Ghost in the Shell live action movie

[Underseer]

New trailer just dropped, so we might as well have a thread for taking about this movie.



Honestly, the trailer looks pretty good, all things considered.

We might as well talk about the elephant in the room: white washing the main character. Personally, I'm not happy about this, but I understand now that audiences are simply too racist to accept an Asian female protagonist in a blockbuster action movie.

Honestly, Ghost in the Shell is a peculiar property that kind of lends itself to race flipping and even nationality flipping, just not the main character. At least not for me.

Bateau
I think most fans, like myself, actually picture a white guy playing this character, and not just any white person. His personality is very American. I always pictured an American white guy playing this part.

Paz
Does anyone really care what race and nationality this guy is? As long as he has some kind of shady connection with the underworld and comes across as someone who is "slick" (or thinks he's slick) with the ladies, it's all good. If they recast him as, say, an Italian ex-mafia guy who ran away to Japan and somehow ended up in Japanese intelligence, would anyone bat an eye?

Ishikawa
He could be anything. Anything at all, and it would not affect the story one bit. In fact if he came from someplace unexpected, that might even be better.

Saito
Saito has a peculiar way of telling stories that you're not quite sure are true, or how much of it is true. The nature of his stories always struck me as very Australian. Aboriginal Australian might work even better.



The three characters that have to be Japanese for me as a fan are Togusa, chief Aramaki, and the main character Motoko Kusanagi.

Togusa needs to be Japanese just because there is a very Japanese quality to his ordinariness. You get the feeling that if he hadn't become a cop, he would have been a salary-man in a Japanese cubicle farm somewhere.

Aramaki is too knowledgeable about Japanese political structures to be anything but Japanese.

And the main character is, well, the main character. I hope they at least explain her as a Japanese person who chose a Caucasian body when picking out what her artificial body would look like. That might actually fit, and would serve as a comment on racial attitudes about beauty in Asia right now.

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By the way, if you are going to pick a white woman to play this character, Scarlet is absolutely the best choice.

 

[Underseer]

I forgot to mention Boma (doesn't everyone?).

No one cares. Seriously, not one person cares about the race and nationality of this character.

 

[repoman]

I also in general don't care about the race or nationality of the character. Just more about the trend in total. Movies are hard to be profitable with all the fractured media landscape and a big star is what is very often, but not always, needed. If this were a netflix series, I think they could have found a solid unknown asian actress to pull it off.

I am fuzzy on Kusanagi, she was a full human who got injured and turned into a cyborg?

If that is the case, I think that the compromise should have been to give her a non Japanese name. Maybe have her have been a military brat as a kid whose family was stationed in Japan and that is how she got to be fluent in Japanese language and culture as well as accent free american english. This plot point could be very quickly introduced. The name just bugs me. It breaks immersion.

If this were a story that originally was set in America with a white character and set currently, an Asian character with a "white" first and last name is plausible. Lots of adoptions and marriages have happened here.

 

[KeepTalking]

I also in general don't care about the race or nationality of the character. Just more about the trend in total. Movies are hard to be profitable with all the fractured media landscape and a big star is what is very often, but not always, needed. If this were a netflix series, I think they could have found a solid unknown asian actress to pull it off.

I am fuzzy on Kusanagi, she was a full human who got injured and turned into a cyborg?

If that is the case, I think that the compromise should have been to give her a non Japanese name. Maybe have her have been a military brat as a kid whose family was stationed in Japan and that is how she got to be fluent in Japanese language and culture as well as accent free american english. This plot point could be very quickly introduced. The name just bugs me. It breaks immersion.

If this were a story that originally was set in America with a white character and set currently, an Asian character with a "white" first and last name is plausible. Lots of adoptions and marriages have happened here.

It seems like they are just going to call her The Major in this movie, to avoid that issue entirely.

 

[aeebee50]

Real action Barbie. May be interesting.

 

[Jayjay]

I don't mind "whitewashing" at all. If Japan wants to do their own live action version, nobody is stopping them, I'd probably see that too. A bit weird that they may have changed the character's name as well, to just being "Major" rather than Kusanagi (but maybe that is supposed to be a plot reveal).

That being said, this new trailer makes me feel like this movie is going to be utter shit. For one thing, why the fuck would they cast James Corden^* as Bateau:

Is the movie going to be about him and Scarlett Johansen singing karaoke in a car (you know, because it's a Japanese pastime)?

Second, what we can deduce from the plot is that Scarlett appears to have some sort of amnesia and the conspiracy by which they made her the super robot police girl seems to be a critical part of the story. Nevermind that it is different from source material, this all sounds very much like the plot of the Robocop remake, which I'm sure everyone remembers was less than stellar. And like Robocop, this is PG-13, so no blood or nipples. The movie is directed by Rupert Sanders, whose only other directing credit is Snow White and the Huntsman, another shit movie.

I'd love to be positively surprised, but it does not look good so far.


* I know he's not James Corden but the resemblance is uncanny.

 

[repoman]

I kind of liked the Robocop remake, at least it switched enough of the plot up and kept up with technological changes since the 80s. But more violence would have been better. Someone who knew nothing of the original would probably have given it a decent review.

huh, halfway through the trailer and holy crap ScarJo is actually too warm, relatable and mundane in her portrayal - which usually is a good thing but not for this. This is why I liked her a lot in Match Point.

Major should be aloof and have a hard time accessing her emotions. Milla Jovavich 15 years ago would have been the perfect actress.

shamelessly stealing from imdb posts here:

The protagonist(Scarlet) looks like a perplexed emo searching for her roots with a constant "worried" expression on her face, were as in the original she's a cyborg, and she acts like a cyborg, but she showed very occasional and subtle signs of humanity, and every time that happened, it felt surprising and exciting.

In the animation she looks like a doll. expressionless. here, she's smiling and emoting all over the place.

 

[Underseer]

I also in general don't care about the race or nationality of the character. Just more about the trend in total. Movies are hard to be profitable with all the fractured media landscape and a big star is what is very often, but not always, needed. If this were a netflix series, I think they could have found a solid unknown asian actress to pull it off.

Like I said, mainstream audiences are simply too racist. The studio had to recast the main character as white or else the project would have been guaranteed to fail.

I am fuzzy on Kusanagi, she was a full human who got injured and turned into a cyborg?

The specifics of the backstory change from incarnation to incarnation (each movie and TV show is considered a separate universe), but generally, she had some kind of serious injury as a child and underwent full body replacement at a very young age. She is also the very first person to undergo full body replacement.

On the one hand, this means she is more expert in using a fully cybrog body than anyone else, but on the other hand, she feels disconnected from her own humanity.

If that is the case, I think that the compromise should have been to give her a non Japanese name. Maybe have her have been a military brat as a kid whose family was stationed in Japan and that is how she got to be fluent in Japanese language and culture as well as accent free american english. This plot point could be very quickly introduced. The name just bugs me. It breaks immersion.

If this were a story that originally was set in America with a white character and set currently, an Asian character with a "white" first and last name is plausible. Lots of adoptions and marriages have happened here.

As long as they change the main character to white, does it really matter how they do it? No matter what excuse they make up in the movie, the result is what will appease all the racist audience members, and that is what is needed to avoid economic failure.

Now they just have to make a movie that is actually good, which I'm not very confident of. When was the last time you saw a decent live action Dreamworks movie? So even though they appeased the racists, the movie could still bomb at the box office.

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I don't mind "whitewashing" at all. If Japan wants to do their own live action version, nobody is stopping them[...]

Wow, that is the most flaccid defense of whitewashing I've ever seen.

 

[Jayjay]

I don't mind "whitewashing" at all. If Japan wants to do their own live action version, nobody is stopping them[...]

Wow, that is the most flaccid defense of whitewashing I've ever seen.

The thought that I had in my mind was that in general doing a remake that is not true to the original in my opinion does not detract from the original in any way. The shitty Robocop remake doesn't make the original Robocop worse, and recasting Ghostbusters as women does not make the old one somehow less funny. So it wasn't so much to defend whitewashing, because I don't care about it one way or the other as long as the casting choice is good and works in the context of the new movie, it's that even if they horribly miscast the main character and the movie is awful, it does not take anything away from the original, or even a possible Japanese version (I know they have done some other Anime-to-Live-Action movies there). All of this just makes the franchise richer and more colorful.

As long as the movie is good (or barely passable) they can change everything for all I care. It's not exactly unheard of in comic book movies either: Kingpin in Daredevil was changed to a black man in the movie, then to white guy again in the Netflix version. Harvey Dent was black in Tim Burton's Batman. Hugo Strange was played by an Asian in Gotham TV series. Jeri Hogarth in Jessica Jones was changed from man to a woman. Punisher was played by Dolph Lundgren. And so on, I guess there must be an exhaustive list on the internet but I am too lazy to search for it.

 

[Underseer]

Wow, that is the most flaccid defense of whitewashing I've ever seen.

The thought that I had in my mind was that in general doing a remake that is not true to the original in my opinion does not detract from the original in any way. The shitty Robocop remake doesn't make the original Robocop worse, and recasting Ghostbusters as women does not make the old one somehow less funny. So it wasn't so much to defend whitewashing, because I don't care about it one way or the other as long as the casting choice is good and works in the context of the new movie, it's that even if they horribly miscast the main character and the movie is awful, it does not take anything away from the original, or even a possible Japanese version (I know they have done some other Anime-to-Live-Action movies there). All of this just makes the franchise richer and more colorful.

As long as the movie is good (or barely passable) they can change everything for all I care. It's not exactly unheard of in comic book movies either: Kingpin in Daredevil was changed to a black man in the movie, then to white guy again in the Netflix version. Harvey Dent was black in Tim Burton's Batman. Hugo Strange was played by an Asian in Gotham TV series. Jeri Hogarth in Jessica Jones was changed from man to a woman. Punisher was played by Dolph Lundgren. And so on, I guess there must be an exhaustive list on the internet but I am too lazy to search for it.

Oh sure. "Those people" can just make their own movie if they're upset about the lack of representation in popular media. Not like it's your problem.

 

[repoman]

A ~30 year old Ming Na Wen would have been good for the role, even if a bit thin and small. When adding the thickness of the body suit it would make look more fitting.

On a different track, maybe finding an asian woman who has some of the androgyny of the "Orlando" era Tilda Swinton would be ideal for this movie. Androgyny is still attractive to a lot of people.


I don't know, the genre of the film can maybe bring in just as many people as the star nowadays. Good word of mouth via social media can make a solidly made film shoot up the box office rankings.

 

[Jayjay]

The thought that I had in my mind was that in general doing a remake that is not true to the original in my opinion does not detract from the original in any way. The shitty Robocop remake doesn't make the original Robocop worse, and recasting Ghostbusters as women does not make the old one somehow less funny. So it wasn't so much to defend whitewashing, because I don't care about it one way or the other as long as the casting choice is good and works in the context of the new movie, it's that even if they horribly miscast the main character and the movie is awful, it does not take anything away from the original, or even a possible Japanese version (I know they have done some other Anime-to-Live-Action movies there). All of this just makes the franchise richer and more colorful.

As long as the movie is good (or barely passable) they can change everything for all I care. It's not exactly unheard of in comic book movies either: Kingpin in Daredevil was changed to a black man in the movie, then to white guy again in the Netflix version. Harvey Dent was black in Tim Burton's Batman. Hugo Strange was played by an Asian in Gotham TV series. Jeri Hogarth in Jessica Jones was changed from man to a woman. Punisher was played by Dolph Lundgren. And so on, I guess there must be an exhaustive list on the internet but I am too lazy to search for it.

Oh sure. "Those people" can just make their own movie if they're upset about the lack of representation in popular media. Not like it's your problem.

Who is "those people"? The Japanese production company that owns the GitS brand? Do you seriously consider that they are worried about lack of representation in popular media? Or maybe the fans who will be disappointed by the crappy remakes? They should get in line, because money-grubbing paper pushers have ruined movies before and they will do so again, the best that we can hope for as consumers is that occasionaly there are going to be some hits instead of just misses.

Honestly, I don't see who else should possibly give a crap about movies meant for entertainment than the artists/producers making them, and the audiences watching them.

 

[prideandfall]

http://asianfilmist.com/12-films-remade-in-asia/
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/showbiz/article/five-notable-asian-remakes-of-hollywood-movies

not a single white face to be seen in any of these asian remakes of hollywood movies.
when will the sort-of-caramel-brownish-washing end!?

OTOH:
crying about "whitewashing" is fucking stupid, because every movie studio casts the predominant native ethnicity for movies being marketed to a given country.

also as an amusing side note every movie i can think of where people cried about "whitewashing" bombed horribly, which means either the cry-babies are right and the general movie going audience agrees with you and studios are consistently financially punished for doing it so STFU about it already, or else the movies were kind of terrible anyways regardless of the casting so stop inventing problems to be upset about,

 

[Angry Floof]

Going by the trailer, looks like a really dumb movie that Scarlett Johanson somehow got herself into. Again.

 

[Jayjay]

What people really want is to see Scarlett Johansson in a Black Widow solo movie. But instead, she gets typecast in movies on the basis of producers thinking that nobody knows Luc Besson or Masamune Shirow, so they slap SJ in there for star power.

 

[repoman]

So, it is out now and this is an interesting review from a youtuber I often watch.

Reviewer says it has been "western washed" for cultural ideal of individuality and finding yourself - or maybe american narcissism, lol.

 

[Underseer]

A ~30 year old Ming Na Wen would have been good for the role, even if a bit thin and small. When adding the thickness of the body suit it would make look more fitting.

On a different track, maybe finding an asian woman who has some of the androgyny of the "Orlando" era Tilda Swinton would be ideal for this movie. Androgyny is still attractive to a lot of people.


I don't know, the genre of the film can maybe bring in just as many people as the star nowadays. Good word of mouth via social media can make a solidly made film shoot up the box office rankings.

Eh.

Just look at the discussions people have been having about the white washing thing. Obviously, American audiences are too racist to accept an Asian woman as the lead in a big budget action movie. The movie studio made the right call to cast a white woman in the lead role. An Asian woman would have guaranteed failure.

As for the movie itself, the quality of the movie is a separate issue from the white washing. After all, Birth of a Nation was a hell of a lot more racist than this, and is considered one of the most influential movies ever.

Anyway, I don't expect much from the movie.

The changes to the story sound like the studio doesn't really respect the source material, and even if they did, live action anime always sucks, even when made in Japan.

 

[James Brown]

If I have no knowledge of the source material whatsoever, am I allowed to like the movie?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

What people really want is to see Scarlett Johansson in a Black Widow solo movie. But instead, she gets typecast in movies on the basis of producers thinking that nobody knows Luc Besson or Masamune Shirow, so they slap SJ in there for star power.

Ya, if Marvel isn't going to give her her own solo movie, she needs to do it elsewhere. If they didn't have someone like SJ playing the main role, this would probably just be a small cult film with half the budget at best.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

If I have no knowledge of the source material whatsoever, am I allowed to like the movie?

You're allowed to, but there's a decent chance that you'll like the wrong things or, even worse, like something which you're supposed to be heavily offended by because it's not true to the source material and you'll get pilloried online if you admit to enjoying it.

Some people take their cartoons seriously.