Forum

I hope this movie flops hard at the box office and dies a well-deserved, agonizing death so that Hollywood will be discouraged in the future from sullying and bastardizing another anime franchise that I hold dear. I am an anime purist who happens to believe that a live-action adaptation of a show like Ghost in the Shell will add absolutely nothing to the story because the original medium is actually better suited to conveying the philosophical themes and the visual artistry presented in the GITS movies.

This will be another bland, generic, focus-grouped commercial "product" that will capture only the most superficial aspects of the show while missing its essence entirely. I am willing to bet that it will be packed with "kewl" action scenes to draw in the Transformers fans while showcasing its ass-kicking female lead without developing her, or anyone else's, character.

The debate about casting a Caucasian actress in the lead role matters very little to me, although I am getting tired of Scarlett Johansson. Perhaps her being in horrible garbage like Lucy affects my opinion of her role as Motoko Kusanagi. If it had to be a white actress, I think Rooney Mara would have been a much better choice. I am much more concerned about the kind of creative bankruptcy that compels Hollywood to use an established anime franchise as source material for making dreck. I wish the American entertainment industry would learn to stop mucking around with things that were great the first time and cannot be improved upon.

It was my sincere hope as a matter of principle that the live-action GITS adaptation would go the way of the threatened live-action Akira and NGE and be stuck in development hell forever before being cancelled and forgotten, not because I am especially fond of those shows but because anime should remain anime. In the case of Ghost in the Shell, something that wasn't broken didn't need to be fixed. If only this project could be wished out of existence.

Boomer wrote:

because the original medium is actually better suited to conveying the philosophical themes and the visual artistry presented in the GITS movies.

Newsflash: the anime movies aren't the original medium either.

Dessa wrote:

Boomer wrote:

because the original medium is actually better suited to conveying the philosophical themes and the visual artistry presented in the GITS movies.

Newsflash: the anime movies aren't the original medium either.

I am well aware that the original medium is manga. It also involves drawing, except that the images are still. The difference between manga and anime is much less significant than the difference between anime and a live-action mainstream commercial flick.

Funny to see all these posts about how deep Ghost in the Shell is. The first time I saw GitS it was shown at TV program specialized in art-house cinema. A lot of philosophers and filmmakers were presented at showing, you know what general consensus was? Hot, pseudo-intellectual garbage for depressed people. I remember how editor from Russia's first anime magazine defended GitS: "Well, it's a good action flick". This is literally the only thing he came up with. So, maybe it really isn't as deep as some of us want to believe?

Even if they don't get a Japanese person to play the Major, there is a possible saving grace that they got a Japanese actress, and one that has worked with many Japanese directors including Kurosawa. With this, they didn't totally whitewash it.

jdnation wrote:

Hence why An American Studio can take a Japanese property, pick and choose what cultural elements it wants to keep, make the lead role a white girl...

If that's what they want to do, fine, just don't call it Ghost in the Shell, because it no longer is. Just like The Magnificent Seven isn't called Seven Samurai, and Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing aren't called Yojimbo.

jdnation wrote:

And the textbook racist is someone who wants to eliminate or deprive God-given rights from a specific group of people for no reason other than that they inherently belong to a group of people defined primarily by physical appearance. ... And you keep using that word 'racism' but it does not mean what you think it means.

Sure, if the textbook you're using is from the 50s. Our understanding of racism and how it's perpetuated has evolved since then. It is not limited to what you think it is. When racist ideas are so thoroughly embedded in culture to the point where no one even notices them (like the default human in people's minds is a white male, regardless of the thinker's race or gender), let alone questions the status quo, that's racism, even if the people who accept these things as the norm don't "hate" anyone, and aren't Racist with a capital R. You can subscribe to racist assumptions like "there is a lack of talent of Asian actors/actresses available," without being a racist.

johan.eriksson.9003 wrote:

Because in my experience the only ones who use that term unironically are tinfoil-wearers whose opinions aren't worth a damn. The rest of this pretty much proves my point so I think I will go to sleep now.

Please consider that your 'experience' is extremely limited, particularly in light of many of your responses, showing that you really haven't thought any of this through and which in some cases really sounds disturbingly obtuse. This doesn't make you a 'bad guy', I feel that you have the right intentions, but are barking up the wrong tree in this instance.

Stuart Smith wrote:

I believe people are fully aware why they're casting a white actress instead of an Asian one, people are just upset at it happening in general. Whether the blame is on the studios or xenophobic audiences who refuse to watch foreign films/minority actors is semantics. People are just upset it's happening at all.

Yeah, I am sympathetic to the idea of keeping racial casts accurate in certain cases, but I think people need to largely chill. This whole thing is not some major human rights cause. If anything I think the demands that Asian actors are obligated to get roles doesn't help and only serves to hinder any progress they've made on their own efforts. People should certainly plead their case to maintain certain casts on the strength of artistic reasons, but to outright accuse the people whose help they want of being racists etc. only serves to poison the entire relationship, and attempting to guilt entire audiences only looking for entertainment of being part of some residual racist effort isn't going to leave a good taste in their mouths either. Which only leads to unnecessary negative baggage brought into films with Asians in them.

This also includes the mentality of certain groups who feel that when Asians are cast in some major roles will turn around criticize the roles as being Asian 'stereotypes' because they are either doing kung-fu or embodying some limited depiction that people associate with such cultures. So then when studios then decide that in order to be sensitive to such demands they recast stereotyped Asian characters with white people, they are then accused of further limiting the roles Asian casts can play. So they're caught between a rock and a hard place. Another silly example from the past was the blow-up over the depiction of a video game character from Mirror's Edge. A rare example of a Western Studio that tried to put an Asian woman in a lead, but are then hounded because the artist apparently made her eyes too 'slanted.' And this was labelled by some as racism. It seems nobody can win in such an overly sensitive climate. With mini-outrages like this, It's probably no wonder many places would rather just stick to the generic-white character and rather take slack for that than explain why they're not racist for making their character look like Lucy Liu and giving her fighting skills.

So if you ask me, I believe Asian cast members and everyone would benefit from just doing what they've currently been doing all along. We see plenty of diverse casting nowadays without the help of the outraged mobs, and in time this will eventually lead to better roles. Asian actors who want more visibility shouldn't turn down jobs because of fears of being 'stereotyped' they should take as many as possible, work with the directors to make the roles better through healthy collaboration, and work their way up. Asians should also not only concern themselves with just acting, but also get into off-camera production roles and further contribute. Things will not immediately improve the next day, no social progress in the history of the world was ever achieved in this manner. The process takes time, and the process happens calmly and by working together and by understanding that this is a long term effort whose fruits you may not live to see in your time. Ghost in the Shell is a missed opportunity... THIS TIME... so let's not burn the storehouse down because if anything this just encourages Western Studios to take the simpler path and just not bother licensing foreign properties by feeling they're not racially-sensitive enough and don't want to put up with PR headaches catering to outrage-groups. And this only helps spread a misconception that Asians in Hollywood are angry people who might just assume you're racist over the slightest decision. And that certainly doesn't help anyone. There will be NEXT TIMES and future opportunities and we'll get there through slow calm friendly working collaborations.

Gina Szanboti wrote:

If that's what they want to do, fine, just don't call it Ghost in the Shell, because it no longer is. Just like The Magnificent Seven isn't called Seven Samurai, and Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing aren't called Yojimbo.

I think this largely depends... For example Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' is a masterpiece but it is very different in a lot of ways from the original work. The same can be said of various incarnations of Oldboy, from the original manga to Park's Korean film to the Bollywood adaptation to the American adaptation. If anything I think maintaining the title helps expose the original work too.

In your comparisons the setting is so vastly different that the original title doesn't make sense. Magnificient Seven is a Western. There were no Samurai there. What has been adapted is the core story. The same too for Yojimbo, a Japanese name. It wouldn't work for roles that are made non-Japanese.

Now with Ghost in the Shell however, the title refers to a concept. That concept even in the GITS universe is not limited to just the Japanese but to all of mankind in that era who are essentially human brains in machine bodies. So there is no problem keeping the title. Much the same as if say, hypothetically, Japan were to adapt Star Wars with an all-Japanese cast. There's be no reason not to call it 'Star Wars,' but we'd leave such a consideration up to the creators and how closely they feel they have adapted or departed from the work. Much in the same way for example an American studio adapting Hellblazer decided it had departed far enough that they would just call it Constantine.

But, for example, if say Japan were to for some reason adapt Captain America with a Japanese cast in Japan. Then that would make no sense, much like having Samurai be in Westerns (unless you're aiming for some interesting mish-mash). But if the Japanese just wanted the core ideas of a patriotic sentai hero with a Shield and origin/costume similarities and wanted to adapt a storyline directly from the character's comic history, then they would have to get permission and credit it, and change it to Captain Japan, or some other appropriate title.

But say it was just 'The Avengers' as the title, Japan could keep it as it is a non-specific group name. Likewise, Ghost in the Shell, set in the west would not suffer that problem. And if the film is retaining a lot of similarity to the original work at least on the surface, I wouldn't see the issue even if the location/cast was changed. See for example the Japanese 'Spider-Man.' Calling it 'Spider-Man' is still okay in my book despite how drastically the character and nearly everything safe similarities of the costume were changed. But we can still recognize it as Spider-Man, and it wouldn't be wrong to do so. It's just the Japanese Spider-Man, in the same way this could be the American Ghost in the Shell. They'll have their differences and they'll have enough similarities on the surface that people can see where they're both coming from.

But this is best left to the opinions of the creators and original license holders and what they agree to. Thus I am okay if the work remains as Ghost in the Shell, and I think the original work also benefits from leaving that be if the film, despite Americanization, turns out well and has enough resemblance to the original that people can see the connection.

jdnation wrote:

Sure, if the textbook you're using is from the 50s. Our understanding of racism and how it's perpetuated has evolved since then. It is not limited to what you think it is. When racist ideas are so thoroughly embedded in culture to the point where no one even notices them (like the default human in people's minds is a white male, regardless of the thinker's race or gender), let alone questions the status quo, that's racism, even if the people who accept these things as the norm don't "hate" anyone, and aren't Racist with a capital R. You can subscribe to racist assumptions like "there is a lack of talent of Asian actors/actresses available," without being a racist.

I strongly disagree with this. I feel much of the recent hoopla like this example is a result of people simply looking for any excuse to continue witch-hunting for any perceived prejudice so as to attain some promised utopia that isn't ever going to happen. It's the equivalent of expanding the definition of terrorism to be so vague that just about anybody can be prosecuted under it and give the government over-reaching expansive powers to the point where what it was originally meant to convey is entirely lost. The same with expanding the definition of what constitutes racism. This is simply dangerous foolhardy ground. Language and definitions of words should not be taken lightly, Orwell depicted this idea in his works. The more vaguely you expand a word the more open to interpretation it is and therefore just about anything becomes fair game for labeling and misplaced anger and hatred. This just leads to more discontent and division as people run around like headless chickens seeking to eliminate any and every action they perceive as racism according to their own internal criteria, subject to their feelings rather than as the objective standard and meaning it ought to be from the point of view of the law. Doing otherwise just leads to chaos as puts the very progress we seek at risk due to paranoia about phantom 'residual racism' which just makes people afraid of interacting with each other.

MajorZero wrote:

Funny to see all these posts about how deep Ghost in the Shell is. The first time I saw GitS it was shown at TV program specialized in art-house cinema. A lot of philosophers and filmmakers were presented at showing, you know what general consensus was? Hot, pseudo-intellectual garbage for depressed people. I remember how editor from Russia's first anime magazine defended GitS: "Well, it's a good action flick". This is literally the only thing he came up with. So, maybe it really isn't as deep as some of us want to believe?

I am pretty sure it is. As with any work of art, the viewer gets out of it what he or she puts into it, and not everyone is able to appreciate its depth. In the same way, some people would dismiss the sketches of Leonardo da Vinci as silly drawings.

As for it being for "depressed people", that may be a common opinion held by those who expect happy endings, comic relief, and wacky high jinks instead of a profound artistic experience. On the other hand, I would agree that the Matrix, for example, is pseudo-intellectual garbage that does not work even as an action flick and manages to be shallow at the same time. GITS is none of those things.

Gina Szanboti wrote:

It is not limited to what you think it is. When racist ideas are so thoroughly embedded in culture to the point where no one even notices them (like the default human in people's minds is a white male, regardless of the thinker's race or gender), let alone questions the status quo, that's racism, even if the people who accept these things as the norm don't "hate" anyone, and aren't Racist with a capital R. You can subscribe to racist assumptions like "there is a lack of talent of Asian actors/actresses available," without being a racist.

That is just another way of calling everyone a racist who doesn't agree with you, despite your statement that you aren't doing that.

So in your view, no discussion of racism or sexism can be had without saying that all manifestations of such are the work of racists and sexists who hate minorities and women and are actively trying to deny people their rights? That's either a very harsh judgement of people, or a convenient way to stifle all discussion of racism and sexism. I'm kind of thinking it's the latter.

Boomer wrote:

I am pretty sure it is. As with any work of art, the viewer gets out of it what he or she puts into it, and not everyone is able to appreciate its depth.

I would agree, if viewers in question were some simpletons, but that wasn't the case. As I stated before, this program was dedicated to art-house cinema, people who discuss films after their showings aren't just random meat from street, they're highly regarded intellectuals from different fields.

As for myself, I never considered GitS to be an intellectual movie, despite how great it is. The same way I don't consider Blade Runner to be intellectual flick, and this is one of my favorite films. Now Innocence, this is indeed pretentious, pseudo-intellectual garbage.

Gina Szanboti wrote:

So in your view, no discussion of racism or sexism can be had without saying that all manifestations of such are the work of racists and sexists who hate minorities and women and are actively trying to deny people their rights? That's either a very harsh judgement of people, or a convenient way to stifle all discussion of racism and sexism. I'm kind of thinking it's the latter.

No I am not. I am only saying, you don't start your conversation, by calling everyone racists.

Anyway, this is not a safe topic for discussion, so I am not going to tip my toes any further.

Well, I don't know whose posts you've been reading, but I didn't start any post with calling everyone racists. In fact I haven't called anyone a racist at all. But I guess if you choose to read it as the argument you wish I was making instead of the one I'm actually putting forth, there's nothing I can do about that. C'est la internet. :¯\_(ツ)_/¯:

And now an official comment:

Quote:

“Looking at her career so far, I think Scarlett Johansson is well-cast,” Sam Yoshiba, director of the international business division at Kodansha’s headquarters in Tokyo. “She has the cyberpunk feel. And we never imagined it would be a Japanese actress in the first place.”

http://kotaku.com/ghost-in-the-shell-publisher-never-imagined-a-japanese-1771992584

Anyone calling for an Asian actress citing some form of racism... you people can shut up now. Razz

KyuuA4 wrote:

And now an official comment:

Quote:

“Looking at her career so far, I think Scarlett Johansson is well-cast,” Sam Yoshiba, director of the international business division at Kodansha’s headquarters in Tokyo. “She has the cyberpunk feel. And we never imagined it would be a Japanese actress in the first place.”

http://kotaku.com/ghost-in-the-shell-publisher-never-imagined-a-japanese-1771992584

Anyone calling for an Asian actress citing some form of racism... you people can shut up now. Razz

Because if 1 Japanese guy says it's ok, then that just settles the discussion doesn't it?

Forum - View topic
NEWS: Live-Action Ghost in the Shell Film Posts 1st Photo of Scarlett Johansson as the Major

Singer, Voice Actress Suzuko Mimori Moves to the U.S.

This Week in Anime - Is The Anime Girl Band Era Here?

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Video Game Review

Kakuriyo -Bed & Breakfast for Spirits- Anime Gets 2nd Season in Fall 2025

The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron HD Remaster Video Game Review

Manhwa and Manga: Similar but Different Art Forms

This Week in Anime - How The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio Captures the Reality of Gig Work

Shaman King Flowers Anime Series Review

The Grimm Variations Anime Series Review

Anime to Watch if You Liked Shogun

Forum - View topicNEWS: Live-Action Ghost in the Shell Film Posts 1st Photo of Scarlett Johansson as the Major

Forum

Forum - View topic
NEWS: Live-Action Ghost in the Shell Film Posts 1st Photo of Scarlett Johansson as the Major