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So filming has begun...and Scarlett Johanssen is the female lead....nice!!!

http://movieweb.com/ghost-in-shell-movie-2017-scarlett-johansson-photo/

‘Ghost in the Shell’ First Look at Scarlett Johansson

Shooting has officially begun on the live-action adaptation of ‘Ghost in the Shell’ under the direction of Rupert Sanders.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy.

cant wait for this.

If this is a success there are a few manga series I think would make a good live action. The Black Swordsman arc of Berserk would be awesome.

Vampire Hunter D would be good as live action

Scarjo looks great as Kusanagi. She looks appropriate to the character from the(admittedly little) shown so far.


To chime in with Live Action Anime, whatever happened to Neon Genesis Evangelion? I'd think Cowboy Bebop could translate well to the screen.

Ok. This definitely has my full attention.

One for the cinema I think.

I am definitely excited though I can't help but worry that Paramount and Dreamworks will butcher the Laughing Man character, which was honestly what made me like SAC so much.

Run cautious_optimism.exe I guess.

Yeah Hollywood has a spotty record when it comes to remaking Japanese cinema for Western audiences. Although I actually liked The Ring more than Ringu...

Ringu I think was a more original film, but the Ring was definitely better imo.

I think my concern lies more in an uncertainty with how they'll handle the character in a ~2 hour film. It took an entire season of 26 episodes to really build up the mystery and complexity of the Laughing Man case (realistically probably only like 13 episodes were actually about it in SAC). To see the Laughing Man reduced to a mere terrorist or "I have an evil plan" villain would disappoint me greatly. Even casting the character as a misguided extremist would probably sour my experience.

 LordofHats wrote:
Ringu I think was a more original film, but the Ring was definitely better imo.

I think my concern lies more in an uncertainty with how they'll handle the character in a ~2 hour film. It took an entire season of 26 episodes to really build up the mystery and complexity of the Laughing Man case (realistically probably only like 13 episodes were actually about it in SAC). To see the Laughing Man reduced to a mere terrorist or "I have an evil plan" villain would disappoint me greatly. Even casting the character as a misguided extremist would probably sour my experience.

Indeed

Honestly hoping for a one off political enemy thing that has nothing to do with laughing man or SaC.

That way they dont have to explain EVERYTHING for those new to the series.

Wow. She's like 20 years too young to play Kusanagi, and I can only expect an american take would be pretty painful. Hope this disappears like the various idiotic attempts to make Akira in live action.

ScarJo is a pretty good fit actually for the more recent Arise adaptation of the character;



I know many had issue with her not being quite the amazon she is in SAC and the films, but fundamentally she was the same character and no less bad ass so I'll give ScarJo her go.

EDIT: And of course, the Major's body is fully prosthetic. They could always change the actor at will (even multiple times in one film) because there's really nothing that stops her from having more than one body at her disposal.

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
Wow. She's like 20 years too young to play Kusanagi, and I can only expect an american take would be pretty painful. Hope this disappears like the various idiotic attempts to make Akira in live action.

The Major has plasticated skin and should be played by someone younger than her recorded age.

As much of a fan as I am of Ghost in the Shell, I just can't take Scarlett Johanson seriously as The Major thus far. She'd be great for any number of characters, but I just don't see her fitting this particular role. Hopefully I'm proven wrong. I'd have gone for someone a little older, a little more "worn", and more heavily built personally.

 Orlanth wrote:
The Major has plasticated skin and should be played by someone younger than her recorded age.

No memory how old she's supposed to be, I'm talking about how old she looks. Johanson is way too young and white for the part. They could have done something badass with an older actress and instead went with some typecast dreck.

I don't know if I really like Pilou Asbæk as Batou.

Eh it's gotta be hard to find someone to play a huge tank of a man like Batou. The Mountain would never work. After playing Gregor Clegane, you just don't come back and play a hero. Not gonna work. I honestly can't think of many actors with the stature to pull off the role.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 spiralingcadaver wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
The Major has plasticated skin and should be played by someone younger than her recorded age.

No memory how old she's supposed to be, I'm talking about how old she looks. Johanson is way too young and white for the part. They could have done something badass with an older actress and instead went with some typecast dreck.

According to the Ghost in the Shell wiki, she is 31 but it's marked citation needed and I'll say that I don't think her age is ever given on screen.. The Major's age and background has been proverbially unclear in most media. In Arise, she was certainly treated as a fairly young woman. Mid or early 20s or so. In SAC I think there was actually an episode where the Tachcoma's spent most of the episode speculating about the Major's background.

 Sinful Hero wrote:
To chime in with Live Action Anime, whatever happened to Neon Genesis Evangelion? I'd think Cowboy Bebop could translate well to the screen.

Both fell apart. Apparently that was a good thing with the Cowboy Bebop that Keano was trying to get made, given some of the decisions such as Ed being a computer.

I suspect any effort to try and judge this as faithful to the source material will just end up with frustration. It won’t be completely faithful, and it shouldn’t be. Lots of things work in anime that don’t really work in live action. And there’s also the basic reality that this is a commercial venture, not a fanwork aiming purely for a faithful interpretation. Hoping that they’d cast an aged female lead in a big budget sci fi film is just not very sensible.

I think if we look at this is as a new sci-fi work, and hope it does a decent job of exploring the same themes as Ghost in the Shell, and we might be somewhat happy with the final result.

 sebster wrote:
I suspect any effort to try and judge this as faithful to the source material will just end up with frustration. It won’t be completely faithful, and it shouldn’t be. Lots of things work in anime that don’t really work in live action. And there’s also the basic reality that this is a commercial venture, not a fanwork aiming purely for a faithful interpretation. Hoping that they’d cast an aged female lead in a big budget sci fi film is just not very sensible.

I think if we look at this is as a new sci-fi work, and hope it does a decent job of exploring the same themes as Ghost in the Shell, and we might be somewhat happy with the final result.

I agree. What would be the point of a film being faithful to a film and TV series that already have been made very well and got high acclaim?

It needs to be a thing of itself.

(I saw the original GITS in the cinema in London in about 1996.)

ScarJo is there to draw an audience and make money. Lucy may have been awful, but it made enough money to justify the choice of casting her here.

 sebster wrote:
I suspect any effort to try and judge this as faithful to the source material will just end up with frustration. It won’t be completely faithful, and it shouldn’t be. Lots of things work in anime that don’t really work in live action. And there’s also the basic reality that this is a commercial venture, not a fanwork aiming purely for a faithful interpretation. Hoping that they’d cast an aged female lead in a big budget sci fi film is just not very sensible.

I think if we look at this is as a new sci-fi work, and hope it does a decent job of exploring the same themes as Ghost in the Shell, and we might be somewhat happy with the final result.

The they should have written their own story featuring the cast rather than copying one of the stories from the animated series.

 AduroT wrote:
The they should have written their own story featuring the cast rather than copying one of the stories from the animated series.

Why? They're taking the story to a new medium. That in itself is potentially a big enough change, and the original story is still the archetypal Ghost in the Shell story, the best one to address in a new medium.

I'm not really holding my breath that this will be good.

I think that by casting Johansson they are trying to appeal to the Avengers audience and use her "star power" rather than get the best person to portray the character. However GitS is not the Avengers. It is slower and a lot more philosophical, often without clearly defined villains and heroes.

Now, they could change it to be more like Avengers, with just lots of big flashy fight scenes and no philosophical angle but that will just butcher the source material, at which point why bother?

But oh well, I'll just have to wait and see.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
I'm not really holding my breath that this will be good.

I think that by casting Johansson they are trying to appeal to the Avengers audience and use her "star power" rather than get the best person to portray the character. However GitS is not the Avengers. It is slower and a lot more philosophical, often without clearly defined villains and heroes.

Now, they could change it to be more like Avengers, with just lots of big flashy fight scenes and no philosophical angle but that will just butcher the source material, at which point why bother?

But oh well, I'll just have to wait and see.

Who do you think would be the best choice for the character?

ScarJo is not a terrible actress, IMO. With the right director, this *could* be good.

It's like people assume people who are mainstream can't act. ScarJo isn't a bad actresses. Her role as Black Widow probably helped set her up for this role more than anything. There's more than a few similarities in the characters. Really all she has to do is turn up the enigmatic and turn down that textbook Whedon snarkiness from her BW role, and she's well on her way.

Really it's going to come down to the story. While I think many people get too worked up about changes in source material to a ridiculous level, it would be very disappointing for this to be dumbed down into a simple action thriller. That won't mean it'll be bad, but it certainly won't have that moral greyness and philosophizing about "being alive" that really makes GitS so good.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Now, they could change it to be more like Avengers, with just lots of big flashy fight scenes and no philosophical angle but that will just butcher the source material

You say this like it's not a certainty?

Re: mainstream can't act, not at all. I think she's a perfectly fine, if not amazing, actress. I just think it was a terrible casting choice for any reasons other than money- she's typecast, has recently been in similar roles, and is IMHO completely wrong for this part.

Yeah, I don't think people are really allowed to complain about this being a bastardization or poor adaptation of the source material because the versions of GITS most people are familiar with are in fact bastardizations and poor adaptations of the source material. For some reason, most people seem to forget that GITS was a manga first, not the Mamoru Oshii movie. The original manga had a very different tone from everything that came after it. Hell, Kusanagi herself is very different. Her character was more lighthearted in the comic, not the stoic, almost emotionless character she's become. The original comic was more of a mystery, with quite a bit more action (and sex scenes) than what we got in the Oshii film.

Now, I'm not saying that the movies and shows are bad, just that they're really bad adaptations of the comic that spawned them. So, don't be upset if this also changes a lot of stuff.

IDK, depends on what you consider a good adaptation. I think they're fantastic adaptations, since they took something kinda' shallow and gave it some life. I consider a bad adaptation one that doesn't add anything and/or generally superficially apes the source material while missing the point (such as Watchmen). Regarding her lack of emotion, I'd highly recommend watching the 2.0 cut of the movie, it's a much better performance (interestingly, by the same actors).

This one should be interesting - and certainly worth watching 'in theater' (I hope).

Also:

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Vampire Hunter D would be good as live action

Yes, please!

That would be...awesome - if it go the SFX budget it would really need!

A Ninja Scroll movie would be great too!