Why ScarJo as the Major? Because she basically already is the Major.

[mecegirl]

Nobody's quesitoning Scarlett Johansson's competence. It's the principle. The "everybody's got to be white" thing.

The problem is, in particularly with females; it's pretty hard to find someone who fits both the type AND has the chops to actually do the role.

Rinko Kikuchi [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0452860/?ref_=tt_cl_t4]

That'd be like getting Peter Dinklage to play Batou, or Keeanu Reeves to play Kakashi.

Rinko comes damn near close to looking perfectly like the Major, its true.

But she has never shown that she has the chops for an action movie where she has to be extremely physically active and physically manhandle people, or carry herself the way the Major does.

And she is too short by several good bits. Harsh I know; but a big part of the Major (only Batou and a few of the male villan antagonists are taller than she is to start with) is that she is pretty physically imposing and looks like she is capable of violence if she needs to be. Rinko would barely come up to Batou's or Togusa's stomach; not very intimidating.

Rinko also seems like a poor fit personality wise for Motoko; especially since Rinko doesn't like nudity unless nessacary while any accurate portrayal of the Major is going to hit on how the Major is pretty "clothes-optional".

Did ScarJo even do all of her own stunts? I'm pretty certain that she had a stunt double. I know for sure she had several when she was pregnant, but even before then I'm sure she had stunt doubles. Like that chair flip escape thing Black Widow did was not ScarJo.

And we know that Rinko did a lot of physical work in Pacific Rim.
http://www.straight.com/movies/399216/rinko-kikuchi-pacific-rims-cockpit-queen

The action-heavy film required a lot from Kikuchi in a physical sense. ?I trained for many months,? she tells the Straight, sounding exhausted just talking about the experience. ?It was boot camp: weightlifting, running on the beach, martial arts. My trainer was so hard on me. One day he says, ?Rinko, run to the pole.? On the beach, in the summer in L.A., it?s so hot. And I can?t see any pole. ?You keep going; you will see it.? I almost cried running to get to the pole. It was the most intense preparation. I got over it and I feel like I became tough.?

That grit came in handy when she was tasked with operating the Jaegers, a job that involved getting into a life-size cockpit designed by del Toro. Costar Charlie Hunnam, who plays Mako?s copilot, Raleigh Becket, marvels at Kikuchi?s ability to handle the rigours of the cockpit.

?She?s just wonderful,? he says during a news conference in the same hotel. ?I?m not sure if she?s just a total badass, but every dude in the movie who got into the cockpit, all of us think we?re real tough guys and we were all crying like little baby girls within minutes of being in there. And Rinko was in there for, like, 16 days and, I swear, she never complained once. She?d do the sequence and just close her eyes and be so peaceful and Zen about it.

?After a while, I asked her, ?What were you thinking about in there? You were so peaceful.? And she just said, ?Chocolate and teddy bears!? And I was just, like, ?I?m thinking about the ways I could kick Guillermo?s ass! And the fact that I?m never going to act again, and the fact that I?m going to come back here later tonight and burn this set down!? ?

ScarJo is 5'3"
Rinko is 5'5"

So if height is gonna be an issue neither one should play the part. Then again movie magic has done wonders for average sized men like Tom Cruise who is 5'7"

And actors do act, very few actors just play themselves in a role. The personality they exude changes with the chracter. I'm also sure that whatever amount of nudity the movie may contain won't it be anywhere near as prevalent as in the anime. And sometimes cgi and prosthetics are used in lieu of actual nudity.

All that said, neither women should play the part cuz this might be a huge train wreck....But its not like well known actors need to land parts. Who the hell knew who Chris Hemsworth was before Thor? Also, who the hell knew shit about Thor comics and their characters? So maybe a lesser known lady could have landed this part.

 

[kyp275]

Meh, personally I don't like EITHER to play the Major, neither of them really fit the image for me tbh.

What is decidedly not ambiguous to me in the least is which of the two would sell more tickets. For those spouting "principles", my view on that is "you can start whining when it's your money on the line". Feel free to want to be politically correct all you want, it's another when you want other people to risk tens of millions of dollars to be politically correct for you.

It's all ridiculous anyway, and that's from me as an Asian. Hollywood white-washes its cast, sure - but so do every frigging film/tv industries in every country. Japanese productions Japan-washes its cast, Chinese productions China-washes its cast, Taiwanese productions Taiwan-washes their casts.... literally everyone do it, because their goal is to sell a product to their target audience, not lose money to satisfy your personal sensibilities.

 

[FalloutJack]

I see nothing wrong with this. Carry on. (Definitely curious about this.)

 

[CrystalShadow]

Meh, personally I don't like EITHER to play the Major, neither of them really fit the image for me tbh.

What is decidedly not ambiguous to me in the least is which of the two would sell more tickets. For those spouting "principles", my view on that is "you can start whining when it's your money on the line". Feel free to want to be politically correct all you want, it's another when you want other people to risk tens of millions of dollars to be politically correct for you.

It's all ridiculous anyway, and that's from me as an Asian. Hollywood white-washes its cast, sure - but so do every frigging film/tv industries in every country. Japanese productions Japan-washes its cast, Chinese productions China-washes its cast, Taiwanese productions Taiwan-washes their casts.... literally everyone do it, because their goal is to sell a product to their target audience, not lose money to satisfy your personal sensibilities.

It's not even that obvious anyway is it?

Someone brought up a point (I think to do with Attack on titan adaptation Japan is doing) in another thread like how 4.5% of the US population is asian (gotta love how people lump that all together as though it's all the same thing), while 98% of Japan is Japanese.

As if that's a huge difference between those figures anyway. That means 95.5% of the US population isn't asian, and 2% of the Japanese population isn't Japanese.

Besides which, if you actually pay attention to such things anyway, is casting a Chinese person as Japanese really any better than casting anyone else?
It's like people's opinion on 'race' is so superficial and shallow they don't even realise that 'asian' isn't a single race, nor is 'black'. And realistically, even 'caucasian' isn't a single unified group...

But apparently that's not important even to the people making such a big deal about casting.
I get the point, sure. White actors get way more parts than anyone else. But still...

(And I see similar complaints thrown around sometimes about casting in other english-speaking countries, where people apply the logic of American racial demographics, even though the countries these were made in have very different racial compositions. Australia for instance... Less than 1% of the population in Australia is 'black', and of those that are, almost all are Indigenous Australians, whose cultural background is vastly different to what Americans would understand as black. (if you're wondering, 92% of the population is white, 7% is asian. And that about meshes with what I've experienced personally. I think 2001 was the first time I ever even saw a non-aboriginal 'black' person anywhere in the country... And that was probably a tourist... >_> - Have seen a lot of Chinese and a handful of other Asians though.)

Anyway, race is always such a confusing subject. We are all human. Not different species. Whatever differences there are are clearly rather minor in any biological sense, yet we pick on really superficial things and make huge generalisations about people because of it.
Sure there are massive cultural differences, but that can be said even amongst people that are considered the same 'race'... It's just bizarre sometimes how much effort we expend on enforcing superficial differences.

 

[Hoplon]

Most likely true, original movie adaptation was made in 1995, that's like 20 years ago now, was a whole other time, SAC is a bit closer to modern expectations

It's still going to suck though, Avatar: The Last Airbender was the easiest adaptation of an animated series they could possibly make, it's basically just Star Wars in an East Asian fantasy setting, but no, they cocked it up

My hopes are low, really low

Fortunately they aren't adapting either, but going back to the Manga.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The problem is you have Western characters with what I pressume will be Japanese names. Unless they decide to whate-wash the names, too, which makes you wonder why they would even bother making a GitS film in the first place, instead of just their own cyborg flick set in America that borrows inspiration from GitS. I mean, they more or less did that with The Matrix.

It just appears like they want to adapt a Japanese story, but without all those oogie things that make it Japanese, like race, names, language, culture etc.

 

[kyp275]

The problem is you have Western characters with what I pressume will be Japanese names. Unless they decide to whate-wash the names, too, which makes you wonder why they would even bother making a GitS film in the first place, instead of just their own cyborg flick set in America that borrows inspiration from GitS. I mean, they more or less did that with The Matrix.

It just appears like they want to adapt a Japanese story, but without all those oogie things that make it Japanese, like race, names, language, culture etc.

The way I look at it, the actual problem is that some seem to have already created their worst case scenario and decided that it has already happened.

Take All you need is Kill/Edge of Tomorrow. Forget about Scarlet Jo as the Major, Tom Cruise as what was originally a Japanese teenage soldier, with the battlefield in Europe instead of Japan, plus a litany of other major plot point changes - and the movie adaptation turned out just damned fine IMO in it's own way. No, it's not the same as the novel, but you'd need to be a fool to expect adaptations to stick by the script, especially when crossing cultural/language boundaries. Hell, there are enough veering-off script for faithful fans of series like, for example, LOTR to complain forever without crossing that line (don't get me started on the Hobbits, that would require an eternity, or two).

 

[mecegirl]

The problem is you have Western characters with what I pressume will be Japanese names. Unless they decide to whate-wash the names, too, which makes you wonder why they would even bother making a GitS film in the first place, instead of just their own cyborg flick set in America that borrows inspiration from GitS. I mean, they more or less did that with The Matrix.

It just appears like they want to adapt a Japanese story, but without all those oogie things that make it Japanese, like race, names, language, culture etc.

There has got to be a sci fi novel somewhere written by an American author that they could adapt.

 

[SNCommand]

Can I just say I only watched this movie for the first time a couple days ago and while good, I'm still not quite sure what this:

Spoiler: NSFW

was meant to accomplish. I get that she's a cyborg with an existential crisis and a bit of a death wish, but even so trying (And failing miserably) to pull a tank apart with her bare hands wasn't exactly the brightest of moves, especially not for a computer brain that ought to know better. Even if she is a bit reckless bordering on suicidal.

As for Scarlett Johansson playing that character in a live action movie, it's not the worst choice. It just seems like Scarlett's become Hollywood's go-to choice for generic tough martial arts lady in movies to the point it's becoming a bit of a cliche. I would prefer someone new.

My take on it is as you said, "a computer brain" ought to know better, the Major has been wondering if she's just a machine the entire movie, I guess by finding something she's willing to die for she proves she's not just a machine, had Ghost in the Shell been your regular hollywood action movie she would have succeeded as well, but in the 1995 movie the action itself says enough, and it allows for a far more interesting shot as the Major breaks herself

Most likely true, original movie adaptation was made in 1995, that's like 20 years ago now, was a whole other time, SAC is a bit closer to modern expectations

It's still going to suck though, Avatar: The Last Airbender was the easiest adaptation of an animated series they could possibly make, it's basically just Star Wars in an East Asian fantasy setting, but no, they cocked it up

My hopes are low, really low

Fortunately they aren't adapting either, but going back to the Manga.

Does this mean we're going to get that lesbian threesome?

 

[SNCommand]

The problem is you have Western characters with what I pressume will be Japanese names. Unless they decide to whate-wash the names, too, which makes you wonder why they would even bother making a GitS film in the first place, instead of just their own cyborg flick set in America that borrows inspiration from GitS. I mean, they more or less did that with The Matrix.

It just appears like they want to adapt a Japanese story, but without all those oogie things that make it Japanese, like race, names, language, culture etc.

There has got to be a sci fi novel somewhere written by an American author that they could adapt.

Hell, they could have adapted Deus Ex, it's basically the same thing, just with more explosions and gunfire and less of that mange baggage

 

[mecegirl]

The problem is you have Western characters with what I pressume will be Japanese names. Unless they decide to whate-wash the names, too, which makes you wonder why they would even bother making a GitS film in the first place, instead of just their own cyborg flick set in America that borrows inspiration from GitS. I mean, they more or less did that with The Matrix.

It just appears like they want to adapt a Japanese story, but without all those oogie things that make it Japanese, like race, names, language, culture etc.

There has got to be a sci fi novel somewhere written by an American author that they could adapt.

Hell, they could have adapted Deus Ex, it's basically the same thing, just with more explosions and gunfire and less of that mange baggage

I mean...I'm not sayin that they need to do an adaptation. It would be nice to see more original stories for movies. But the road with less baggage just seems like the smarter move to take.

On the other hand I guess they may be counting on the controversy and buzz a manga adaptation would make among geeky circles? But surly there aren't enough of us discussing this on the internet to boost possible sales.

 

[w00tage]

Nobody's quesitoning Scarlett Johansson's competence. It's the principle. The "everybody's got to be white" thing.

The problem is, in particularly with females; it's pretty hard to find someone who fits both the type AND has the chops to actually do the role. Hollywood is more than a little risk adverse so they're going to go with "know competence and we'll fudge out the race details later" more often than not. Especially when the race/nationality is not vital to the character.

For filling men's and boy's roles, you have a WHOLE lot more options just because there simply are more. Let's take say....a live action Naruto, shall we?

You can probably name several suitable male actors for nearly every male role in the series; this is especially easy because most of the males are not nationality/race specific for the most part.

Where you're going to get hung up is trying to fill the female roles. Because several of them ARE nation/race specific (Hinata jumps immediately to mind) AND several of them need very specific body/personality types to work at all. Like for example; Lady Tsunade.

You need a large, physically imposing woman - Tsunade is the largest, strongest woman in the entirety of the show, with only a couple of women being slightly taller than her (Misokage), a few males, and she is more imposing than most males as well (Raikage, Killer Bee and Jiraya being the only ones to come to mind) - who is ALSO physically attractive (and has the voice to match. Tsunade's voice is actually pretty husky/deep especially in the Japanese version). I think there is literally one actress capable of playing her - the woman who played the female Russian pilot in Pacific Rim.

If you can't get that, you're gonna have to take the next best thing. In the case of the Major; you could try a lesser known actor who looks a little more the part, but is untested/not well-known for their action abilities, or you could take ScarJo who fits the personality and physicality of the character to a "T" and fudge the race part.

Eh, I *think* that there's enough evidence that someone who doesn't physically fit the part - ex Heimdall - can still do a great job. And I can't prove it, but I can postulate that a Japanese female actor can be found who would do a great job as this Japanese character. One has to realize that the Hollywood industry is not known for its commitment to equality, but its commitment to its own success. Ms. Johannson has star power, and that widens the market from "people who like the GITS shows" to "anyone who thought she kicked @ss in the Marvel movies", meaning mo money on the table.

It's too bad. I've been watching foreign films for forever (say that three times fast lol) and love it when I see them express things about their culture I didn't know. It would be exceptional for a foreigner to do as good a job at that aspect as an actual member of the culture.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The way I look at it, the actual problem is that some seem to have already created their worst case scenario and decided that it has already happened.

Take All you need is Kill/Edge of Tomorrow. Forget about Scarlet Jo as the Major, Tom Cruise as what was originally a Japanese teenage soldier, with the battlefield in Europe instead of Japan, plus a litany of other major plot point changes - and the movie adaptation turned out just damned fine IMO in it's own way. No, it's not the same as the novel, but you'd need to be a fool to expect adaptations to stick by the script, especially when crossing cultural/language boundaries. Hell, there are enough veering-off script for faithful fans of series like, for example, LOTR to complain forever without crossing that line (don't get me started on the Hobbits, that would require an eternity, or two).

Ghost in the Shell has a large iconic presence though in the anime/sci-fi world. One of the reasons being Major Kusanagi. This is the reason they're making an adaption in the first place; Brand recognition.

All You Need is Kill wasn't really well know, even to the people in the sci-fi/anime/manga scene, untill the movie came out. It wasn't banking on the popularity of the original book, it was just using the concept to create another sci-fi vehicle with Tom Cruise. Hence why they changed the title to Edge of Tomorrow.

GitS is completely the opposite. That title is supposed to draw in movie audiences along with ScarJo as The Major. So a big pull is likely going to be Major Kusanagi on the big screen in a live-action movie... but she's played by Scarlett Johanson... who is white. So is she just going to be white, but with a Japanese name? How are they going to handwave that? What about the rest of the cast? Or are they just going to give her are a more Western sounding name so that it doesn't look weird? Well no, they can't, because the fans will wanna see Major Makoto Kusanagi, not Major Janet Kittridge or whatever.

It's not so strange for people to expect the worst case scenario, since we already got Dragon Ball. Which was a similar case of taking something popular/iconic from Japan and trying to adapt it to Western audiences.

 

[stroopwafel]

Will this be as good as Resident Evil or Street Fighter The Movie? Those movies were amazing with brilliant performances.

Seriously though, GitS is so steeped in Japanese culture that a literal adaptation just isn't going to work. The restrained storytelling, cutesy robot things, slow pace and subtle exploration of blurred lines between man and machine can't be trusted to modern Hollywood, which turns everything into a dumb action flick with a hamfisted romance.

It doesn't even really matter which actors they're gonna cast. They could've better done a movie adaptation of Deus Ex Human Revolution, which is heavily inspired by GitS but doesn't wear its influence on its sleeve. It is also decisively western. Hollywood at its best producing movies like The Terminator, Robocop, Blade Runner or The Matrix that all heavily inspired Japanese entertainment(from anime to videogames) can easily rival GitS, but a Hollywood adaptation of GitS itself(even with a hot actress like ScarJo) just...no.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

I think the reason people are complaining is, so often, white actors and actresses are chosen to portray originally non-Caucasian characters, whereas the opposite is much rarer (and even when it does happen, like Idris Elba being picked to play Heimdall in Thor, people piss and moan for the same fanboy reason of ?It?s not true to the source material!?).

I don?t have a problem with ScarJo playing the Major, though. Then again, that might be because I?ve never read or watched Ghost in the Shell, so I?ll be going in with a completely fresh mind. And I didn?t care that Gokuu was portrayed by Justin Chatwin in Dragonball Evolution because 1) Gokuu?s an alien without a confirmed ethnicity and 2) his racial characteristics aren?t particularly important to his character. The problem I did have is Chatwin is, to put it politely, not a great actor, and the film itself was shit.

Anyway, the reason Hollywood don?t want to take the risk of casting a minority actor is?well, because it?s not about principles, it?s about money. A film doesn?t even to be particularly good to rate well at the box office; just look at Transformers.

Out of curiosity, has the director been announced yet and, if so, who is it?

Speaking of rated R anime adaptations, where is my live action Berserk? Aside from the homosexual undertones the west would eat the story up, especially taking into acount the reception that Game of Thrones has received.

Nah, if the CGI films were bad, a live-action film would be even worse.

Although, out of curiosity, who would you cast as Guts, Griffith, Casca, and Puck (presuming the narrative would only go up to the Golden Age arc)?

I think Hollywood should just stick to making original films - maybe loose adaptations, perhaps without the series' actual name - rather than just trying to falsely brand a film with almost nothing to do with the source material.

Blade Runner was good, because it did something new with the Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? novel, expand on some of the characters, and just generally make a film that can stand on its own and eventually became more famous than the original book due to its quality (and, of course, the milking of multiple 'revised' editions following the theatrical release).

 

[mad825]

.ScarJo should do just fine. And if you notice, the Major while she IS Japanese, could easily be portrayed by someone not Japanese; her nationality is not as important as many make it out to be. Its not like someone is trying to cast a white/asian person as say....Othello.

Yeah, because it isn't set in Japan and Japan has a habit of recruiting foreigners into their secret service.

What makes GitS different is that it's viewing international politics from Japan's point of view, something somewhat controversial becuase the U.S hasn't gotten over the events of pearl harbour despite Germany now being considered as an ally. Having a U.S (westerner) actor playing the lead role IMO will compromise that view.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Well honestly I am just bored of her having the role of an badass woman with fighting skills as if that is her only skillset (which is not). Ok sure she only been in two films with that role (that I can think of) but come on let some other actress fill in the role.

 

[kyp275]

Ghost in the Shell has a large iconic presence though in the anime/sci-fi world. One of the reasons being Major Kusanagi. This is the reason they're making an adaption in the first place; Brand recognition.

All You Need is Kill wasn't really well know, even to the people in the sci-fi/anime/manga scene, untill the movie came out. It wasn't banking on the popularity of the original book, it was just using the concept to create another sci-fi vehicle with Tom Cruise. Hence why they changed the title to Edge of Tomorrow.

GitS is completely the opposite. That title is supposed to draw in movie audiences along with ScarJo as The Major. So a big pull is likely going to be Major Kusanagi on the big screen in a live-action movie... but she's played by Scarlett Johanson... who is white. So is she just going to be white, but with a Japanese name? How are they going to handwave that? What about the rest of the cast? Or are they just going to give her are a more Western sounding name so that it doesn't look weird? Well no, they can't, because the fans will wanna see Major Makoto Kusanagi, not Major Janet Kittridge or whatever.

It's not so strange for people to expect the worst case scenario, since we already got Dragon Ball. Which was a similar case of taking something popular/iconic from Japan and trying to adapt it to Western audiences.

I'm sorry, but you may want to seriously rethink just how much pull the GiTS fanchise actually would have in the theatrical market in the west, the correct answer IMO is somewhere around "None" and "Negligible". As far as I'm concerned, adapting GiTS is really no different than any other of the 23897452938472 attempts by Hollywood in the past couple decades to adapt any and every existing IP because they're too scared/lazy to come up with new ideas themselves.

If brand recognition is your primary plan for selling a GiTS movie, you would be lucky to do much better than Dragon Ball did. GiTS is not Harry Potter, or LOTR, or Hunger Games, or even Maze Runner - the sheer vast majority of your potential audience wouldn't have the first clue what GiTS is.

did you even watch Pacific Rim

I dont feel like you watched Pacific Rim

I watched Pacific Rim.

And no, Rinko did not impress me one bit if you were to make that an audition of sorts for the Major, she is simply.... too small/petite. Add another 20 inches and a good 40+ lbs and we can start talking

I think the reason people are complaining is, so often, white actors and actresses are chosen to portray originally non-Caucasian characters, whereas the opposite is much rarer

Understandable, but also massively ignorant IMO. These people should really step outside of their little matchbox and actually look at the rest of the world - seriously, go to China/Taiwan/Japan/Korea, and tell me how often "originally non-Asian characters" are played by, well, Asians.


*psss, the answer is "All the time"*

 

[SNCommand]

And no, Rinko did not impress me one bit if you were to make that an audition of sorts for the Major, she is simply.... too small/petite. Add another 20 inches and a good 40+ lbs and we can start talking

To be fair Johansson is even smaller than her, when I found out I'm 26cm taller than her and weigh just 3kg more than her I feel kinda freakish