Ghost in the Shell

[crabra comander]

I didn't mind the teaser. Creepy geisha was cool. I don't think SJ should be looking so concerned if she is supposed to be a cyborg badass like the Major, but maybe Hollywood felt she needed to emote...Also didn't mind seeing that revolver bit.

 

[Noeland]

But she has headlined a film, and it won several awards and received nominations, one of those nominations being Best Female Lead at the Independent Spirit Awards. Yes, I know, "it doesn't count. It's not a major Hollywood film." But it does count, because she was the lead of the film and got some recognition of it.

BTW, has anyone seen the Mamoru Oshii directed Avalon? It's a pretty good one. Looks like it could almost take place within the GitS universe, even though not much of cyborgs are featured in it.

I forgot to mention that I agree with you. I really liked Avalon, Stray Dogs, and some of Oshii's other live action endeavors. I think he should have been given the directors chair for this live action film.

I also should have phrased my last post better in that what I meant was that she has never headlined a major studio film that was a commercial success. Being a lead, and headlining are separate things anyway. My point was simply that one actress is commercially successful and well known, and one is not. That is the simple reason one is playing The Major, and one is not.

Artistically speaking there are several actresses who could play the role in a direct adaptation of the anime and make it fantastic.

This movie isn't being made for fans though, so I doubt too many fans of GITS will enjoy it. I hope I am wrong though and they surprise us all, but based on the new teaser footage I do not think I am.

 

[dascoyne]

I don't mean any offense, but I don't see why they couldn't have Rinko Kikuchi as the Major. I mean, people would recognize her from Pacific Rim, Babel and The Brothers Bloom.

http://37.media.tumblr.com/2123de502a912d695398a55a2cfea9b2/tumblr_muoveyQRmz1qi532yo8_500.gif

http://cdn2-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/2015/03/Mako_Mori_2.jpg

Yeah but she looks nothing like Motoko.

SJ looks a lot more like Motoko than she does.

 

[annanake]

I'd thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.

 

[Wes R]

Yeah but she looks nothing like Motoko.

SJ looks a lot more like Motoko than she does.

Still there's plenty of good actresses in Japan who could manage it. The only white person who should be in this movie that isn't part of the American Empire is Batou and i'm not even sure he's meant to be fully American. If we're lucky maybe this will at least open up some company here to bring over the toys and model kits so they don't have to be bought from specialty shops on amazon. I want to know if Masamune Shirow was part of signing up for this or if it was a part of a deal he did for the animes and they somehow sold it to the US as live action, he's always been pretty protective of his stuff? Either way someone in Japan needs their heads examined.

 

[Mike J.]

I want a spider-tank.

 

[Clutch]

This looks like Ultraviolet II.

 

[Riskbreaker]

I don't understand the complaints. Visually, this and THE ARRIVAL make for some exciting science fiction on our horizon. Rupert Sanders is a gifted, original visualist. It's on him now to produce a film with a coherent storyline. Hopefully GITS is that.

 

[DaddyfromNaboo]

I want a spider-tank.

Tachikoma! If they don´t have those designs, then I don´t know how well it will be received by the fan base ...

 

[CB2001]

I want a spider-tank.

I'd be okay with it. Seriously, it's an impressive machine to have shown up in the anime.

 

[Mike J.]

You'd be "OK" with it? It's the climax of the film! That big mother is absolutely bad-ass!

Hell, if it's in there, they could build a static mock-up for reference photography & promo stills shooting, and tour the world with it! We have a 'real' Gundam, a 'real' Patlabor, I demand a real spider tank!*

If they wanted to, they could pack this full of cool stuff – thermoptic camo, Tachikomas, crab tank, big guns, car chases, shootouts, helicopter snipers, exploding cyborgs...


-MJ

*Crab tank, think tank, whatever. You know the one. The BIG ONE.

 

[crabra comander]

Again, general audience vs. fan base...General public wins. I do like the Tachikomas, however, the Spider Tank is head and shoulders above their design, IMO.

Yes, a climax of Major vs. tank would be good, but I suspect we won't be having them ape that scene...so either she beats it in a different fashion completely or they do something else for the climax...

 

[hansicle]

From the shots I've seen with these clips, it doesn't look as atmospheric as it should. It's almost as if they are intentionally copying storyboards from the anime, and making the background bare and not very detailed.

 

[CutThumb]

Some fairly iconic shots in the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4VmJcZR0Yg

This is much better than I originally thought.

 

[EmmaInCandyland]

Yup! Looks really promising!! Can't wait!!

 

[YenChih Lin]

I'm still skeptical about the released trailer, I've seen the 5 teasers so far and TBH, there are some minor details that could be changed, nothing major (ha ha, see what I did there? Major?). Mamoru Oshii, the director of the GitS movie gave his blessings, well, if we take the 95 movie as the starting point, the 2017 movie is close as it can get in terms of the look with a slight different alamaganated story (GitS and SAC in the blender), but I have a problem with the dumbed down philosophical aspects of GitS, about consciousness and the relations between man and machine. Unfortunately GitS has to appeal for a broader, mass audience. And that, I think, is the problem. Cerebral content that made GitS so groundbreaking in the infancy of the commercial internet in its 5th year, is what made GitS so interesting. To think about the possiblities in 2027, how technology could shape society and vis versa how technologies are going to shape us.

It's hard to convey it to the average Joe, who wants to see something set in the future and being fresh and interesting, you gotta sacrifice some on the altar of dumbeness. Which is sad, because as I mentioned earlier, the Matrix was influenced by GitS and yet everyone was crazy then, about the visuals, the philosophy, what roots Matrix had. And now, the mother of all modern cyberpunk movie in the last 20 years has go "Idiocracy" on that. In the end, you can say it's a "Ghost in the Shell", a ghost of the former innovative anime, put in a shell of a visual movie with nothing to think about. Style over substance.

 

[EmmaInCandyland]

There are quite a few noticeable scenes though, so it depends how they will stick with the storyline, doesn't seem they have changed much things, the only thing that kinda miss is all of this atmosphere that the soundtrack was creating, I hope they'll use some of the main songs ^^

 

[dascoyne]

One minor gripe about Japanese action films.
There seems to be a convention in Japanese films where, between the action pieces, are long dialogue-heavy sequences taking place in government committee meetings where the exposition is largely superfluous. I guess Japanese audiences can relate more to the backdrop of bureaucracy-laden government than Western audiences do. Those scenes can really tax my attention span.

 

[Jeyl]

Son of a glitch, they stole my idea! I wanted to use the re-built body mechanic for Samus in my Metroid movie! If you can picture the artificial areas of this Major's body as blue, it's Samus' Zero Suit. I was going to use that!

I'd definitely give this a shot. Heck, I gave Ghost in the Shell Arise a shot and I wound up hating that piece of garbage.

 

[Rotwang]

It all looks very impressive, but from what's said in the trailer it looks like they figured that the original plotlines and ideas were far too complex for the average moviegoer and they decided to shoehorn a classic morality tale about the dehumanizing effects of evil technology. In the original material cyborgs were an established fact of life and commonly accepted, but in the trailer it's suggested that the Major freaks out people and that her background is one of betrayal and deceit and that being a cyborg is something evil. It feels a lot like they are doing a kind of Robocop "Oh woe to me, they stole my humanity and lied about it" redux.