that's the single most common outfit across two seasons of SAC). Johansson's pretty clearly borrowing from a combination of the Oshii film and Arise, which itself borrowed from the 1996 film. It's maybe worth noting that both the manga and TV series, for a variety reasons, have less nudity vs. overall screen time than Oshii's film did (and you can probably guess why, especially since SAC Kusanagi uses a civilian cyberbody and thus, is implied to be anatomically correct). SAC also has a leotard-like getup over a FONZIE(TM) jacket which is great.
The clothes, and the character itself, carry a lot of weight. The fact that Oshii went with a more plainly androgynous facial design for the Major, while simultaneously making her a lot more nude, than Masamune Shiro was a deliberate move--and not a bad one, even though I have a childhood affection for the goofy, coquettish Major in 80's bodysuits. I'm still surprised by Sanders' unflinching desire to reproduce so much of the Oshii film, shot for shot, even acknowledging it as what Ghost in the Shell is in America (at least for audiences who didn't watch the TV series decade-long run on the Adult Swim programming bloc). It smacks of corporate interference ("SHE HAS TO FIGHT THE FUCKING SPIDER TANK! WHY WOULD WE EVEN HAVE IT OTHERWISE?"), but honestly there could be something else completely behind it.
Well, it's unfair for me to critique the aesthetic choice too much--they made their choice, even if it seems a little misguided at times.
Interesting that da Chief gets to shoot someone. That's a consistency across the manga and TV series--the closest Aramaki ever comes to that is threatening another official with a pocket revolver in the manga, where he's somewhat less poised than in the TV series. In there, particularly the London episode demonstrates Aramaki is all brains and heart (and even becomes the damsel-in-distress on one occasion), and has unshakable poise.
This does confirm their adherence to the source material that I suspected, thanks Surreality-sensei.
Plus, Stand Alone Complex's soundtrack is far better than it has any right to be--courtesy of Origa, Yoko Kano, and to a lesser extent Tim Jensen, etc., but with Olga Vitalevna Yakovleva's passing in 2015, I wonder if you could ever hope to recreate it even if that was your aim. Couldn't hold that against the film.
i want 90s gits now
While I am a huge fan of all the GitS iterations, the manga by far has the best art direction and design. This also goes for Appleseed and Dominion.
Aside from being culturally insensitive, the other major problem with whitewashing is that it generally comes from a place of artistic laziness. It's a canary in the coal mine. There are several variations of how this laziness can manifest:
Imagine if a director has a role in mind for a character in loafers, but he doesn't mention that in the casting call. And then when the actors show up, the ones who don't wear loafers are immediately rejected because they don't look "right" for the role. And that's the problem that most Asian actors are facing right now. But the problem isn't simply that you're rejecting actors who are otherwise qualified for the role.
You might think I'm exaggerating. But here's the casting call for extras who want to be in Last Airbender:
https://avatarmovie.wordpress.com/tag/casting-call/
This is just... wrong. On every level. Kimonos aren't Korean. And despite the statement of "if you're from Belgium...", I seriously doubt that any of the white actors in the cast had to jump through similar hoops to demonstrate their ethnicity.
Kana did an excellent analysis about how the themes from the original GiTS were completely abandoned in favor of more stereotypical Western themes. Once again, the central problem behind all of this boils down to laziness. And laziness rarely results in good filmmaking.
What is this? What does it even mean? Why is it white? So when you get shot, they can see your cyberbody bleed? So you have to wear it under white battle kit? Wait, there's no further kit under that? How is the mass-produced robot pilot/secretary the most normal looking one in the panel? And is this why Batou, who wears the same outfit, is given a military cyberbody with no discernible junk? So we don't have to stare at his package outlined in white? Don't they know this is Penny Arcade?
Wait, when did this turn into The Young and the Restless? What the book lacks in tight-pants optional FONIZE(TM) jacket Kusanagi, it makes up with giving her a different wardrobe in every single chapter. And just wait till you get to big-shouldered blazers and MC Hammer Pants Kusanagi.
Apparently, as of the 29th, rumor is WB is trying to get Jordan Peele to direct it now
Akira is a very long movie in the original anime version, but the political climate and such really never seemed specific to Japan so I'm hopeful with some freedom of interpretation they can move it towards something a bit more "Children of Men" levels of holy what the fuck is wrong with this place. I think they could probably do a good deal with Venus Wars, too.
I have feeling though, that if GiTS is a commercial success, even if not a critical one it will get many manga/cartoons converted into live action and ruin the genre pretty quickly. Kind of like how Found Footage horror films were such a saturated market they were old hat within 8 months or so. Which would be a shame.
I want this to happen. Not because I want an Akira movie, but because I really like Peele, but still want it to crash and burn so he has a hilarious story to relate about it.
I'm just really curious just what Jordan Peele would do with the concept. Like, it's completely unlike anything he's done before to my knowledge, but at the same time that presents an interesting blank slate of possibility for a director who has a strong sense of perspective and is able to execute on it.
Of course, there's the potential I suppose that, even after the success of Get Out, WB may see him as still early enough in his career that they can still throw their weight around as the studio and he won't have as much pull to rein them in.
But I don't know if I'm getting things too off track here, though I suppose it still counts given the cultural translation/localization aspects that have surrounded Hollywood Akira forever now?
there kinda a lot of content in the manga, and it's not as though the anime is all that faithful to it.
I'm sort of wondering if you could stay pretty loyal to the manga, and just tell the entire story, of Neo Tokyo, from an American point of view. The government has fallen, and thet have to send in a rag tag band if whatevers to figure out what is going on.
Turns out, Akira is more or less going on.
I am, like, 85% sure this is a plotline in that manga. would be kinda neat if they did that.
Akira is pretty 80s Japanese politics. I don't see how you westernize it. if it still takes place in Japan, it has some specific things to say about the character of that government. I don't think a Hollywood studio is going to want to touch those things.
we'll get a bad remake if the movie with the themes adapted for us audiences.
It's a fantastic visual feast, but it's... kind of lacking in the story department.
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Right. There's so much plot, why bother trying to remake the anime, when you could do a different part of the story. There's parts that would maybe work better for film and us audiences.
I'd rather see a small new part of Akira done well than what expect a remake of the movie would wind up like.
and i love that movie. they're are bits about it that are basically bad, there's a lot that is confusing, and there's stuff like the biker gang stuff...
Kanada's song, and the opening chase/fight thing with the clowns. i worry about a remake being a little too NeoTokyo Drift.
They should reboot it as an anime film series or series.
Our culture has more in common with Akira than Ghost In the Shell. Akira's technology and government are dystopian and nihilistic, whereas GITS Japan is a post-scarcity society.
However, the rebellious youth that shaped the future in an anarchy of technology do not exist here. And Hollywood will never ever try to stir up trouble in society even if it would pay out mad loads.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
On reverse, a GitS failure will prevent other Anime derived movies getting green lit.