Ghost in the Shell: Movie
I've been a fan of the Ghost in the Shell franchise for a long time. I mean, I bought a GitS t-shirt from freaking Columbia House. (I still have it, by the way.) I had the movie on video, and recently bought it on DVD after we started purging our video collection. About five years ago I really got into the Stand Alone Complex series, and eventually also roped 
plonq into watching it as well. Together we burned through all those episodes and related movies, and have just recently moved onto the Arise series. (Not as good, but still interesting.)
So I was super excited when I first heard that they were coming out with a live action GitS movie. Excitement tempered with caution, of course, but how bad could it be??
...
The first teaser trailers were great, but after watching the full trailers I really started to have some doubts. And it didn't even have anything to do with the "whitewashing" of the cast. As far as the Major is concerned, she could have been played by someone who was blue for all I cared. The Major is a cyborg, and could look however she wanted to look. In canon she sometimes shifts to other bodies when she's undercover. So I didn't have any problems with that part.
No, my problem was that the whole point of the original GitS movies was looking forward to what humanity could become with cyberization. In the original movie (and later, the series), the Major didn't dwell (much) on where she came from. She knew where she came from and how she got to where she was in the story. She was very much more interested in the here and now, and how she could move forward to reach her goals.
But the trailers quickly made it clear that it was going to be a standard "mystery origin story" Hollywood story (TV Tropes link warning). "Where did I come from? What did they do to me? Why am I here?" etc
Ugh.
However, I still wanted to see it. So last week we went out to see if before it disappeared from theatres.
And - well, I'll give it this much. It was goddamned pretty. Some of the scenes that were almost shot-for-shot remakes of the original movie were epic. Two exceptions: the spider-tank scene at the end is one of my favourite scenes from the original movie, and the live-action movie just didn't hit the right notes for me. And she was too mad in the scene in the water - in the original she is almost clinically emotionless while beating the crap out of the hacked guy.
The story, though.... Yawn.
I think it was at about the halfway point in the movie when I realized what they were doing. They were grabbing little bits of plot and characters from not just the original movie, but the series as well, and cobbled it together into a new story. It's almost as if someone with very few original ideas decided to write a fan fiction of the show. But instead of coming up with something original, they took their favourite part of the movie, and this episode, and that other episode, and sewed everything together into a new narrative. I spent the rest of the movie playing "spot the reference," picking out bits of various shows and movies.
In an interview, Scarlett Johansson called the movie a "love song to the original." I think I'd rather call it a really expensive piece of fanfiction.
This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/619947.html. Please leave any comments there.
plonq into watching it as well. Together we burned through all those episodes and related movies, and have just recently moved onto the Arise series. (Not as good, but still interesting.)
So I was super excited when I first heard that they were coming out with a live action GitS movie. Excitement tempered with caution, of course, but how bad could it be??
...
The first teaser trailers were great, but after watching the full trailers I really started to have some doubts. And it didn't even have anything to do with the "whitewashing" of the cast. As far as the Major is concerned, she could have been played by someone who was blue for all I cared. The Major is a cyborg, and could look however she wanted to look. In canon she sometimes shifts to other bodies when she's undercover. So I didn't have any problems with that part.
No, my problem was that the whole point of the original GitS movies was looking forward to what humanity could become with cyberization. In the original movie (and later, the series), the Major didn't dwell (much) on where she came from. She knew where she came from and how she got to where she was in the story. She was very much more interested in the here and now, and how she could move forward to reach her goals.
But the trailers quickly made it clear that it was going to be a standard "mystery origin story" Hollywood story (TV Tropes link warning). "Where did I come from? What did they do to me? Why am I here?" etc
Ugh.
However, I still wanted to see it. So last week we went out to see if before it disappeared from theatres.
And - well, I'll give it this much. It was goddamned pretty. Some of the scenes that were almost shot-for-shot remakes of the original movie were epic. Two exceptions: the spider-tank scene at the end is one of my favourite scenes from the original movie, and the live-action movie just didn't hit the right notes for me. And she was too mad in the scene in the water - in the original she is almost clinically emotionless while beating the crap out of the hacked guy.
The story, though.... Yawn.
I think it was at about the halfway point in the movie when I realized what they were doing. They were grabbing little bits of plot and characters from not just the original movie, but the series as well, and cobbled it together into a new story. It's almost as if someone with very few original ideas decided to write a fan fiction of the show. But instead of coming up with something original, they took their favourite part of the movie, and this episode, and that other episode, and sewed everything together into a new narrative. I spent the rest of the movie playing "spot the reference," picking out bits of various shows and movies.
In an interview, Scarlett Johansson called the movie a "love song to the original." I think I'd rather call it a really expensive piece of fanfiction.
This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/619947.html. Please leave any comments there.