Ghost in the Shell

[bcholmes]

The trailer is really pretty.

"Ghost in the Shell Official Trailer 1 (2017) - Scarlett Johansson Movie" (Watch on YouTube)

I’m still pretty sure I’m not going to see the movie because of the whitewashing. If not for that, this movie has a lot of stuff that I’d be all over: amazing aesthetic, an interesting vision of future technology, a great female lead. I think it would have been exactly the kind of movie that’d work for me. But the studio ruined it with whitewashing. And I’m a bit sad about that.

Others have pointed out that the trailer is hella appropriative: “The ratio of cool-Japanese-stuff to Japanese people in the trailer is like 2000:1. There is nothing easier for Hollywood to do than disinclude the Asian faces, nothing.”.

The trailer for Valerian looks visually impressive, but I fully expect it to be narratively simplistic (which is sort of what I think of The Fifth Element: I really wanted the film to be deeper than it was).

Mirrored from Under the Beret.

Comments

[jiawen]

The GitS trailer looks seriously like someone thought "What this anime needs is a white person". It looks to me like it adds very little that wasn't in the anime.

(Looks heavily based on the anime series, not so much the manga.)

[bcholmes]

Yeah, you're not wrong on the "what this anime needs is a white person" observation.

I confess that I've often enjoyed seeing remakes of movies just to see what the new creative team chooses to emphasize or downplay. There have been a number of films where the remake seems to just boil down to "we remade it for audiences who don't like subtitles," which I don't fully get.

(I will say, though, that I find watching subtitled Anime slightly frustrating -- there's something about the limitations of animated faces and the cadence of Japanese that make me feel like I'm missing a level of emotional content and subtext.)

I've seen some interesting remakes. I enjoyed comparing the versions of Flight of the Phoenix, and I own multiple versions of The Great Gatsby and The Razor's Edge. I enjoyed comparing Let The Right One In versions, as well as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

The worst remake I think I've seen is the American version of The Secret In Their Eyes, which compares really poorly to the original Argentinian film (which I adored).

I'm tempted to rewatch the 1995 film, although since I'm unlikely to see the new version I can't really compare it. I suspect that the newer film will be faster-paced.