Sci-Fi & Fantasy Girlz discussion

Fans of the manga/anime will probably already know about this, but trailers for the live action version of The Ghost in the Shell are out:

https://youtu.be/HapT0SKcyfY?list=PLV...

The controversy on this one is casting a white actress to play a character who is in many people's eyes definitively Japanese. While I'm sympathetic to that POV, Johansson is an actor, and I'm not someone who thinks that actors should only play characters within their nominal racial groups. I recently helped edit an article that said precisely that—at least as far as Native Americans are concerned, and I call BS on that extreme solution to the problem. It's not automatically disrespectful or even racist to cast an actor who doesn't have a comparable ethnic/genetic background to the character s/he is playing, but it does evoke a range of social issues, and it is at the very least a dicey move. It's been done disastrously at least as often as not in the past. It can work believably, especially these days since the techniques and technology have progressed. If done with an knowing and conscious eye is perfectly reasonable.

Regardless of any of those issues, I don't personally see her in that role, regardless of issues about Hollywood white-washing, but I've been wrong before. Maybe I'll be wrong this time.

Thoughts?

I watched this the other night.

It's crap.

Now, I was a big fan of the original anime, so I'm trying not to compare/contrast the live action film too much with that version, but it's hard—and maybe pointless—to do that as this product is such a bastardization of that earlier version. The best parts of this film are almost certainly the nearly shot-for-shot recreations of the anime. The folks who made this thing clearly studied that original, but as often happens, they just figured they were better storytellers than the people who created a story and characters that reached across national, linguistic and cultural lines to inspire millions of fans, so they came up with their own story ideas, wedged them into the existing materials in a sad, hamfisted way, and tacked the original brand name on it to make a "New and Improved!" version that is just a watered down, dumbed down version of the original.

It's sad when someone spends $110 million to create something that is substantially crappier than what we had over two decades ago.

Wow, that certainly helps me decide what to do about this film - or not do. I was already pretty turned off from the way they whitewashed the whole production. Not only was Scarlett playing the lead role, but the role of Batou was also being taken on by a white actor.

Matthew wrote: "Wow, that certainly helps me decide what to do about this film - or not do. I was already pretty turned off from the way they whitewashed the whole production. Not only was Scarlett playing the lea..."

I'm pretty confident that the whitewashing problem was part of a generalized bad film-making process. The movie is half-assed on a whole bunch of levels. So much so that the casting might not even make a Top Ten Problems With This Movie list.

I watched the anime again last night. Even 22 years old and with the standard bad English voice dubbing, it's a superior product on every important level.

I was reading an article about this morning - after seeing your post, btw, so congrats on sending me on a research binge! ;) From what I read, the biggest fault in the movie was the way they dumbed it down. Instead of really getting into the whole cyberpunk-themed existential thing - i.e. what is life, memory, and consciousness in a world where everything can be simulated and reproduced? - they just skirted the edge of it and flat-out copied all the old visuals.

I've never undertstood the need to remake films. I mean, I know why they do it, the see it as easy money since if movie X had tons of fans back then, today we have those tons of fans plus new ones as audience. But they usually end up making an inferior movie.

According to Box Office Mojo Ghost in The Shell has made $124,373,450 worldwide in 2 weeks.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?...

And then there's Beauty and the Beast, another remake that has made $977,416,034 in just 3 weeks.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?...

This is why they keep doing remakes :(
There are so many cool books that could be turned into awesome movies. Fresh material, that's what I want!

I don't mind the occasional remake, but I think that

A. they should wait until all the principal actors are dead.

B. the movie should be set the era in which it was original set. That is, if someone remakes The Maltese Falcon they need to set it in the 30s thereabouts, not make it about finding the fabled Maltese Ipad. (Sci-fi movies, of course, have an easy workaround for this.)

C. the authors of books upon which movies are based should have final cut approval, and if the author is dead then it should go to a jury of anonymous English Lit scholars chosen randomly from Goodreads users who rated the book.

D. Rule 34 should already have happened. (For anyone unfamiliar: Rule 34 is "If it exists, there is porn of it – no exceptions")

E. if you bring a 1st edition copy of the comic book to a live action version of a film based on that comic book then you get in for free, having already paid your admission when the product was just getting started and/or shelled out serious change for a collector's item.

There are so many cool books that could be turned into awesome movies. Fresh material, that's what I want!

Exactly! I know they do it because certain stuff sells, but seriously, what's happened to originality?

Spiderman/Batman/Superman...over and over and over again :(

This looks more promising than that movie... but I shouldn't get my hopes up. They could still cast Bugs Bunny as the Major.

Netflix Announces New Ghost In The Shell Anime Series

Netflix's push to add more anime content to its already sizable library will soon include a new Ghost in the Shell series. In addition to the original manga, the popular franchise has already had numerous iterations, including animated films and TV shows, as well as the not-entirely-well-received live-action film starring Scarlett Johansson that was released in 2017. This new version will apparently makes use of "next-generation animation" to give the long-running franchise a little spit polish before it's presented to the binge-watch crowd.

Full article: https://dailynews14.com/netflix/new-g...