So far the only character that I've been miffed at having another race than the original legend would be Heimdal in the Marvel Thor movies.
I mean how did they turn this
Into this
But then Kenneth Branagh justified the casting with "The dude (Idris Elba) is a great actor" (heavily paraphrased) and I got on to the next beef I had with the movie (which was even more petty).
Thors hair-colour (he's a red-head according to the original legend).
But then, I didn't grow up with Marvels depiction, but rather the comic-series in Denmark called Valhalla, which was basically copy-pastes of the original legends.
Anyway, back on topic. As long as the actor is good, and can carry the role I have not a care in the world regarding the ethnicity of the original character.
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'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.
You mention Lord of the Rings, but that series didn't become box office material untill the movies made it so. Sure, it was famous for being nerdy literature, but that's about it. The general audience really couldn't give a toss.
This isn't about whether or not the GitS name is going to draw in massive amounts of crowds, of course it's not. But it's obviously supposed to draw in the (anime) fandom with ScarJo's attachment picking up the rest of the slack. Just like Akira, it's a title that holds enough weight for Hollywood to not wanna give up their attempt at adapting it.
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
Sorry, didn't see anything about that in your post, as for the issue of height or weight, I don't think it matters, these days most directors seem perfectly capable of masking short height if it's an issue
So a lot of people have been a bit upset that Scarlett Jo. got the role of Major Kusanagi in the Ghost in the Shell live action film, thinking the part should've gone to other actors, like the woman who played Mako Maori in Pacific Rim.
I agreed.....until I stopped and gave it some more thought. After that I realized that ScarJo is pretty much the perfect person to play the Major and that it would actually be hard to find a BETTER actress to play the Major.
Why?
Because ScarJo has already proven on no less than 4 occasions that she basically IS MAJOR KUSANAGI.
She has already proven in 4 big-budget, popular and well received films (Iron Man 2, Avengers 1, Winter Soldier and Lucy) that she is capable of carrying and portraying the kind of attitude, presence and physicality that being Major Kusanagi would require. What do I mean?
Scarlette Jo. Performance Examples
Major Kusanagi Performance Examples
I unfortunately couldn't find any decent clips of where she goes on a couple of her more personal hand-to-hand ass kicking sprees.
Yeah.....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.
Its also not like say...the live action AoT film using an all Asian cast for a series where the setting is distinctly European, the characters are all directly stated as being European and the one person who isn't European serves as an important plot point.
To be honest Scarlett Johansson is just the current "It" action girl of the moment, I like her, but not much of what is being shown here convinces me she would be any more exceptional at it than other girls like Jennifer Garner were during their prime. Jennifer Garner having carried "Alias" for like 5 years despite mediocre reception on the big screen (people seemed to like her, but her Elektra movies were hardly praised... either Daredevil or her stand alone movie). Casting her in a non-white role here is just as bad as when they cast blacks as white characters for PC reasons. It's not so much that she can't play "tough cop girl" but that she's the wrong kind of person for the role, it's sort of like how Idris Elba might be able to act properly godlike, but he shouldn't be playing Heimdall.
That said producers want a box office draw, and ScarJo is as I pointed out an "it" girl while there aren't any Japanese actresses in their prime that are going to provide a global box office draw. Not to mention that to be fair it seems most big time Japanese actors don't do well with English, and even beyond the language barriers most of them are terrible, especially the ones that do action movies. China has more decent actors and actresses, but that would also be an ethnicity swap of a sort, and simply casting an Asian is borderline insulting (all Asians look the same to westerners) especially when you look at the history involved given that China and Japan aren't exactly buddies. It's sort of like the "WTF" points the movie "Ninja Warrior" got when they had some Korean pop star trying to pretend to be a Japanese Ninja... not well known know, but that one got a few comments when it first came out. Korea and Japan (like Japan and almost everyone else in the region) have some bad blood.
Other than the actress from Pacific Rim passing as the right ethnicity, she doesn't look like the character, and to be honest while the movie was praised for the character arc the actress herself hardly sells me as someone being able to pull off this role.
The thing you need to understand about Major Kusanagi is that the look is the key to the entire thing. Half the point is that her "shell" is pure physical perfection, both in combat and otherwise, part of why she's seen louging around with her girlfriend, etc... in the TV series. It's part of the whole equasion of what she gave up for that, and the big analogy between the ghost and the shell and how separate the two are. It's a big part of why certain scenes make a big deal of that body being torn apart before the ghost survives, etc... I won't say much more but those who have seen versions of the Anime or read the Manga will get where I'm coming from. With no offense to the actress between the starlet behind Mako in Pacific Rim, your not going to sell anyone giving up part of their fundamental identity to look like her, or having pretty much everyone she meets being silently in love with her despite her acting like a vicious pit viper half the time (when she's not just being cold). Remember people both in the real world and those existing as cyberspace entities going gaga for her is part of the whole schtick. To cast Major Kusanagi your pretty much going to need a world class Japanese beauty with a natural-looking boob job. The other members of her unit as easy as a lot of them are just enhanced... she's basically a combat capable sexbot with a human psyche downloaded into it.
That said, "Ghost In The Shell" is something they shouldn't even consider doing as a real movie right now, and honestly if I was a big name celebrity I'd stay well away from it. Along with a lot of other "classic" anime like Angel Cop (similar to it) half the international appeal of it is because it's a display of hilarious Japanese insanity and how offensively out of touch with reality they are. Japan has grown up a lot in recent years which has come out in it's pop culture, and as a result I think it's part of why the international popularity of anime has been fading, you just don't get the whole "WTF did they just say" vibe from most of the stuff nowadays.
Ghost In The Shell is pretty much part of the whole "Japanese Wank Material" genera of anime science fiction. Aside from the whole William Gibson inspired "ghost in the machine" and trans humanist stuff which wasn't even new then (but on the fringe) half the whole point is to present this world where somehow Japan has fulfilled it's "destiny" and become the dominant world power, somehow having managed to defeat all other global powers using sadistic payback tactics like cyborg VR rape-torture (covered in the TV series), but has incurred their jealousy leading to the evil western powers (read America) trying to subvert Japan, leading to the creation of these special police units made up of cyborg war veterans. Compared to some this world is fairly light weight, I mean you don't have the sheer ranting of Angel Cop where we have a central plot involving American psychics being used to subvert government agencies so corporations can dump waste in Tokyo bay on the behest of the global Zionist conspiracy (seriously, I am not making that one up, check out the original subtitled version, it was later edited), or the smell of insanity that wafted off Gasaraki (empathize with the motivations of the villain now revealed to be noble soul who sliced his own eyes out with a Katana rather than see Japan join the rest of the world as simply another nation and his glorious plan to destroy the west through starvation by manipulating the global wheat market...). The point is that "Ghost In The Shell" is pretty offensive and insane in it's basic set up, pretty much being a Nazi-like pro-Japanese police force, sort of like a cyberpunk version of the Shinsengumi (who are also romanticized), not as bad as some thing, but pretty much it's the kind of thing that probably has any non-Japanese just hearing the world definition/history lesson and then the character justifications and overall motives blinking in disbelief. It's just a few shades less than if we say made a movie about the KKK officially taking over the USA and engaging in the heroic ethnic cleansing of other nations... not quite there, but well... when you put it all together it's pretty bad. The thing is if you don't do this though what's the point, it just turns into another "Blade Runner" type police story about AIs and Law Enforcement. It take a certain kind of person to really appreciate this in all it's splendor (good and bad), it's not right for mainstream release, and if you tone it down, why bother to make it at all?
That's my long list of thoughts at any rate, in my mind old school Anime needs to be left alone, it's the result of a perfect blending of time and crazy ideas to make something unique for the relative fringes of society. Not everyone can appreciate how a crawl of text ranting about Japanese supremacy in the future can make an otherwise mediocre work of science fiction when you start reading between the lines. I suppose Ghost In The Shell isn't terrible since it doesn't linger on these concepts, but still I sort of feel they are part of the set up. It's almost like trying to do "Angel Cop" without the ranting reveal of the alliance between America and the Zionist conspiracy and how they are deploying the super psychic "Lucifer" to destroy Japanese intelligence to cover up the waste dumping plan.... someone must have been doing Hunter S. Thomson levels of drugs when they made that one...
You mention Lord of the Rings, but that series didn't become box office material untill the movies made it so. Sure, it was famous for being nerdy literature, but that's about it. The general audience really couldn't give a toss.
Framing LOTR, literally the second best-selling novel in history as "famous for being nerdy literature" is akin to calling GiTS "obscure japanimation for weirdos that nobody knows about".
This isn't about whether or not the GitS name is going to draw in massive amounts of crowds, of course it's not. But it's obviously supposed to draw in the (anime) fandom with ScarJo's attachment picking up the rest of the slack. Just like Akira, it's a title that holds enough weight for Hollywood to not wanna give up their attempt at adapting it.
No, it's supposed to draw in the crowd with ScarJo, with the (anime) fandom being very optional - in fact, negligible icing that in all likelihood wouldn't matter one tiny bit whether they show up or not. Seriously, just how many GiTS fan do you think are there in the western market?
SNCommand said:
kyp275 said:
SNCommand said:
kyp275 said:
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
Sorry, didn't see anything about that in your post, as for the issue of height or weight, I don't think it matters, these days most directors seem perfectly capable of masking short height if it's an issue
To me it's not just the height, it's also... I'm not sure what's the word... maybe "physique"? The Major for the most part has always been portrayed with a... powerful built, one that frankly you're probably not going to find on most actresses.
So far the only character that I've been miffed at having another race than the original legend would be Heimdal in the Marvel Thor movies.
I mean how did they turn this
Into this
But then Kenneth Branagh justified the casting with "The dude (Idris Elba) is a great actor" (heavily paraphrased) and I got on to the next beef I had with the movie (which was even more petty).
Thors hair-colour (he's a red-head according to the original legend).
But then, I didn't grow up with Marvels depiction, but rather the comic-series in Denmark called Valhalla, which was basically copy-pastes of the original legends.
Anyway, back on topic. As long as the actor is good, and can carry the role I have not a care in the world regarding the ethnicity of the original character.
I give Heimdall a pass because he's based on the Marvel Comics version, making him thrice bastardised before pen was put to paper on the movie. If they'd been doing an adaptation of the legends themselves, it's a complaint I'd actually back. Though one really neat little fanfic I read made it into a sort of a gag: Hiemdall started out as white, but thanks to a thousand years of exposure to sun, his skin darkened
Captcha: Pearly Whites........that's not funny captcha.
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
Like I said, I assume it's meant to be a mix of recklessness and suicidalness but even so it's a bit of a strange scene to watch.
stroopwafel said:
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.
How so? There's nothing uniquely Japanese about Ghost in the Shell, it's Cyberpunk through and through. Even the movies themes, pacing, and story all pay extreme homage to the various Cyberpunk media that came before it from the obvious example of Blade Runner to Neuromancer. Even the general idea of existential crisis being experienced by an AI, questioning what it is to be human, what defines life, that's all cornerstones of the genre itself. Not unique to Ghost in the Shell.
Ghost in the Shell might very well be one of the absolute best Cyberpunk movies out there, no denying that, but to say as some people in this topic have that it's something 'the west' could never pull off is complete nonsense considering where the movies own inspirations obviously lie. Cyberpunk itself being based loosely on the themes and ideas expressed in the old Film Noire genre.
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
Sorry mate, but you're wrong. You are in excellent company however! I also originally thought that both actresses were far too short to play the role, but it turns out that Rinko Kikuchi [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0452860/] is the perfect height to play the Major [http://ghostintheshell.wikia.com/wiki/Motoko_Kusanagi], while Scarlet Johansson [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0424060/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1] is a little shorter but not by much. By Japanese standards of the late eighties/early nineties Motoko Kusanagi is a tall amazonian warrior woman, but by western standards she's rather average.
So far the only character that I've been miffed at having another race than the original legend would be Heimdal in the Marvel Thor movies.
I mean how did they turn this
Into this
But then Kenneth Branagh justified the casting with "The dude (Idris Elba) is a great actor" (heavily paraphrased) and I got on to the next beef I had with the movie (which was even more petty).
Thors hair-colour (he's a red-head according to the original legend).
But then, I didn't grow up with Marvels depiction, but rather the comic-series in Denmark called Valhalla, which was basically copy-pastes of the original legends.
Anyway, back on topic. As long as the actor is good, and can carry the role I have not a care in the world regarding the ethnicity of the original character.
I give Heimdall a pass because he's based on the Marvel Comics version, making him thrice bastardised before pen was put to paper on the movie. If they'd been doing an adaptation of the legends themselves, it's a complaint I'd actually back. Though one really neat little fanfic I read made it into a sort of a gag: Hiemdall started out as white, but thanks to a thousand years of exposure to sun, his skin darkened
Captcha: Pearly Whites........that's not funny captcha.
Marvel Thor is so so removed from the actual myths. Sif doesn't fight, and is technically bald because Loki shaved her head. Thor made Loki get Sif a nice blonde wig to make up for the transgression. Thor himself should be a Red head with a bushy red beard to match. The warriors three don't exist at all.
Black Heimdall is the least of the issues. At least they got his shiny armor right, though they didn't add the gold teeth...Which is probs a good thing.
I agree with this, really. I don't have anything against anything expect this, which is kinda annoying to me on so many levels. It really shouldn't bother me, so that bothers me. I mean I was okay with Yojimbo being remade into Last Man Standing, and a Fist Full of Dollars (I think), and Akira Kurosawa adapting Shakespeare, but I dunno, why's everybody gotta be white these days? I would've imagined Hollywood would've been at a point where they didn't need to make everyone white. Then again, Dragon Ball evolution. Oiy.
On another note,
Nevermind the fact that I think only Japan has ever made decent live action anime. I mean as far as western stuff goes, I guess Guyver, and Fist of the North Star was okay, but I can't remember them that well. Problem is none of them are particularly cerebral, or philosophical. Way easy to just go into the violence part. None of the films were really high budget.
Ghost in the shell, to me, is there to satisfy the action junkies, and the cerebral types offering food for thought. It doesn't hurt at all that there's humor, too.
Hollywood has had a hard time grasping anime for the longest time, and still does have a hard time.
Ya know the jokes about Speed Racer's talking speed/quirks? Because translators thought that they were supposed to sync mouth movements for a while.
The silences in anime? They don't really get that, either.
Hell, when was the last time there was EVER an inner monologue in an american movie? I can't say.
If Hollywood just makes it a straight forward action flick, a lot of fans will likely be disappointed.
I have a strong feeling that Motoko will have no sort of relationship in the hollywood flick despite her being into both men, and women. If they do, she'll be straight, and won't even hint at the fact that she has had relationships with women. Motoko is a very open woman. They definitely won't acknowledge that she used her super high tech body to make high grade lesbian porn.
I imagine a -lot- will be lost in translation. I don't know if Hollywood can pull off a Major up to the standards I've become a fan of. In fact, I'm pretty damn sure they won't. They'll try to fix what isn't broken, and screw with a favorite character of mine, dumbing the series down.
It just seems like a huge clash of styles on more than one level.
You mention Lord of the Rings, but that series didn't become box office material untill the movies made it so. Sure, it was famous for being nerdy literature, but that's about it. The general audience really couldn't give a toss.
Framing LOTR, literally the second best-selling novel in history as "famous for being nerdy literature" is akin to calling GiTS "obscure japanimation for weirdos that nobody knows about".
And yet that's what you seem to be doing in the very next paragraph.
No, it's supposed to draw in the crowd with ScarJo, with the (anime) fandom being very optional - in fact, negligible icing that in all likelihood wouldn't matter one tiny bit whether they show up or not. Seriously, just how many GiTS fan do you think are there in the western market?
And LotR is famous for being nerdy literature, just as the Bible is famous for being religious literature. Just because it's the second best selling novel in history doesn't mean everybody bought and everybody read it. I've heard of more people who quit less than halfway through than that have actually completed it, just like the Bible.
You mention Lord of the Rings, but that series didn't become box office material untill the movies made it so. Sure, it was famous for being nerdy literature, but that's about it. The general audience really couldn't give a toss.
Framing LOTR, literally the second best-selling novel in history as "famous for being nerdy literature" is akin to calling GiTS "obscure japanimation for weirdos that nobody knows about".
And yet that's what you seem to be doing in the very next paragraph.
No, it's supposed to draw in the crowd with ScarJo, with the (anime) fandom being very optional - in fact, negligible icing that in all likelihood wouldn't matter one tiny bit whether they show up or not. Seriously, just how many GiTS fan do you think are there in the western market?
And LotR is famous for being nerdy literature, just as the Bible is famous for being religious literature. Just because it's the second best selling novel in history doesn't mean everybody bought and everybody read it. I've heard of more people who quit less than halfway through than that have actually completed it, just like the Bible.
I'm not sure if your evasion is intentional or if proper context just that impossible for you to grasp.
For starters - I certainly did not in anyway shape or form denigrate GiTS, unlike you did with LOTR(really? nerdy? can you try to be more juvenile?). What I said was simply my assessment of the size/weight of GiTS (and anime in general) fanbase in the west, something you may want to ask any of the myriad of publishers that have gone out of business in the past decade.
At the mean time, please do feel free to actually answer my question - how many GiTS fans do you think there are in the western market?
Now take that number, and ask yourself how much effect they'll have on a film that would most likely end up costing near or over 9-digits when all's said and done?
On LOTR - it's sold over 150 million copies in the last 60+ years, how many of those 150 million readers have you talked to? or are you claiming that LOTR have an abnormally high rate of readers dropping the book halfway through? If so, may you enlighten the rest of us with your impeccable evidence?
Or perhaps you can pull your head out of whatever orifice it's stuck in, and realize that books that leads to many readers dropping them halfway tend not to make it on best seller lists, much less second place on the all time list, that has had substantial impacts in its genre for decades.
FFS, I'm as big of an anime fan as any others, but that doesn't mean I have to wear the fanboy glasses. You go and make a GiTS live action starring Rinko or whomever you want to appeal to your "authentic fanbase" sense, and I'll bet that movie will tank so hard it'd make The Interview look like the commercial success of the century.
Paradoxrifts said:
kyp275 said:
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
Sorry mate, but you're wrong. You are in excellent company however! I also originally thought that both actresses were far too short to play the role, but it turns out that Rinko Kikuchi [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0452860/] is the perfect height to play the Major [http://ghostintheshell.wikia.com/wiki/Motoko_Kusanagi], while Scarlet Johansson [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0424060/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1] is a little shorter but not by much. By Japanese standards of the late eighties/early nineties Motoko Kusanagi is a tall amazonian warrior woman, but by western standards she's rather average.
I'm not sure if your evasion is intentional or if proper context just that impossible for you to grasp.
For starters - I certainly did not in anyway shape or form denigrate GiTS, unlike you did with LOTR(really? nerdy? can you try to be more juvenile?). What I said was simply my assessment of the size/weight of GiTS (and anime in general) fanbase in the west, something you may want to ask any of the myriad of publishers that have gone out of business in the past decade.
Since when is the term 'nerdy' anything other than 'being really into something'? LotR prides itself on having probably the largest, most detailed lore of any fictional story. That's nerdy. That's not being derogatory, that's claiming that someone (in this case the author) is extremely dedicated toward a goal that is typically outside the mainstream. And Fantasy was outside the mainstream, untill the movies came along.
At the mean time, please do feel free to actually answer my question - how many GiTS fans do you think there are in the western market?
Enough to try and adapt it to the Western market, just as with Dragon Ball Z.
FFS, I'm as big of an anime fan as any others, but that doesn't mean I have to wear the fanboy glasses. You go and make a GiTS live action starring Rinko or whomever you want to appeal to your "authentic fanbase" sense, and I'll bet that movie will tank so hard it'd make The Interview look like the commercial success of the century.
Where did I say I wanted to do that? I'm not even a real fan of the franchise at all. All I said in a post long, long ago, is that taking a Japanese story filled with Japanese characters with Japanese names and setting it (likely) in America with a cast that's white/non-Asian is going to be quite an impossible feat if you want to keep the reason most people like the original franchise intact.
I just think the entire project should be scrapped. PG-13? HA! Not even close to being able to cover a lot of the content from the movie/series. If they're not going to make it R like it - if we're being honest with ourselves - needs to be, then why even bother? This really does have "watered down bullshit" all over it, same as the Last Air Bender movie.
Even if it was rated R, though, it'd still be utter crap. The amount of CGI alone that a project like this demands in order to be pulled off faithfully to the source material (and thus not enrage the frothy-mouthed fanboys) will make the movie almost nauseating to watch.
i've always saw the major as a military leader first, woman second (funny how a military leader acts like a military leader, huh?). i need the actor to be able to give orders, for them to say them with authority and no sass. that's really it, oh and be asian. i find it annoying how hollywood barely use non-white actors. you get better at acting, by acting. give them some roles and maybe we'd have some non-white actors with the 'chops' for bigger roles. also if this is not suppose to placed in japan, it really breaks the whole world setup. i mean where would they choose as a setting? america? ha, the whole of the the series' geopolitical problems steamed from the US now being several waring super-powers. any political setup would be minimalist at best. which sucks, because the politics in GitS were the second best part (first being the laughing man).
and while it may sound elitist or whatever. i really can't bring myself to see this because of one thing. that this isn't being marketed as a movie with brains. the GitS series had very philosophical and political opinions it want to present, however it was able to explore those subjects as deeply as they did, because they talked about it like you aren't an idiot. while movies can present a big idea for the audience, they have to make it so easy to understand that they can't ever explore the subject in any meaningful way.
so; i'd need an asian actress, who can carry her self authority (but no sass). i'd also need the movie to be smart and to do the philosophical and political ideas with integrity and depth.
Hmmm. I'm betting the thought process behind her casting was less 'We won't sell tickets with an Asian female lead' and more 'We won't sell tickets without Scarlet Johanssen/Angelina Jolie as lead'. Quibbles about casting are irrelevant, I'm betting that if Johanssen hadn't developed the box-office pull that she has then the film wouldn't be getting off the ground in the first place.
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