Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

That's true, and not unreasonable.

Major Tomoko out of Ghost in the Shell is a fictional SF character from a future Tokyo, Japanese goverment secret police department who is a full body replacement cyborg.

There's no reason why Tomoko couldn't be a man's brain inside a female shaped robot shell. One of the themes of the story is alienation and loss of identity.

Having got this far, "realism" has left the building as far as casting goes.

All that being said, everyone has always assumed that Tomoko is a Japanese woman in origin, and so casting Johansen "stole" the role away from female oriental actresses who get few enough opportunities already at lead roles.

*Motoko Kusunagi.

But one of the unanswered questions of the story is whether she was actually a man before the original accident put her in the cyborg body, much to Batou's chagrin. If anything, the Major is a perfect example of a character that could be anything, as she has shown to body swap if her current body gets damaged beyond use.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
*Motoko Kusunagi.

But one of the unanswered questions of the story is whether she was actually a man before the original accident put her in the cyborg body, much to Batou's chagrin. If anything, the Major is a perfect example of a character that could be anything, as she has shown to body swap if her current body gets damaged beyond use.

One could argue that *not* looking as expected is kinda the point. They even play with it at the end of the live action movie, in a different way compared to the anime.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
As an Asian dude, no, it's not good to have cast ScarJo as Maj. Kusanagi. The "original movie" is exaggerated, not realistic, and most importantly, because there are Asian actresses who would do a better job with the role.

As a general rule, having white people play non-white roles is a lazy casting decision. If Marvel had had cast a white dude as Black Panther, would that have worked? No.

Totally - and really I hope they learned their lesson with Ghost in the shell. I didn't see it because I'm not going to support that kind of laziness.

Then lets look at Gods of Egypt. Possibly the most epic fail I have ever witnessed.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Backfire wrote:

If we are not caring about the actors matching the visual expectation, what about props and sets? What if some hypothetical Hollywood director, lets call him Michael B., decides to make a new movie about D-Day and gives all the Germans AK-47's because they just look more menacing and badass than historical Mauser carabines? Who cares then if they're unhistorical?
Well, I for one would care very much. Setting is important part of a movie and if the screenwriters do not care about consistency within the setting, I am not going to be interested about the setting and consequently, about the movie.

This seems very hypothetical. That said, various WW2 films have been made using Chaffee tanks as Shermans, and M3 halftracks as Hanomags, and M26 tanks as Tigers, and so on and so on.

No-one cared, because the exact variety of a tank or a rifle doesn't matter. What matters is that it's a tank or a rifle being used to recreate a dramatic historical event.

However, these have been because lack of available historically accurate equipment, and/or technical means and resources to simulate them. With todays enormous budgets and advances in set building and CGI technologies, they are no longer excusable.
And to some extent, same applies for old movies where actors were completely different ethnicity for the roles they were playing.

In general sense, I am not against actor being a 'wrong' ethnicity/race/gender for the role, if he/she is believable. I mean, it's acting. Some makeup, clothing, learning the speech patterns, accent, gesturers etc go a long way. In 'Orlando'(1992), Quentin Crisp played Queen Elizabeth and did great job.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

We've seen Shakespeare (Henry V) performed in modern dress, with modern army rifles and so on, and it does not compromise the quality of the drama.

But these have been stories transformed for modern period, not cases of period-inaccurate props or sets.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
*Motoko Kusunagi.

But one of the unanswered questions of the story is whether she was actually a man before the original accident put her in the cyborg body, much to Batou's chagrin. If anything, the Major is a perfect example of a character that could be anything, as she has shown to body swap if her current body gets damaged beyond use.

One could argue that *not* looking as expected is kinda the point. They even play with it at the end of the live action movie, in a different way compared to the anime.

IMO, the issue with ScarJo's Ghost in the Shell was that it couldn't really decide what it was. Was it relatively loyal remake of the original story, or transferred to Western world? They went with bizarre 'somethinginbetween' generic futuristic Asian setting but mostly with Western Caucasian actors, which ended up looking like really cynical whitewashing with Kitano thrown in as a token Japanese. Johansson playing a main role wasn't a problem as such IMO, after all she was meant to be a generic robotic body.

Movies are not documentaries and therefore they can imo get away with a lot of silly stuff. It only is worrisome, if the silly stuff is down right over the top.

Example:
SW Episode 6: Emperor is thrown down a shaft and dies. That´s okay.
Latest SW movie: Leia Organa is cast into space via an explosion, survives this incident and floats back by herself into the safety of the ship. That´s bogus.

For goodnesss sake, let's not get started on SJW again.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
To go back to Backfire's point, in the 1960s if they wanted to make a big tank battle film like Battle of the Bulge (1965), they hired a load of tanks and filmed them zooming around. The tanks used were contemporary types, which were M24 Chaffee and M47s probably in the hands of a NATO ally army such as Ireland or wherever. An eastern European film would ave used T34s.

Nowadays they would be expected to model Shermans and Tigers accurately.

What is more realistic -- real tanks, or CG models of historically accurate tanks?

Does it matter? Is the film less dramatic and exciting because the tanks used are not the historically accurate vehicles? Most viewers wouldn't even know the difference.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

To go back to Backfire's point, in the 1960s if they wanted to make a big tank battle film like Battle of the Bulge (1965), they hired a load of tanks and filmed them zooming around. The tanks used were contemporary types, which were M24 Chaffee and M47s probably in the hands of a NATO ally army such as Ireland or wherever. An eastern European film would ave used T34s.

Nowadays they would be expected to model Shermans and Tigers accurately.

What is more realistic -- real tanks, or CG models of historically accurate tanks?

Does it matter? Is the film less dramatic and exciting because the tanks used are not the historically accurate vehicles? Most viewers wouldn't even know the difference.

Yeah, like me. I don't give a damn about being historically accurate. I want to watch a story that should entertain me, period. I'd even accept a roman centurion wearing a watch as a genuine mistake, it wouldn't ruin the movie if overall I loved it.

Otherwise I'd watch a documentary.

In the movie First Man every details are perfectly historically accurate, including the original Omega watch that the astroauts wore. But what do I care about that? I almost fell asleep at the theatre.

Same feeling about special effects' quality. I'd take the dummies from Army of Darkness everytime over the massive amount of perfect CGI that is typical of many modern blockbsuters if the overall result is a mediocre film, or decent at most.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

To go back to Backfire's point, in the 1960s if they wanted to make a big tank battle film like Battle of the Bulge (1965), they hired a load of tanks and filmed them zooming around. The tanks used were contemporary types, which were M24 Chaffee and M47s probably in the hands of a NATO ally army such as Ireland or wherever. An eastern European film would ave used T34s.

Nowadays they would be expected to model Shermans and Tigers accurately.

What is more realistic -- real tanks, or CG models of historically accurate tanks?

Does it matter? Is the film less dramatic and exciting because the tanks used are not the historically accurate vehicles? Most viewers wouldn't even know the difference.

Doesn't have to be CGI tanks. In 'Fury' they had real Tiger. In 'Saving Private Ryan' they had T-34 dressed up as Tiger which looked very good. Yes, I do expect moviemakers to put some real effort to make their product look at least somewhat authentic. If you attempt to portray history, it is expected that the movie looks like, y'know, historical. If it doesn't, I am not going to be interested. And for the counter-argument "but what if it is really good otherwise?" It's not. My experience is that if the details are completely messed up, similarly little attention has been paid to writing good characters and dialogue.

Of course if it's in the realm of 'history based fantasy' like '300', then standards are much more lax. For some reason, Frank Miller had decided that ancient Persians were actually black, so can't fault the movie following source material there...

Backfire wrote:

And for the counter-argument "but what if it is really good otherwise?" It's not. My experience is that if the details are completely messed up, similarly little attention has been paid to writing good characters and dialogue.

This may be true for modern movies. But decades ago every historycal movie wasn't historycal accurate at all, and yet a lot of them are masterpieces. Once it was mostly about the plot, the acting and the setting. The attention was about how the movie looked on screen, the picture overall, now it's all about the details. Because everything else is bland, that's my take: now all the efforts are on the special effects, make up and the re-enact of the details typical of the period in which the story was set. Today all the attention goes towards the surface, not the soul.

Of course there are exceptions, I'm not an expert and I can't say if a movie is historycal accurate enough but Dunkirk was amazing, no matter if the details were perfect or not. A movie like Fury? Completely forgettable.

What about Spartacus or Quo Vadis? Full of mistakes, some are even a completely invented re-enact of real histoycal events, but absolute gold in comparison to gak like Exodus, Alexander or any other serious (I'm not considering 300 because it's a different thing) movie that is set 2000+ years ago.

Fury is an interesting example.

The climax of the film is a battle in which a single immobilised Sherman, short on ammunition and with no communications or support, parked in the middle of a well-marked for enemy artillery crossroads but fairly close to lots of convenient cover for infantry, fights a night action against hundreds of well-equipped, elite Waffen SS panzer grenadiers, and essentially wins by somehow killing loads of them and bogging down their advance for hours, when they could have simply by-passed it.

As a piece of historical recreation it's ludicrous, but it's a hell of a dramatic action sequence.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Fury is an interesting example.

The climax of the film is a battle in which a single immobilised Sherman, short on ammunition and with no communications or support, parked in the middle of a well-marked for enemy artillery crossroads but fairly close to lots of convenient cover for infantry, fights a night action against hundreds of well-equipped, elite Waffen SS panzer grenadiers, and essentially wins by somehow killing loads of them and bogging down their advance for hours, when they could have simply by-passed it.

As a piece of historical recreation it's ludicrous, but it's a hell of a dramatic action sequence.

The whole film is essentially a live action Battle comic, historically and logically shaky but I loved it

I think in this modern era there's no excuse for not at least trying to keep some aspect of realism, particularly if your film/show/media is set in real life. people have the internet, much more access to sources of knowledge etc, so people are going to know if things are wrong. of course you can forgive small indiscretions. having everything perfect would be exhausting to everyone.

personally I, and probably to a larger extent, my partner, are cursed with the fact that having spent 9 years as an armament/EOD technician, I compulsively point out everything wrong with any explosions, depictions of IEDs, faults in Bomb techs actions etc on screen. it must be a nightmare for her, but I cant help it.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
personally I, and probably to a larger extent, my partner, are cursed with the fact that having spent 9 years as an armament/EOD technician, I compulsively point out everything wrong with any explosions, depictions of IEDs, faults in Bomb techs actions etc on screen. it must be a nightmare for her, but I cant help it.

Kind of a similar thing here, as a pilot a lot of stuff stands out as wrong when most people would miss it. Die Hard 2 is a comedy film, etc. But I think in terms of what level of realism we should expect it's probably worth drawing a line between things that experts would catch (tanks not quite being the right model, etc) and things that the average person would go WTF at.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Fury is an interesting example.

The climax of the film is a battle in which a single immobilised Sherman, short on ammunition and with no communications or support, parked in the middle of a well-marked for enemy artillery crossroads but fairly close to lots of convenient cover for infantry, fights a night action against hundreds of well-equipped, elite Waffen SS panzer grenadiers, and essentially wins by somehow killing loads of them and bogging down their advance for hours, when they could have simply by-passed it.

As a piece of historical recreation it's ludicrous, but it's a hell of a dramatic action sequence.

A hell of a dramatic sequence which ceases being dramatic once it’s absurdity sinks in.

These days flashy graphics and loud noises don’t impress me like they did when I was a kid. There has to be some emotional involvement otherwise I could just snooze through the action scenes. At one point where computer enhanced graphics were new a movie with good graphics could be carried by them, carried by action sequences with no substance. Now decent quality CGI films is common place and we, or at least I, have been desensitised to them and it’s up to the content around the action to pull me in to it.

I’m one of the people that thought the final scene in Fury put a sour aftertaste on what was otherwise okay movie.

I think historical realism is important for several reasons, breaking immersion is one of those.

Historically realistic CGI vs inaccurate practical effects is an interesting one. Ideally you’d have practical effects that are also realistic (eg Fury using a real Tiger rather than using a trussed up T34) but that’s not always possible (Dunkirk using a Merlin powered 109E). I think you go with what feels best at the time, in the case of Dunkirk I think they would have been better off CGI’ing in a “real” 109E rather than a fake Merlin 109, but then I’m an aircraft nerd and to me the silhouette of a Merlin powered aircraft is completely different to a 109E.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
in the case of Dunkirk I think they would have been better off CGI’ing in a “real” 109E rather than a fake Merlin 109, but then I’m an aircraft nerd and to me the silhouette of a Merlin powered aircraft is completely different to a 109E.

Going to have to disagree with this one. One of the brilliant things about Dunkirk's aircraft scenes is that they didn't CGI it, and as a result it has a sense of realness that CGI just can't capture. There's just a subtle wrongness to most/all CGI aircraft, they don't quite move the way they should (too clean, I think, without the slight wobbles and vibration of real planes) and it really hurts the realism for me. It's the same reason that Top Gun IMO has the best aerial photography work ever to appear in a gay porn film. Sure, modern CGI could add more flash and maybe they wouldn't be using black F-5s as "MiGs", but I doubt it would capture the beauty and energy of the real thing.

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
in the case of Dunkirk I think they would have been better off CGI’ing in a “real” 109E rather than a fake Merlin 109, but then I’m an aircraft nerd and to me the silhouette of a Merlin powered aircraft is completely different to a 109E.

Going to have to disagree with this one. One of the brilliant things about Dunkirk's aircraft scenes is that they didn't CGI it, and as a result it has a sense of realness that CGI just can't capture. There's just a subtle wrongness to most/all CGI aircraft, they don't quite move the way they should (too clean, I think, without the slight wobbles and vibration of real planes) and it really hurts the realism for me. It's the same reason that Top Gun IMO has the best aerial photography work ever to appear in a gay porn film. Sure, modern CGI could add more flash and maybe they wouldn't be using black F-5s as "MiGs", but I doubt it would capture the beauty and energy of the real thing.

I think these days we could come up with CGI that did look realistic, if the impetus and passion was there to do it. Nolan went to the effort of putting cameras on planes, modifying cockpits of actual aircraft and buying a Merlin powered 109 for the film.

If that same effort was spent on an engineer to work with the CGI guys to create something realistic, I’m sure it could be done.

I much prefer the practical effects with an unrealistic 109 to some crap Pearl Harbour CGI, but I think the same effort that went in to the practical effects put in to CGI could have created something realistic that also was representative.

Also if I recall the 109 was never used as a close up POV aircraft like the Spits, so you still could have done the practical effects with an aircraft that wasn’t a 109, but pulled data from gyros, accelerometers, mocap, etc. to recreate an authentic CGI 109 that actually moved like a real aircraft.

There is also the fact that these days there are actually a couple of Emils in flying conditions, though I assume there was some good reason they weren’t used.

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
in the case of Dunkirk I think they would have been better off CGI’ing in a “real” 109E rather than a fake Merlin 109, but then I’m an aircraft nerd and to me the silhouette of a Merlin powered aircraft is completely different to a 109E.

Going to have to disagree with this one. One of the brilliant things about Dunkirk's aircraft scenes is that they didn't CGI it, and as a result it has a sense of realness that CGI just can't capture. There's just a subtle wrongness to most/all CGI aircraft, they don't quite move the way they should (too clean, I think, without the slight wobbles and vibration of real planes) and it really hurts the realism for me. It's the same reason that Top Gun IMO has the best aerial photography work ever to appear in a gay porn film. Sure, modern CGI could add more flash and maybe they wouldn't be using black F-5s as "MiGs", but I doubt it would capture the beauty and energy of the real thing.

Got to agree with that, one of my favorite films is A Bridge too Far precisely because they decided that when you need to shoot a scene with a gak load of planes they got a gak load of planes etc. Okay they used a Leopard rather than Tiger but they actually used a real tank and didn't mock one out of plywood!

What if they painted a real airplane with Andy Serkis' mocap suit grid so they could map a CGI airplane that is accurate in every detail over a real airplane that really flies, but is inaccurate in the details?

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
in the case of Dunkirk I think they would have been better off CGI’ing in a “real” 109E rather than a fake Merlin 109, but then I’m an aircraft nerd and to me the silhouette of a Merlin powered aircraft is completely different to a 109E.

Going to have to disagree with this one. One of the brilliant things about Dunkirk's aircraft scenes is that they didn't CGI it, and as a result it has a sense of realness that CGI just can't capture. There's just a subtle wrongness to most/all CGI aircraft, they don't quite move the way they should (too clean, I think, without the slight wobbles and vibration of real planes) and it really hurts the realism for me. It's the same reason that Top Gun IMO has the best aerial photography work ever to appear in a gay porn film. Sure, modern CGI could add more flash and maybe they wouldn't be using black F-5s as "MiGs", but I doubt it would capture the beauty and energy of the real thing.

Agreed, for example airplane scenes of 'Pearl Harbor' were cringeworthy. They had mixed in real aircraft flying with relatively leisure pace (for safety reasons probably), then CGI aircraft doing super-fast clean computer game maneuvers. It was SO stupid.

Regarding 'Fury', until the final battle scene I thought it was an ok movie, with some heavy-handed scenery and way too old cast (50 year old Lieutenant?), but battle scene put it right on 'stupid' category. I couldn't enjoy it at all, it was so illogical. Why did the tank not employ it's considerable range advantage over infantry unit but let them close enough so they could be damaged with assaults and anti-tank weapons? It would have been MORE dramatic had they followed bit more realistic take where infatry attempts to close or get around the tank.

Backfire wrote:


Agreed, for example airplane scenes of 'Pearl Harbor' were cringeworthy. They had mixed in real aircraft flying with relatively leisure pace (for safety reasons probably), then CGI aircraft doing super-fast clean computer game maneuvers. It was SO stupid.

Regarding 'Fury', until the final battle scene I thought it was an ok movie, with some heavy-handed scenery and way too old cast (50 year old Lieutenant?), but battle scene put it right on 'stupid' category. I couldn't enjoy it at all, it was so illogical. Why did the tank not employ it's considerable range advantage over infantry unit but let them close enough so they could be damaged with assaults and anti-tank weapons? It would have been MORE dramatic had they followed bit more realistic take where infatry attempts to close or get around the tank.

Yeah those two examples summarise my issue about the over concern with realism.

Pearl Harbor: bad CGI and special effects which were too fake to be realistic. But I've never even noticed that, that movies IMHO sucked because it was boring as hell and with a cast of actors, actresses and director that I can't stand.

Fury: lot of efforts in order to reproduce the tanks and all the details in a very accurate way, but plot and characters' behaviours were silly and illogical. Overall I don't like the movie because of that, regardless of the visual impact the movie had.

Many modern biopics and historycal movies have the same problem: perfect aesthetics and actors/actress that become look alike (they even learn to talk like the people they portray) but boring plot and actings that are basically an exhibition of the actors'/actresses' skills. Sometimes they work and sometimes don't. I don't want to see Jacky Kennedy, I'd like to see Natalie Portman impersonating Jakie Kennedy. In the movie Jackie I haven't seen Natalie Portman at all. I loved Colin Firth in The King's Speech (and all the supporting cast as well) because he gave something from himself to the historycal character. To reproduce an historycal character exactly like it was it's not worth a movie.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
What if they painted a real airplane with Andy Serkis' mocap suit grid so they could map a CGI airplane that is accurate in every detail over a real airplane that really flies, but is inaccurate in the details?

Modern flight sims are probably realistic enough that you could do it without even putting a plane in the air and have something more realistic than sticking a camera on the wrong type of plane (like using a modern light aircraft, but WW2 fighters were considerably heavier and faster so don’t really move the same way).

As I said before, just because CGI has been done badly (eg Pearl Harbour) doesn’t mean it can’t be done right. Simulators could be a way to reproduce realistic aerial scenes that would be unsafe or impossible to film with practical effects due to lack of authentic aircraft.

This thread answers the OPs question really well.

I hated 300 not because of the ways it differed from Herodotus but because the message it wanted me to take away from the film was terrible and hateful.

We should judge movies much more harshly on what the creator wants us to "learn" or "understand about the world" based on its subtext and messaging than any realism implications.

In fairness to '300', they were mostly just replicating the Miller's graphic novel, with some extra sizzle added for visuals, and unnecessary role expansion for the Queen.

The sequel, however, was absurd even by '300' standards. Not only it was bad (drink a shot every time Themistocles holds an inspirational speech), the stupidity was mind-boggling. Ships were sailing 100 metre tall mega-tsunamis? WHAT

I mean the point of 300 was that it was visualising the tale that Faramir was telling, not that what you saw was an accurate sequence of events.

What "actually" happened in the film comprised of the 5 seconds before the end credits.

I only saw the sequel (it was it a prequel?) Once and don't really remember with a framing device in that.

It was sequel, though they showed bit of Marathon in the beginning.
Original graphic novel did not have framing device btw.

 Compel wrote:
I mean the point of 300 was that it was visualising the tale that Faramir was telling, not that what you saw was an accurate sequence of events.

What "actually" happened in the film comprised of the 5 seconds before the end credits.

I only saw the sequel (it was it a prequel?) Once and don't really remember with a framing device in that.

I thought the whole thing was Spartan Queeny explaining to her army how it all got from one state of affair of there not being a War on to there being a War, and how terrible sequels need some recognized name and or Ms Greens ladylumps

New rule: all the movies with subtitle "Rise of <something>" suck.

Backfire wrote:
New rule: all the movies with subtitle "Rise of <something>" suck.

I tried to think of one just to be a smart ass but... yeah no I can't think of a single one. You win XD

 Blackie wrote:

Backfire wrote:

And for the counter-argument "but what if it is really good otherwise?" It's not. My experience is that if the details are completely messed up, similarly little attention has been paid to writing good characters and dialogue.

This may be true for modern movies. But decades ago every historycal movie wasn't historycal accurate at all, and yet a lot of them are masterpieces. Once it was mostly about the plot, the acting and the setting. The attention was about how the movie looked on screen, the picture overall, now it's all about the details. Because everything else is bland, that's my take: now all the efforts are on the special effects, make up and the re-enact of the details typical of the period in which the story was set. Today all the attention goes towards the surface, not the soul.

Of course there are exceptions, I'm not an expert and I can't say if a movie is historycal accurate enough but Dunkirk was amazing, no matter if the details were perfect or not. A movie like Fury? Completely forgettable.

Eh? What was amazing about Dunkirk? The only memorable thing about it was that it was far too loud, and the guy who didn't talk was a relief. Other than that, it was over the top melodrama senselessly strung together without any connection with the characters to make me care about the third, fourth or fifth no win situation they were stuffed into for no apparent reason.