Snak posted:

It's not about having "a bunch of scenes". RoboCop is about Murphy becoming RoboCop becoming MajorRoboMurphy. GitS2017 is barely about anything.

You can even compare parallel scenes between RoboCop and GitS2017, but in RoboCop they are forming part of the films core narrative and emotional arc, and in GitS2017, they mostly feel like plot exposition. I don't think they mesh as well with the "hunting the bad guy" plot.

(spoilers for both movies, I guess?)

In both movies, encounters with the guy they are supposed to be hunting Clarence Boddicker and Kuze, lead to memory glitches, which cause them to start remembering their past lives. Technitions attempt to address these glitches. Then they visit their previous homes. While catching the Boddicker/Kuze, they learn that their creator is also a bad guy, and the take care of that poo poo in the end, claiming their new hybrid identity as their own.

So what makes it effective in RoboCop and ineffective in Project 2017? There's a big obvious difference: In RoboCop, we see Murphy and get some insight into his character as a human before he's turned into a weapon. This is hugely important. When Kuze is yelling "What did they take from me?!" the audience answer is "I don't know". We never see the characters that Kuze and Major were before, so it's impossible for us to really connect with that loss. it doesn't matter that it puts us in the same boat as them thematically. The fact that our ignorance of the previous characters mirrors there's doesn't make it interesting. When RoboCop reaches the end of his journey and embraces being RoboCop informed by Murphy, we the audience can recognize that. When Major asserts her identity at the end of the film, it's a moment for the character, but not for the audience. She's essentially saying "yep, I'm the character that I was established to be in the film". It's a perfectly fine character arc, but it has no impact for us, because we don't see her past and we don't see much of who she is now. Most of the time that should be used to develop who she is now was spend watching her investigate her past, which we didn't know anything about and she ultimately (sorta) dismisses.

It's easy to see what they were going for, but I feel like they failed to find a way to get us emotionally involved. And there were lots of opportunities. Build real emotional involvement with Mom Kusanagi or Dr. Oulet or both. They're just kind there. Build hatred for something and explore it for insight into Major's character. Show us her behavior in straightforward situations to give us insight into what she's like.

Look at the differences between the action scenes in RoboCop and GitS2017. RoboCop's early action scenes establish him as a problem solver. He grabs people through walls or shoots their dicks off. He's a creative being. This demonstraits that he's not robot following mindless protocols. He's exactly what they wanted in both movies: A killing machine with the ability to innovate like a person. The action scenes in GitS are all over the place. They're not bad, but they don't tell us a whole lot about the character except that she's a risk taker? In the first scene she jumps off a building and hovers outside a window (???) and the burst through and does some Matrix-type poo poo from Kickass. Then in the next scene she pretends to be a victim so she can trick people for some reason? really it's to trick the audience into thinking she might be in trouble. So that they can reveal that of course she's not in trouble, she's a badass. Which we already knew. It's not like this charade was to get information or buy time or anything, really. She could have started kicking rear end right away. There's no good plot reason for it, it's just to "gotcha" us with "oh no, maybe Major is weak". Then she beats the poo poo out of a garbage man for fun. because it was in the original movie. Then she gets captured by Hanka without a fight because??? Then she fights a spider tank, because it was in the original movie. These action scenes did not help build a coherent sense of her character for me.

That's like, action movies 101. It's rote. 101, man. The Terminator is characterized by his action scenes. Marion Cobretti is characterized by his action scenes. And in the original Ghost in the Shell, the Major is characterized by her action scenes. Because she's a different character and lifting the scenes that they lifted into this new narrative with this new character doesn't work as well.

Mithaldu posted:

And yeah, a good bit of it resonated, it was a nice post to quote.

quote:

And yep, that's also something i said before, gits'17 could've been a great action movie if they went balls-out on the action. Just non-stop.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

I wouldn't change a single thing about this movie's ratio of action to non-action. I have my misgivings about the film but I'm exhausted by the number of recents movies that begin with a balance of action to drama only to completely fill out their third act with one long chunk of violent spectacle that feels completely disconnected from everything that came before.

GITS still has its big setpiece -- the spider tank fight -- but I thought it actually did a much better job of emphasizing both the emotional stakes and the physical vulnerability of the participants than anything else I've seen recently.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

GITS still has its big setpiece -- the spider tank fight -- but I thought it actually did a much better job of emphasizing both the emotional stakes and the physical vulnerability of the participants than anything else I've seen recently.

Mithaldu posted:

That setpiece isn't an action scene imo. It's too deliberate, too tactical. It feels more like watching a play of chess. Move, consideration, move, consideration, move, consideration, ...

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

SAC is incredibly, obnoxiously talky, especially when a lot of what it's conveying is just Theory of Mind 101.

Conversely both Rupert Sanders films I've seen go completely all-in on visual communication and have incredibly awkward, if not objectively bad, dialogue.

Mithaldu posted:

That setpiece isn't an action scene imo. It's too deliberate, too tactical. It feels more like watching a play of chess. Move, consideration, move, consideration, move, consideration, ...

Mithaldu posted:

See, the thing is, there's tenuous evidence that she does not look japanese. Shirow said she has a mass-produced outerior that is intended to not draw intention, and in 1995 she is shown next to a caucasian body and looks identical aside from color details.

I'm not saying these are proof that she's intended to be caucasian, but rather it looks more like Shirow doesn't give a drat and lore-wise either choice is valid.
I wrote that under the assumption that you knew the facts i described in this post, given they'd just recently been mentioned.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Ghost In The Shell 2017 actually has more scenes about identity than the 1995 film, or either version of Robocop. These scenes just, arbitrarily, 'don't count.'

Snak posted:

...barely about anything. ... I don't know. ...it doesn't matter. ...our ignorance doesn't make it interesting.... It's not for the audience. we don't see ... we don't see much... we didn't know anything. they don't tell us a whole lot.... (???) ...for some reason?

it's to trick the audience into thinking... this charade .. there's no good plot reason for it... just to "gotcha" ...???

That's like, action movies 101.

It's rote.

101, man.

gohmak posted:

https://youtu.be/ARTLckN9e7I

This is the city I wanted to see in the film.

gohmak posted:

http://33.media.tumblr.com/dfc420db24d76a5e4354721a717106fa/tumblr_n7imlzdIbh1rpfx57o1_500.gif

Yeah let's put an end to that bullshit. If the puppetmaster dove into a shell that is a white version of the Majors, what does that make her?

Snak posted:

Actually I was responding entirely to Zodiac5000, SMG posted while I was writing that.

edit: Aww, you edited in a quote for top of the page

tl;dr: Ghost in the Shell wasn't as good because Major didn't shoot anyone's dicks off.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

You're having trouble thinking, so let's look at a specific scene. [Or, rather, two scenes.]

Mira stares into the face of a dead robot. She is unsettled because it had just been pleading for its life. She looks down at the void where the face used to be. Batou notes her concern and says "you're not like it! It's just a robot!", but he had just callously executed a Yakuza in the exact the same way. Implicitly: "I'm not like him! He's just a criminal!"

Later, in the morgue, the dead Yakuza and the robot lie beside eachother. We are treated to matching shots of them lying in the slabs. However, where Batou turns away from the man he killed, Major continues to stare down into the void where the robot's face used to be. She then lies down on a slab, beside the dead, and (despite Batou's protests) enters this void. She effectively stares so hard at the robot that she enters into another dimension, literally falls down into this massive looming skull. Inside, she sees cloudy images of sexual assault and, further inside, a shadowy figure who stares at her and then suddenly explodes into a roiling mass of filthy homeless who grab at her and attempt to drag her into a darkened pit.

This entire sequence is succinct characterization for four different characters. Mira, who chooses to look. Batou, who fears what she will find. Kuze, whose hatred is writ large. And, finally, the robot who literally shares Kuze's hate. We can even add the Yakuza guy to this list, as he is implicitly like the robot.

Now, explain how this is meaningless.

Mithaldu posted:

Did you intend that post to read equally valid as disagreement and agreement?

gohmak posted:

Mithaldu posted:

Do you think ethnicity has no markers beyond skin, eye and hair colors?

Mithaldu posted:

Do you think ethnicity has no markers beyond skin, eye and hair colors?

Snak posted:

In anime?

Milky Moor posted:

Are you serious, my dude?

edit: "Japanese people are self-loathing", "They worship white people", "[that actress] was playing an American bitch", why wasn't the mom a tiger mom, why didn't they cast a non-Japanese Asian actress in a Japanese role (like that hasn't been a minefield historically), we want to see a new Asian-American movie star - why didn't they cast Michelle Yeoh?, 'edited for length and clarity'? They flip-flop between 'why would a Japanese company make white robots' and 'JAPANESE PEOPLE ARE ALL hosed UP AND LOVE WHITE PEOPLE'

edit 2: Okay, I'll bite. What perspective is this? Beyond "four Asian-Americans think ScarJo was the Bad Choice but can't clearly elucidate why", of course.

frank.club posted:

I have to say that I strongly disagree with this. And the counter argument that I'm seeing in this thread is that it doesn't count in 95 because it's 'too boring". Overloading your movie with "thoughtful" moments doesn't automatically make the movie thoughtful. For reference I'd like to point out the scene with Batou and the Major and Batou the boat. In 95 and in this movie the Major is diving as an experience of 'escape' from the real world. That it's scary as a cyborg to be submerged in water and that's what's freeing about it.

Compare this scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryJSu1f8Hi4 to the one we watched in 2017. Which might be kinda hard because it barely even happened.

In 2017 the scene follows the Major talking about why she dives but omits the conversation they have afterward (which isn't the flaw I'm arguing). In 95, the Major starts talking about how she identifies herself as an individual within the cybernetic world. As she starts talking about the ability to access infinite amounts of information, and how that blends into her understanding of herself, the city background behind her starts to close in to the foreground. As she talks about feeling both free and combined within the boundaries of her society the foreground picture of the Major and the background of the city get as close as the will within the frame. The conversation triggers a voice that is vaguely like the Major's, but clearly comes from an independent source. The shot focuses on the Major after this, and the coloring aesthetic of the city background changes to match the hair and eye color of the major.

There is nothing approaching that in this film. The boat scene happens in 17' because it happened in 95' and 'hey don't you remember that'? I'm not even going to argue that the boat scene in the new one needed to be exactly like the old film- it doesn't. This movie had every right to take the franchise in a new direction but it borrows everything it can without really putting in the effort to figure out why those scenes were so effective. And if the argument some may have is that the scenes were not effective in the original film, then why do they work stripped of everything but their setting in this film?

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Most of the stuff the Major talks about during the boat scene is implicit in, like, everything that happens in the movie. You don't need to tell me that humanity has an impulsive drive to do things just because they can and that this might be unnerving to someone who got stuck in a cybernetic body and has just realized her memories may not be real.

Sir Kodiak posted:

I was surprised that Japanese Major had blue/green eyes in the posted GIF, but I guess that's an anime thing?

Sir Kodiak posted:

I was surprised that Japanese Major had blue/green eyes in the posted GIF, but I guess that's an anime thing?

frank.club posted:

I'd use that example to further my argument that they undercut themselves by trying to force parts of the 95 movie in without understanding how they worked in the film.