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Do we know that the GITS movie isn't set in Neo New York or whatever? I've not seen any info that the film is set in Japan.
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Apr 17, 2016 18:58
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HorseLord posted:So now we've covered Paramount's enquiry into building an electric yellowface machine, I'm wondering what a non-Japanese version of GITS could even be. The entire premise of the series comes from the history of postwar Japan, it's place in the world, how it's society relates to technology, and where that could lead to in the future. The core of GITS is android police in cyberpunk land. You could set it pretty much anywhere.
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Apr 17, 2016 21:49
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HorseLord posted:No, the things that make GITS what it is are the things I mentioned. If "android police in cyberpunk land" was the entirety of it's high concept and cultural significance then it would not be Ghost In The Shell. Shakespeare's plays are definitely a product of Elizabethan England, and yet they've been translated into every language on Earth, and adapted and redefined and re-imagined into any cultural situation you could imagine. And yet no one (sensible) gets into a huff about that. GITS is no different. All that's at the core of it are android police in cyberpunk land. Everything else are subtleties that can be lost, or changed, or added to across adaptations. I mean, poo poo, GITS isn't even a monolithic whole in Japan, there are three distinct versions (maybe four? I've not seen Arise yet, I don't know how different it is). You could set this film in Neo New York or Neo London or Neo Paris or Neo Madrid or Neo Mogadishu, and you could still call it Ghost In The Shell and explore most of the same themes, and maybe some other new ones. Crain posted:Off the top of my head, and before heading out to work, I can't think of any other recent and notable examples. This GitS movie however is going the route of the lazy remake. You can easily do a western adaptation of GitS. I mean poo poo, someone else already posted the Wachowski's filmography and showed that they've basically been doing just that in all but name their whole career. A big part of GitS is the Ship of Theseus paradox. When does Major Kusanagi stop being human? Or does she? The idea of human augmentation and human essence is easily doable from a western perspective. You just have to replace the Japanese political theater with something else. And as with The Departed, that's totally doable as well. Do you have inside knowledge on this movie? As far as I know, all we know about this film is some of the cast, that one picture, and that brief plot synopsis which doesn't even say if the film is set in Japan or if ScarJo is playing a character called "Motoko Kusanagi". But you're completely writing it off based on...? Personally, the fact that Beat Takeshi is involved suggests to me that this won't be the cashgrab you've already decided it will be. Incidentally, have there been any examples of actual Japanese people in Japan being upset about this?
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Apr 19, 2016 00:00
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Gyges posted:Though it does still raise the question of why ScarJo's Major is still sporting a Japanese name and why they were looking to CGI their cast Asian. Has it been confirmed anywhere that ScarJo's character will actually be called "Motoko Kusanagi"? And as for the CGI asian thing, they said it was only going to be for a single character in a single scene or something. The story has ballooned out that they were going to CGI the entire cast into asians.
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Apr 19, 2016 01:08
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Crain posted:They have said that ScarJo is playing Motoko, but they are only referring to her as "The Major", according to one of the stories earlier. And as far as me writing it off: The main reason for that is that there is nothing here to give me a reason to assume otherwise. The director is a literal nobody with 1 major credit that was nothing more than fairy tale action movie. They went with a meaningless casting decision for the biggest role. At best they probably thought "Oh hey, it's a bad-rear end woman character. Just get that Black Widow Chick". Then they balked at that idea when they caught wind of people being upset for the standard white washing that hollywood does, but instead of anyone actually giving a poo poo they decided to try and use loving yellowface to make it better, so that they didn't have to worry about recasting anything and lose potentially both crowd draw and contract guarantees to the actors they're cutting loose. Not to mention any reshoots that potentially might need doing. It just seems like you're damning this film based on no information. Race aside, I think that Johannson is an excellent choice for Kusanagi - she's obviously got the action chops, and Under the Skin showed that she can give off a very otherworldly quality that would befit a cyborg. And beyond that it's not like the crew are famous for clunkers or anything. There's no reason to just assume they will be terrible. This CGI "asianing" thing has really been blown way out of proportion. What was a single CGI test for a single actor in a single scene has exploded into the fear that Hollywood will CGI entire casts asian so they can set films in the East without actually having to employ real asian actors. No one is trying to do this. We have no idea what story justification there would have been for this CGI scene: for instance, they could have had a scene where they show lots of copies of the Major's robot body, and show that they even come in various different ethnicities. So they would have to CGI an asian face that still looks recognisably like Scarlet Johannson. That seems pretty reasonable to me. And at any rate, are we in such a drought of outrage that we are now reduced to getting angry about poo poo that movie studios decided not to do now?
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Apr 19, 2016 01:46
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7c Nickel posted:The issue isn't about Japanese people in Japan. It's about asian people in America. No one gives a poo poo about the casting of the live action Attack on Titan because Japan is 98% Japanese and the other 2% are mostly from other asian nations. That's true, and I do wish that the debate would stick to this central, actually relevant point, instead of allowing outrage to spread into increasingly tenuous arguments around it - "Hollywood's trying to CGI out all asians!", "For some reason, changing the location of a fictional story is immoral now!" But while I can understand that it can be frustrating to see a character who's originally asian played by a white lady, it seems to me to be more an artifact of the adaption process. If GITS was Western, and Kusanagi was always Japanese-American, then there's no doubt that this would be terrible whitewashing. But since GITS was about a group of all Japanese people, in Japan, any adaptation for a Western audience was going to involve changing either the location or the characters or both. And in that instance, why shouldn't it be Kusanagi who changes, rather than, say Aramaki, who is being played by an actual Japanese person. So, while it's a pity that another big film is coming out without an asian lead, it seems odd to single out GITS for that.
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Apr 19, 2016 06:31
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Donnerberg posted:I'm not even upset about the white washing. I'm baffled by the thought process that ended up with them exploring CGI Asians because Asians were unsafe. This is a film about human-looking robots. There could well have been a scene where different varieties of the same robot body were shown with different ethnicities. So they would need CGI to show an asian face that was still recognisably ScarJo. Do you really find this concept offensive? Because I practically guarantee that something like that was what the CGI test was for. Because the alternative is that Hollywood has a secret desire to cast white people in films as asians and then CGI them so that they look asian for the whole film despite how expensive and prohibitive that would be, and the huge outrage it would cause, and the pointlessness of casting a famous face and then making them look unrecognisable. It was never going to happen.
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Apr 19, 2016 15:55
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