Forum - View topicINTEREST: Live-Action Ghost in the Shell Producer Speaks About Casting Controversy
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AmuroNT1
Posts: 107 |
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-Cast ScarJo as the lead
"Oh my God, how dare they whitewash the Major!" -Reveal that she's playing an entirely different character "Oh my God, how dare they not include our beloved Major!" These guys literally can't win, can they? |
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FloozyGod
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[quote="Shay Guy"]
Omg this. The irony surrounding this whole debacle has more iron than the Mesabi Range. People arguing about what the appropriate race of the Major should be, and the entire point of her character and Cyborg theory as a whole is to question why we have categorized ourselves into such things as race in the first place!!! |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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It's Hollywood folksI They're not selling this to just Japan. I don't think Shirow or Kodansha really care as long as it garners enough interest in the original books and anime to sell even more.
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2250 |
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Er, GitS is a VERY Japan-centric story no matter if you go by the manga, either of Oshii's films, or the Stand Alone Complex show. Section 9 is a division of the Japanese police force, they deal with situations involving Japan heavily (though the tv show did have a few stories about international politics, they were the exception rather than the rule).
Let's face it, this entire production has been an never-ending parade of excuses and backpedaling and now Paul is resorting to either being completely ignorant of the source material or just outright lying. This is not going to end well. |
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meruru
Posts: 473 |
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It's not hypocrisy to not complain as much about one issue versus another.
1. Lack of complaining does mean approval 2. Attack on Titan live action was made in Japan for Japanese people. People in other countries violently complaining could come off as policing other countries/cultures. It makes more sense to complain about things in your own country. 3. The social issues in Japan, the way racism is presented, is different from other countries (as all countries have their own unique problems). It's not really cool to complain about an issue when you don't fully understand the situation. 4. There's way less awareness of Attack on Titan the live action movie in countries that are not Japan versus Ghost in the Shell. Example: Recently people complained about a museum exhibit, in the United States, being run by ethnically Japanese or even Japanese nationals. They complained it was "cultural appropriation" because they were encouraging non Japanese people to wear kimono. This was stupid, because if you've been in Japan, you'd know wearing kimono does not have that kind of cultural significance, and non Japanese people may even be expected to wear them in some situations. The fact that non Japanese people who were uninformed were complaining about actual Japanese people was much more offensive. This is also known as WHITE KNIGHTING. Being on the internet, you've probably heard the term? Last edited by meruru on Fri Jul 01, 2016 1:57 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Gemnist
Posts: 1758 |
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Third, there are still PLENTY of Japanese actors, the Major is AN ANDROID, and no one had been cast as her "mother" (though I will say I'm kind of pissed at her name getting deleted, unless they do something like with The Driver in Drive). Fourth, Scarlett Johanssen has four Golden Globe nominations, the first of which should have gotten her an Oscar nod - if she can give a good performance, then there should be no complaints. Fifth, if GotS's original mangaka is working on the film, unlike what Akira Toriyama did, then everything will probably still fit what we have seen all these years. And Sixth, after Edge of Tomorrow, I think a lot of Hollywood execs will take these movies a LOT more seriously - so let's just see what freaking happens.
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Mohawk52
Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5510 Location: Mexico |
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Maybe they would if Hollywood gave them opportunities with bigger roles. ScarJo wasn't raking millions of box office since day one. And the success of Force Awakens showed that you can give a leading, important role to a PoC and still break the box office. |
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SaitoHajime101
 Posts: 285 |
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Okay, and Hollywood is changing (for better or for worse) a story to fit and work for the American audience in general to make money, not to make it a carbon copy of the original to fit for Anime/Manga fans who liked the original story itself. I'm really curious to see what the Japanese really think about this situation. Americans are making an uproar, but the Japanese could be sitting there laughing at this as a ridiculous debate as they just don't care  I would be greatly amused by that.
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MagusGuardian
 Posts: 591 |
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I honestly find it amusing how people just blow up at the slightest change or tweak, my only issue is that they didn't give scarlet a tinge of purple in her hair and frankly that's about it, cause when you get down to it does this really Really need to be a race issue with a cyborg character. the only thing I hope doesn't happen is seeing idiots in the manga section going "oh this manga knocked off the movie and it's crap in comparison" again just like they did with edge of tomorrow and all you need is kill
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Kikaioh
 Posts: 1205 Location: Antarctica |
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The film is being made by Hollywood, and understandably they're going to choose the most recognizable talent to justify the budget for a film like Ghost in the Shell. Investors wouldn't have been likely to take on the risk of an unknown actress, and considering the US has less than a 6% Asian population, there isn't necessarily a big pool of Asian actors to pull from in the first place (I imagine Japan faced similar problems when trying to adapt the live action Attack on Titan). Not to mention, Japan is so cuturally ethnocentric, they may have also cried foul for selecting an Asian-American actress to represent the Japanese people, in which case the production team would have been criticized either way.
It's also been said before, but the original Ghost in the Shell film's setting was based on Hong Kong, and the original manga itself was influenced by Western philosophy works like "Ghost in the Machine" and Blade Runner. More importantly, the philosophies and ideas expressed in the work revolve around the disconnect between human consciousness (the ghost) and the physical body (the shell), and questions the basic meaning of humanity in a world of emergent machine intelligence. So I think focusing on the race of the actors/actresses, to me at least, misses the point. In any case, it's a Hollywood film starring American actors. For a Japanese film starring Japanese actors (which really seems to be the only scenario that would satisfy fans crying fowl), the movie would have to be made in Japan. It stands to reason that if the franchise is adapted in other countries, it would be based on the demographics and economics of the region it's made in (just like the live-action Attack on Titan). |
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CrowLia
Posts: 5510 Location: Mexico |
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But this is not an issue of hurting Japanese feelings. It's about racism in Hollywood and lack of opportunities for Asian-American (or non-white in general) actors, who have been very vocal about this kind of thing for years. The #OscarssoWhite controversy was not gratuitous Last edited by CrowLia on Fri Jul 01, 2016 2:03 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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meruru
Posts: 473 |
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Why do you think Japanese nationals are the final say in Ghost in the Shell? The people who really are affected are ethnic Japanese-Americans (and other minorities) who are severely underrepresented in American media. As an ethnically Japanese person, I can tell you that while Ghost in the Shell itself doesn't exactly anger me, that it's one in a very long and awful trend DOES anger me. |
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L'Imperatore
 Posts: 873 |
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Nope, it showed that people will still flock to see freakin' STAR WARS regardless of whatever race the PoC belongs to. Last edited by L'Imperatore on Fri Jul 01, 2016 2:06 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2250 |
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Which proves my point; the show was Japanese-centric. Heck, the series was made during the end of the Bubble Era which was a uniquely Japanese social and economic era. Heck, one of the big reasons international entities even pop up in SAC is due to the unique technologies Japan invented such as the Tachikoma AI and the radiation scrubbers. |
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