MOTOKOOOOOOOO!!!

[guitargeek]

There is "ham-fisted" as an adjective to describe exposition in a film.
That adjective does not apply here. This effort does not deserve such praise.
Seriously.
This piece-of-crap is just a meaningless, senseless chain of tired action-move and sci-fi tropes, existing solely to embed them with eyecandy and pretensions of meaning.
It's not just bad in comparison to the original. It's bad, period.
I haven't seen such a piece of shit in ages and ages, and I've seen pieces of shit.

I can almost hear someone complaining that a negative attitude towards this movie must be a sign of misogyny.
To which I reply that I love the original beyond reason and will soon binge-watch the lot, so as to exorcise this empty, turgid, cineastic filth-demon from my mind. Major Kusanagi is a magnificent, impressive, awe-inspiring, dignified, badass idol. She is not in this movie.
I fear I cannot watch another Scarlet Johansson movie and not have the occasion ruined by memories of this monument to Hollywood butchery of sublime source material, of the wilful, emphatic, and determined incompetence at just making any movie at all. Recollections of the foul, odious malefactors that foisted this fetid obscenity upon the world, cackling and hurling their own feces all over one of the most beautiful sci-fi franchises will haunt any future opportunity for me to witness Mrs. Johansson.

If you want to watch a better movie, cineastically superior, more credible ideas about robotics, with better writing and acting, really, and only mildly inferior special effect, I recommend Runaway, starring Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons.
No, I'm quite serious. Compared to this revolting heap of excrement, this distasteful discharge of dung and dross, even Selleck vs. Simmons is solid, well crafted, entertaining and thought-provoking cinema.
Don't watch this one, though. Don't think about it. Don't speak its name or just acknowledge that it exists. Just don't. Believe me, trust me, and just don't.

I have GITS 2:Innocence on DVD. I think I'll watch that, instead.

[Bo_9]

Yeah, I was quite excited to be held in awe of this spectacle. But after a couple reviews from sources I trust I completely wrote of giving this one my money. I'll wait for DVD, maybe when it hits the $3 bargain bin. Then I can put it on the shelf next to the atrocity that is the live action Aeon Flux.
Boy howdy, I can't wait until they tackle Akira...

[Bo_9]

Okay, got my copy to go on the shelf of disappointment.
I'll start with saying that this (apart from some really lazy CGI) is a gorgeous film.

Spoiler

Show

I don't like pretty much everything else about this movie. I like Charlize Theron and I don't think she did a bad job here but nearly every callback to the original was just visual nostalgia and the reason to have the scenes and the drama they could have driven was stripped out. No character development for any of the supporting cast. Bothering to do the diving scene but then not having the payoff of the boat scene and conversation with Batou, would have been better to do without entirely. The way too simple detective story bits were sad too. All in all very disappointed. I'll quiz the rest of the fam about their opinions on it as only one of them has seen the original.

The practical effects with the geisha robots was great and it always good to see Michael Wincott getting work.

[Bo_9]

Okay, I quizzed my Wife and 13YO daughter who both rated it a "Meh..."
Not enough development to make them care about the fate of any characters.

[DerGolgo]

Nerdwriter analyzes quite accurately how and why it failed.
And I must confess. When I saw that critique a few days ago, I was surprised to learn the movie had had a plot.
It had been so fucking awful, it had just slipped my mind:

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2soHxEN79c[/media]

[Bo_9]

Yeah that vid sums it up nicely. I'm not sure why they felt compelled to recreate the scenes from the original out of context apart from having eyecandy for the trailer.

[DerGolgo]

having eyecandy for the trailer.

That's probably all there is to it.

[red]

I CAST THREAD RESURRECTION!

I finally watched this movie. It's not terrible, it's not great. Lots of damn good digital effects.

[DerGolgo]

I CAST THREAD RESURRECTION!

I finally watched this movie. It's not terrible, it's not great. Lots of damn good digital effects.

...you're talking about the abomination starring Scarlett Johannson?

[red]

I CAST THREAD RESURRECTION!

I finally watched this movie. It's not terrible, it's not great. Lots of damn good digital effects.

...you're talking about the abomination starring Scarlett Johannson?

Yup. If you look at it as a live action remake of GiTS, yeah, an abomination. But rather, look at it as just a high budget sci-fi rip off.

[DerGolgo]

Hey, you like it, you like it. I know I like a bunch of movies that other people around here despise.

But seeing how that film just didn't "get" GITS, I'm sad that a lot of people who could have tons of fun with the animated stuff are never gonna check it out.

Yup. If you look at it as a live action remake of GiTS, yeah, an abomination. But rather, look at it as just a high budget sci-fi rip off.

There lies the problem.
I went in there and had high hopes they might use the live-action format to do new stuff with the material. Remakes that add nothing, that reinterpret nothing, those are usually boring - and they certainly won't attract a lot of people who hadn't been attracted to the original.

They did not add anything noteworthy that stood out to me. They flipped nothing around where I think it would have mattered.
It felt like a movie constructed around a number of "moments", which is a problem many movies these days have. The narrative takes second seat to having those "wow!" moments. Emphasis goes places that don't matter much, just so that they can have a great "wow!" moment.
Watching Johanson In The Shell, a bunch of the time I was like "Who the fuck cares?". Or "WTF are they going on about?!"
I know, bearing the shame of having written my novel, that's some chutzpah to question other creators like that.

Trying to get those moments, they bowdlerized stuff like the much famed and famous image of

Even this dreck deserves a spoiler warning. I got standards!

Show

Motoko waking up, the window in the background.
In the original, I saw a bright, inviting city. A place to meet many, many people, to do many things. Like a proper big city, beautifully illuminated.
But the person waking up. They did not wake up with or next to someone. All the promise of that magnificent city. But their personal existence was just darkness. A void of loneliness.
When I saw Motoko waking up in that shot, I wasn't expecting to see a wise-cracking bonvivant, nor a hungover party animal. I just saw someone alone.
Someone went and took screenshots of both movies, the original and Ghost In The Scarlet. Have a looks.

Mohanson doesn't look like she's waking up alone in a bright, exciting city full of people.
She looks like she's climbing out of the battery charger. I half expect a technician to walk in, check that the battery bar is full, and unplug her. While the city in the background, with just a little light up top. Looks more like she's in the city's underbelly, far from the sunshine and far from any people one would even want to meet. Rather a place one only ventures out into when one must. A place where the apartment isn't a black hole of loneliness. But a fortress against roving gangs of movie tropes. Or, possibly, a place that is actually devoid of people. Like the city is the black hole of loneliness.
In reality, a city's underbelly is often enough where you can meet the nicest people. But there is a cineastic language shorthand for that. Which, here, we don't see.
As a matter of fact, the contrast of the charging platform or whatever that is illuminating her from below, contrasted to the gloomy city that only gets a little light from above. That conjures up a lot of mental imagery. Is she some kind of messiah, here to fight those up above?
Or is she the servant of those up above, as indicated by the light, sent to pacify the poor district?

Basically, the original Motoko comes across like a human. Afflicted with the human condition - which, considering what we learn about her subsequently, is pretty important. Even though most of her body is now synthetic, a machine, she still is a human. Not an automaton that can't experience loneliness.
Seeing Jotoko wake up, I'm not sure whether that's a person, a sentient android, a future real-doll, or flipping ED209.

Yes, I've spent a lot of time thinking just about that one. The image sorta burned itself into my mind, and since I'm no longer neurologically able to watch the original GITS, thinking about it is about all I can do.

A lot of the time, rather than bowdlerizing, they at least did they level best to duplicate scenes and shots as accurately as CGI and budget let them. Boring, still, but could have been worse.

In the end, there was all this business about

Still got standards!

Show

consent.
Consent is important - but here it was used for something very specific. And I just didn't get the memo. Right to the end I was confused, and then the finale. When the chief has his piece aimed at the villain and, for some reason, via his headset, speaks to Scarloko, who is at another place.
He asks her for her consent, and it's played up like some kind of big moment when she gives it.
Only the next thing that happens is that he shoots the villain.
I think I watched it twice when it was recent, and I still didn't get what all of that was about. She could consent to murdering a suspect, someone who should have been placed under arrest?

THAT felt like it was supposed to be some big "wow!" moment. For me, initially, it just felt like a big "huh?" moment. Since then, it has matured to a "Seriously, HUH?" moment.

AND ON TOP OF IT ALL.

My usual rant.

Show

I'm still pretty fucking aggravated that they cast about the whitest whitebread to play a Japanese character.
I don't care what plot-armor they came up with for that. She even has a Scandinavian surname.
I know it's been 5 years. But seriously, it has only been 5 years. This movie wasn't released in 1957, not even 1967. But 2017. Half a century, and they still won't risk casting an ethnically/culturally appropriate actor.
Hollywood has had a long, long history of putting whitebread actors in "asian" makeup, with often massively disrespectful results. Ridiculing, villainizing, straight up othering Asian people. Whitebread superstars getting lead roles that the source material had filled with someone Asian. Perhaps not even rewriting anything, just pretending like that white guy just has a weird name.
By 2017, Hollywood should have been well past that. If you need a big name to justify the big budget, but you can't find a big enough name among actors from whatever ethnic group your whole industry has traditionally marginalized and othered?
Then you either find other material to adapt, or you take the fucking risk of hiring an actor who maybe is well known in other countries, has the talent and screen presence the role demands.
But then the Schulz family won't do the two-hour drive to the nearest cinema in Notown, Midwest, to see the movie?
Then you either don't make the fucking movie, or you find markets for it where people will pay to watch it.
@Hollywood, if your fucking business model depends on satisfying the tastes of stuckup people in rural communities or suburbs of the USA. Then there is just material you don't adapt, because it's not for your business model.

Afaik, when a Hollywood does a thing, and the film fails? Nobody likes to say that it was just a bad movie. Instead, the Hollywoods look at some kind of single quality of the movie. Like where the source material came from.
A movie adaptation of foreign source material being bombarded with criticism, not being a stellar success? That may well have hobbled many other adaptations of anime material.