Hacker Cinema
Ghost in the Shell
2017 · Film · 107 min
Directed by Rupert Sanders
In the near future, Major is the first of her kind: a human saved from a terrible crash, then cyber-enhanced to be a perfect soldier devoted to stopping the world's most dangerous criminals.
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64 comments on Hacker News
The same works the other way, and actually a lot better IMO.
Let's imagine a scenario with two identical restaurants with the exact same quality of food.
One sells their dish as a fully vegan option, but doesn't tell the customers.
Hardline "oorah, meat only for me" dude walks in and eats the dish, loves it.
If he goes to the other restaurant and is told beforehand that "sir, this dish is fully vegan" - do you think they'd enjoy it as much?
Prejudices steer people's opinions, a lot. Just like people stop enjoying movies and games due to some weird online witch-hunt that might later on turn out to be either a complete willful misunderstanding of the whole premise (Ghost in the Shell) or a targeted hate campaign (Marvels and many many other movies starring a prominent feminist woman).
Seconding Fullmetal Alchemist. I hear the remake (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) is usually regarded as the better version. More suggestions: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Death Note, Sousou no Frieren, Cowboy Bebop, Nichijou, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Bakemonogatari. There's also quite a few good movies, anything by Studio Ghibli is great, and so are Akira, Perfect Blue, and Ghost in the Shell.
If data integrity is assured, and thus there is no change in the data to store/transfer, then that's the opposite of computationally transforming the data?
How do we see robot and AI and helping interactions in film and tv and games?
A curated list of films for consideration:
Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" or "The Modern Prometheus" (1818), Metropolis (1927), I\, Robot (1940-1950; Three Laws of Robotics, robopsychology), Macy Conferences (1941-1960; Cybernetics), Tobor the Great (1954), Here Comes Tobor (1956), Jetsons' maid's name: Rosie (1962), Lost in Space (1965), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), THX 1138 (1971), Star Wars (1977), Terminator (1984), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Flubber (1997, 1961), Futurama (TV, 1999-), Star Wars: Phantom Menace (1999), The Iron Giant (1999), Bicentennial Man (1999), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2003), I\, Robot (2004), Team America: World Police (2004), Wall-E (2008), Iron Man (2008), Eagle Eye (2008), Moon (2009), Surrogates (2009), Tron: Legacy (2010), Hugo (2011), Django Unchained (2012), Her (2013), Transcendence (2014), Chappie (2015), Tomorrowland (2015), The Wild Robot (2016, 2024), Ghost in the Shell (2017),
Giant f robots: Gundam (1979), Transformers (TV: 1984-1987, 2007-), Voltron (1984-1985), MechWarrior (1989), Matrix II: Revolutions (2003), Avatar (2009, 2022, 2025), Pacific Rim (2013-), RoboCop (1987, 2014), Edge of Tomorrow (2014),
~AI vehicle: Herbie, The Love Bug (1968-), Knight Rider (TV, 1982-1986), Thunder in Paradise (TV, 1993-95), Heat Vision and Jack (1999), Transformers (2007), Bumblebee (2018)
Games: Portal (2007), LEGO Bricktales (2022), While True: learn() (2018), "NPC" Non-Player Character
Category:Films_about_artificial_intelligence : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_artificial_intelligence
List of artificial intelligence films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_intelligence_films
Category:Films_about_robots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_robots
Category:American_robot_films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_robot_films
I disliked the ATLA movie before even seeing it because most of the characters didn't look like the original. This isn't some moral stance, there is simply such a thing as bad casting in a live adaptation. The movie sucked for plenty of other reasons of course, but even if it didn't, this would've detracted from it.
Idk if anyone was actually not watching the Ghost in the Shell remake over the casting. The characters look right. If someone out there is upset that the main character wasn't played by someone Japanese, I don't get it, the original character didn't even look Japanese.
I think you're free to take your money and buy the entertainment you prefer.
Is it political soapboxing, or trying to make show business fairer? Because if Hollywood listened to your preferences, minority actors have less oppportunities for roles.
I was watching "A Gentleman in Moscow", a series about an aristocrat living in house arrest in a luxury hotel in 1920s-1950s Soviet Russia. Everyone in it spoke English since it is an US/UK production, and there were black and Indian actors in it, I guess because of "DEI". I found it awkward at first, but I thought "I guess this is progress, better get with the times.". No one moaned about all the Russian characters speaking English, the show didn't have any race-related topics (a movie about the KKK with black Klan members would be incongrous), but with actors of different color skin? That series had lots of IMDb reviews complaining about "political soapboxing"...
I must be one of those people^W sheep who don't mind being oppressed by the woke-mafia, huh?
As an addendum, I find it obnoxious if people insist straight actors can't play gay characters, or genteel actors playing Jewish characters. It's called fucking acting! Scarlett Johansson should've been able to play a fictional Japanese cyborg in Ghost in the Shell without idiots complaining about it...
Ghost in the Shell, definitely, both manga and anime (but avoid the live action movie and the weird recent CGI show set in the US). 'The Diamond Age', perhaps, if you still count that as cyberpunk. 'Snowcrash', though I have some reservations about some parts of it. 'Cyberpunk: Edgerunners' is pretty good, too. There's some good cyber-punk-ish games like 'System Shock' and others.
Don't see this as a comprehensive list. It's just what I had at the top of my head, so no guarantees it's even what _I_ think is best, just what I could remember quickly.
Who's Charles Dance? :)
As for Scarlett Johansson, I remember her from the Ghost in the Shell the live action movie controversy. Not fondly.
>That’s why she was the voice actor for the AI voice in Her.
She was used in Her because she has a dry/monotone/lifeless form of diction that at the time seemed like a decent stand-in for an non-human AI.
IMDB is riddled with complaints about his vocal-style/diction/dead-pan on every one of her movies. Ghost World, Ghost in the Shell, Lost in Translation, Comic-Book-Movie-1-100 -- take a line from one movie and dub it across the character of another and most people would be fooled, that's impressive given the breadth of quality/style/age across the movies.
When she was first on the scene I thought it was bad acting, but then it continued -- now I tend to think that it's an effort to cultivate a character personality similar to Steven Wright or Tom Waits; the fact that she's now litigating towards protection of her character and likeness reinforces that fact for me.
It's unique to her though , that's for sure.
Ha. Stuff like this is entertaining but it is not what I would call good. It’s like the reality tv of anime. Cheap wish fulfillment fan service.
There have been some legit good series recently that play with these fantasy genres, have solid writing and animation.
* Friern: Beyond Journey’s End - an extremely sentimental coming of age tale that explorers children raising parents, loyalty, and platonic love.
* Delicious in Dungeon - a really silly story that subverts the dungeon crawling genre by crossing over with the food/cooking genre and playing with all kinds of genre/tropes.
* Pluto - a classic scifi morality tale on what it means to be human. This series tried really hard to be a modern Ghost in the Shell. It was successful in some ways and fell flat in others. Definitely worth watching though.
There are lots of entertaining anime out now, but so little of it is well made or written. Maybe that’s ok though. I still watch lots of the low quality stuff because it’s like popcorn/candy and is easy to watch.
If the producers want to retain the spirit of the book, they'd have to take a film noir approach, and also include the reality of a world in which corporate conglomerates with private armies hold at least as much power as the traditional nation-states and institutions (e.g. Turing Registry). This might be challenging for Apple to embrace, it might not be the kind of dystopian vision the head office will want to promote.
I also hope they don't try to update themes, in particular Rastafarian Zion habitat (sort of a 1970s concept) shouldn't be chopped out... all in all seems pretty challenging, and the result might be some atrocial rewrite like the Hollywood version of Ghost In The Shell.
Paper is much harder to secretly vanish (A) at scale and/or (B) remotely.
I always thought it was cool how some Ghost in The Shell movie/anime stuff involved storing very sensitive secrets as barcodes on paper, to be kept physically-secure before being read by cybernetic eyes.
There's also some line from one of the The Expanse books (Abbadon's Gate) which I can't easily call up here. The protagonist is inside an alien space-station following an AI's instructions to try to save the day, and he's curious why the AI doesn't just do it. The AI tells him that for the builders of that place, having physical existence was a kind of authority all on its own.
This makes me think about the ghost in the shell movie. When you have that kind of technology at your disposal, you can inflict great suffering.
It's almost completely gone in the US on Netflix also. I've had better luck watching older movies on Youtube 'Free with Ads' service, especially 80s and 90s movies, than I've had on Netflix. And there's no ads if you get Youtube's premium service (I currently don't, but don't mind the ads).
Currently on there is Wrongfully Accused (funny Leslie Nielsen movie), Glengarry Glen Ross, Robocop (1987), Ghost in the Shell, The Mask, License to Drive, The Neverending Story, Tombstone, Leon The Professonal, The Amityville Horror, Over the Top (some Stallone movie), Miracle on 34th Street, Con Air, Edward Scissorhands, Gone Fishin', Look Who's Talking, While You Were Sleeping, The Craft, Red Dawn, So I Married an Axe Murderer, Secret of Nimh, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Revenge of the Pink Panther, Mad Max, Das Boot, Little Shop of Horrors, Hackers, .... okay, I'm just going to stop now, but t keeps going, I'm only a third of the way though the list.
I always interpreted it as "unable to be adapted faithfully."
For instance, in my earlier post I mentioned the live-action Ghost in the Shell, which in some parts Hollywood almost-mechanically adapted to be shot by shot identical to the original animated film, while completely missing the point with the racebent casting choices and much of the writing. I would count that as a poor adaptation, but not adapted so faithlessly that it has no resemblance to the original work.
Then again, Blade Runner is a loose adaptation of PKD's original story, yet does its central themes justice. So I guess "unflimable" is a relative term. Maybe it could ALSO just mean "no demand or desire to see adapted for film or television."
My overall point is that it's a golden age of IP and with the mainstreaming of nerd culture (and the endless demand for content from the streaming studios), all sorts of works that were once considered unfilmable are about to see the light of day.
Ghost in the Shell (1995) 7.9/10 IMDb 95% Rotten Tomatoes 4/5 Letterboxd
Amazing how much it was able to get right while coming out in the same year consumer did, and the philosophical questions it asked continue to be relevant. I rewatch it every year. It's available for free with ads on Youtube, in Japanese with subtitles, which is the recommended language to watch in. There have been many analysis written online that I recommend reading into after finishing the movie. It's a little slow and gives the viewer time to think. There's a independent show with the same characters that is sort related but not a sequel in any way. The 2017 remake is not a good reflection of the story nor does it stick to the original story in any way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHil4Y4r3Wk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell_(1995_film)
I'm going to be Pollyanna and say that we might be at the cusp of a golden age of sci-fi adaptations. For decades people said that Dune was unfilmable and then Villeneuve went and done it and made it look easy, even conventional. (I actually have some additional thoughts on that- it could have been a little bit longer for greater exposition and characterization, and more weird.) So this should mean that any classic work of sci-fi should get some consideration. We're at a time in the industry where both visual effects and audiences (with the mainstreaming of nerd culture) are ready for such media.
That's not to say these adaptations will be good, but they're certainly filmable. Neuromancer gets a lot of cachet, but other IPs have been attempted already. Villeneuve successfully made a good Blade Runner sequel. Live-action Ghost in the Shell happened- it was execrable and wrapped up in controversy, but it still got made and the neon-soaked setting looked decent. They made a fourth Matrix. Stepping away from cyberpunk, Childhood's End got a miniseries. The Expanse got a full show.
So I doubt that there's anything inherently more difficult about Gibson's novels. If anything, the popularity of Cyberpunk 2077 and its Edgerunners anime has primed the public for '80s retrofuturistic cyberpunk, so they can choose to adapt this as a period piece if they wanted to, without "modernizing" its futuristic conceits. No need to add smartphones.
Call me when they start adapting John Brunner '60s new wave sci-fi. Now that would be a hard sell.
That's fine, but Amazon isn't rewriting his books. I think it is impossible to infer Tolkien's reaction, and furthermore, quite silly to try and enforce that inferred reaction.
Take the Wheel of Time series. A lot of unhappy fans again. Robert Jordan isn't around to give his opinion, but Brandon Sanderson finished off writing the series after Jordan's death and has talked about what he thinks of the TV series. His comments are remarkably less hysterical than what fans say. He basically says he likes it and there are some things he would have done differently [1].
Ghost in the Shell is another example. The live action movie was bad. There was a whitewashing controversy about a caucasian actor playing the lead role. The original Ghost in the Shell anime director came out and said it didn't matter [2]. His comments are worth reading:
> ...Oshii said that because the main protagonist – Major Motoko Kusanagi – is a cyborg, the question of race and whitewashing is a moot point. “What issue could there possibly be with casting her?” Oshii said. “The major is a cyborg and her physical form is an entirely assumed one. The name ‘Motoko Kusanagi’ and her current body are not her original name and body, so there is no basis for saying that an Asian actress must portray her. Even if her original body (presuming such a thing existed) were a Japanese one, that would still apply.”
Oshii added that he thought Johansson was the best possible person to play Kusanagi in the Rupert Sanders-helmed remake, which is out next weekend in the US. He also argued that actors of different backgrounds from the characters they are portraying is part and parcel of the film-making world.
”In the movies, John Wayne can play Genghis Khan, and Omar Sharif, an Arab, can play Doctor Zhivago, a Slav. It’s all just cinematic conventions,” he explained.
”If that’s not allowed, then Darth Vader probably shouldn’t speak English, either.”
[1] https://winteriscoming.net/2022/01/27/how-brandon-sanderson-would-have-changed-the-wheel-of-time/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/mar/24/scarlett-johansson-ghost-in-the-shell-director-whitewashing
> Contrast Galadriel who acts like a self righteous dickhead with Aragorn who was reluctant to accept his calling spent and three movies proving himself to be worthy of honor and love
You mean three books, right?
The difference here is that Aragorn was written by Tolkien, this show wasn't and has completely betrayed the original material.
Race or gender swaps are not a big issue, but they become one if the purpose is the swap for the swap just for marketing purpose.
Elves are almost eugenetically born all the same, want to add some diversity? Go for humans.
Wanna piss off the audience so that the debate will create more engagement? do exactly what shouldn't be done, because it's out of character.
Another example is the new Disney's Pinocchio, were the Blue Fairy is portrait by a black woman. The problem is not that she is black of course. but that the original story is set in Italy, Tuscany, mid 1800, were no black woman was ever seen and she is also described as "il viso bianco come un'immagine di cera" that translates to "her face as white as a wax image".
It becomes clear that the black blue fairy was put there to check a box and not because she serves some need to modernize the story, which is exactly the same that Collodi wrote 140 years ago.
EDIT
it's the same reason why people cricized film directors that casted Scarlett Johansson for every role or the god awful Ghost in the shell live action where, not only the story was orribly mutilated, but the setup was very very far from the original Japanese one, completely ruining the experience.
It's not about the colour of the skin or the gender of the actors, of course, it's about expectations. I expect Black Panther to be black, Thor to be white and blonde, Ghost in the shell to be set in futuristic Japan etc.
> I always felt The Matrix borrowed more from John Woo-type HK live action movies than anything else. Second on the list for me would be video games or maybe Neuromancer-style classic hard cyberpunk. Or PK Dick. Or... probably a few more other things before anime.
I'm sceptical about a lot of the article, but the directors were very explicit about taking inspiration from anime. Ghost in the Shell in particular is a clear direct influence on both the general look and the famous lobby gunfight conclusion.
I'm not entirely convinced of that attitude; plenty of science fiction in a cyberpunk setting have strong underlying messages, of e.g. personal identity, capitalism, privacy, overpopulation, sex work, drugs, classism, AI, environment / global warming, etc; some of the big names there would be (imo, I'm no expert and I can't think of much) Ghost in the Shell, Altered Carbon, The Matrix, some episodes of Love Death & Robots and even Black Mirror, to name a few.
> Like when black actors get representation in media previously dominated by white people, to me that is just a good thing, but I see reports that many think this is “wokeness”, which they think is bad.
In the 90s Will Smith starred in Independence Day, and absolutely no one complained (as far as I know) because Will Smith is awesome and he deserved the role. See also Blade from the same era.
People get upset when it's clear that a person has been chosen for a role/position just because of their skin colour/gender/sexuality rather than their talent. I can't actually think of any movies that have done this, but plenty of TV shows (Star Trek Discovery).
Obviously some roles require the person to be of a certain race for it to appear authentic. Lots of older films used white actors for middle Eastern roles, which is seen as "white washing" and is therefore wrong. The latest Ghost in the Shell race swapped the main character to be American, and was rightly called out for doing so.
Basically we should be allowed to criticize both ways...
GitS did it first: it was mentioned in the manga (90s) and was adapted as part of season 1 of SAC (2002).
Also, it seems the overall idea isn’t new: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghost_in_the_Shell/comments/6msddc/so_did_sacep_8_predicted_the_organ_harvesting/
I wish we could do the same for Computer Science/Software. Movies like "Travelling Salesman" or "Pirates of Silicon Valley" or "Imitation Game" would be great suggestions but typically things like the Matrix or Ghost in the Shell are recommended which for me are great movies but poor examples of the discipline.
Pokemon is a mostly video game and „Ghost in the Shell“ a movie remake. One swallow doesnt make a summer. Also, Studio Ghibli has not made a new movie in 5 years.
Annihilation, Dark City, Riddick Chronicles, Babylon A.D., Guardians of The Galaxy, Fast and Furious, Hummingbird, Transporter, Crank, Hardcore Henry, Revolver, Lucy, Ghost in The Shell, Now you see me, Passengers, Transcendence, Maze Runner, Limitless...
I think we've had a good run; I also think it's easy to be biased and not see it because of some nostalgia-effect of sorts. If you are f.e. 30+ you might more easily dismiss a movie as Limitless or Lucy as uncredible; both are based on a common myth that we only utilize a low percentage of our brains capacity, as an example, so they are that: unrealistic. But I think that's an unfair comparison because of an inherent bias that when you think about a movie like The Matrix you don't see it with the same critical lens because you perhaps had less knowledge of the world in your earlier years. #JustAFewThoughts
I'm not saying they are a good thing per se, just a reassuring thing. It means we still need to be in control of our systems, and can't blindly let our systems control us, because indeed they are fallible. It's of course rather philosophical.
There's also a big difference between these sort of vulnerabilities, and the sort of problems that enable for example ransomware, which is a serious issue that has a more difficult solution than simply designing more robust hardware.
Anyway, if you're intrigued maybe check out Ghost in the Shell sometime (not the one with Scarlett Johansson, although it is enjoyable, it's not really the same thing), if it needs to be Hollywood, then maybe the Hackers movie would also work a bit (with Angelina Jolie).
Yes, for now.
Jio's rival Airtel owns satellite/cable tv platforms and even supplies wired internet in parts of major cities. No one with any ambition has really tried wired internet in India -- for a long time the only way to get it was via the government-run telecoms provider (who are -- surprise! -- not very good).
Jio's parent company produces a lot of movies in India and in Hollywood, including Arrival, Ready Player One, Ghost in the Shell, Lincoln, etc. They know the value of a converged platform that serves data + video. And they don't have a satellite/cable tv network because the Jio vision was all-digital, all IP. And they have been building the backhaul to do this at scale across India (lots of planning applications are online) and are now slowly trialling Jio GigaFibre (a Gigabit Home Fibre service) in parts of India.
What I don't know is if they can turn these trials into a compellingly priced proposition Indians will pay for (and get rid of their cable tv subscriptions for -- and cable is very popular in India, even wired cable tv -- even in low-income neighbourhoods. So clearly India can solve the last-mile wiring problem if they want to). But they have been able to do it with 4G and I suspect they wouldn't trial a Gigabit fibre product if they didn't have a proposition in mind.
Incidentally if you're wondering: "won't 5G make wired internet redundant" -- India has lots of cell towers but also lots of people connecting to each of those towers. This means that often speeds during the daytime are pathetic. I personally used Jio and Airtel while visiting India recently in May, and even web pages had trouble loading (on both networks) in the afternoon^. I suspect the effective bandwidth available per subscriber in even small Indian cities (1M would be small in India) would be quite variable, and certainly small during busy periods.
Sorry if this is too much detail. I just find the ambition involved in bringing internet at scale to an entire country (especially one the size of India!) endlessly fascinating.
^ May is 'peak summer' in India, and the afternoon sees very few people on the roads and the bazaars are deserted as people rest or take a siesta. I suspect internet usage goes through the roof then.
i like a lot of the concepts in this article, if someone were to build this then i'd be very happy to use it, but they seem more incremental as opposed to game changing, very tactical or utilitarian, it's like taking patterns from modern websites and applying them to the desktop, drawers, tags, cards, filters, notifications. there were some more advanced things like the eye sensor, touch, and audio, but i was expecting some groundbreaking stuff since your original premise was about desktops not changing over the last 30 years.
a lot of sci-fi movies stretch the imagination, they tend to think outside the box, i was expecting something like that, like ghost in the shell hologram displays, or displays embbeded directly in the retina.
ultimately, it comes down to convenience, finding ways to meld the computer and physical worlds such that the lines are blurred. letting the computer be an extension of oneself, kind of like cars to humans. so for example, typing is a very unnatural thing, and to some degree there's a lot of churn translating from one's brain to the keyboard and then to the computer, voice would be a more natural way of input, but imagine trying to write code using voice only or this article (gasp), my throat would be dry after the first function. so voice isnt a full supplement, but i think having to tap things in a context sensitive way would be good, borrowing from web design, less clicks the better, imagine writing code by tapping, choosing functions instead of having to write a for loop every single time, checking for errors, etc.
my feedback would be to take several steps backwards, look wholistically at the computer, and dream of how humans could better, more efficiently, and more naturally interact with them, that to me is the crux of a what a desktop represents, it's the interface between man and comouter/machine some of the solutions that you dream up could very much be based on patterns found on mobile phones or web pages, but dont let that limit you, ultimate goal is make a computer an extension of one's hand, brain, etc, just like a well built car is an extension if one's foot and hand.
kind of what i'm thinking is that we could be walking around with supplemented displays that could be toggled on/off, dont really like the smart glasses, they're bulky, cumbersome, and generally stupid looking, but almost like ar, layered on top of reality, i can see certain statistics, or necessary things followed by actions, absorbing different things from multiple sensors to supplement my view.
to me, that's where innovation needs to take place, quite honestly mac os x and windows both have voice assistants, amazon echo as well, but i dont rely on these things as much, they are not as usuable at the moment, it's more of a toy. i think visual technology is not as usable either, ar glasses, holographic displays, we have a long way to go.
and ultimately the computer needs to get smarter about understanding our needs, machine learning is a general step in the right direction, but i'm talking about being able to learn, adapt, and tie lots of things together to make decisions or recommendations without having to massage data, create data models, or choose certain algorithms.
When the GP mentioned Elysium I was also reminded of the live-action Ghost in the Shell movie with the AR ads similar to this video.
The concept of that movie was really insightful, but the trailer looked kind of terrible. Was there any Ghost In The Shell kind of deep philosophy, or was it just a Hollywood excuse to blow things up and do completely unrealistic action scenes?
I would say the west has failed to make good video game movies, or proper adaptations of an anime.
e.g: street fighter? mario bros? dragonball evolution? death note? ghost in the shell?
You need to be extremely creative to ruin those.
The reverse has also been true: bad game adaptations from good movies. e.g: ET, back to the future, etc.
After Ghost in the Shell i don't watch remakes in cinema. I'll watch it when it comes to Netflix.
Another example stolen from reddit (this is one of my favorite scenes in the movie, opening montage to the original was one of the most beautiful things I saw on a movie theater screen this year):
http://puu.sh/rk1e0/8bde48eb5a.jpg - Live Action Movie
http://66.media.tumblr.com/eff396f3b1c3f9fcf9ce6e0923484f96/tumblr_nvr719UED01r0qg4mo1_1280.jpg -Animated
And this is the fan movie: http://www.gits2501.com/wp-content/uploads/GITS_SITE_1920_AT_37.jpg
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/53y0ri/ghost_in_the_shell_official_teaser_trailer_2017/d7xggfy/
Yeah; that's what I meant about "dumbing down" the movie. I agree that Ghost in the Shell in all of its iterations is heavy on exposition -- which makes it a difficult show for audiences to get into.
I also agree about your point about Westworld -- I think Ghost in the Shell could be pulled off as a live-action TV series because the exposition could be spread out across a whole season. Because it often doesn't have a guaranteed global market at the time of production, anime in general tends to be a balance between ambition and budget -- the compromise often being "recap" or "expositional" episodes focused on one or two characters (fewer voice actors to worry about) and using recycled animation. I get why they do it, but it's frustrating.
Reading this reminds me why I was disgusted with the recent remake of Ghost in the Shell.
The merging of minds between Kusanagi and the Puppet Master was the finalé in the journey Kusanagi took through the film. To remove that final step from the remake made me angry.
> people into GITS might like this post we made about shots in the movie recreated from the anime: https://medium.com/@gitsost/a-love-letter-to-ghost-in-the-shell-how-shots-from-the-2017-movie-allude-to-the-anime-972a7dfb74e8
I find it quite superficial to call the new movie a love letter just because a number of stills have similar elements in them.
As an example: In the water fight scene the anime has a LOT of story-telling with her actions being clearly based on high level moral motivations, as well as observations of and adaption to the progression of the fight itself. Every action taken has a reason and nuance behind it, based on who and what her adversary is as well as the tactical situation. In the movie it's a straight-up beat-down of an almost entirely unresponsive puppet.
Long time fan of both mangas and anime:
While lacking the full spirit of either source (it's clearly more influenced by Mamory Oshii's anime) it's still an entertaining democratization effort (communicating at least some of the originals' visions successfully). What I did like especially were the somewhat untypical aesthetics and special fx - geisha scene was the coolest one yet, also enjoyed Kitano as funny, yakuzaesque Aramaki. Those - to me - genuinley fresh aspects may be due to apparently more outside-of-Hollywood production influences.
7/10
Hideo Kojima identifies the real problem with the movie – the age of (internet) wonder is over:
http://www.glixel.com/news/hideo-kojima-on-the-philosophy-behind-ghost-in-the-shell-w475805
Yeah. I was thinking maybe execs got spooked because the movie didn't make a return on its massive budget but (1) it costs virtually nothing to put the album on Spotify, iTunes etc right? and (2) as you said, the last minute cancellation is just strange because everything should have been worked out already.
An interesting data point is that there was supposed to be an official 'novelization' of the movie that is now in limbo as well. If Hollywood really gets cold feet so easily I hope our campaign can help them change their minds. The movie made $160m worldwide, so there are definitely fans out there--these artefacts don't need to get cancelled. There's also a 'The Art of Ghost in the Shell' book that already came out, so at least that's safe.
> I really think from set-design, costume, and setting perspectives this movie on par with visual feasts from the 70s/80s like Bladerunner, Dune, Star Wars, or Alien.
For those who haven't seen the live-action movie, Kotaku just put up an article showcasing some of the concept art:
http://kotaku.com/the-incredible-art-of-the-ghost-in-the-shell-movie-1794015446
(Except for die-hard fans of GitS, I would not recommend the new movie.)
The video game industry is the new movie industry -- except nobody is unionized. The film industry is notorious for this crap as well; look at the Sausage Party controversy for a recent example. Honestly, a programmer on a video game is not much different than a camera operator, a film editor or a VFX engineer. Sure, you need quality work in those areas to have a good product, but great work in these areas can still be submarined by a terrible concept (ahem ScarJo's Ghost in the Shell).
And really, can you blame them? Revenues are largely based on the work of the producer (marketing / promotion), the director (overall tone / quality) and the acting talent (big names = box office draws); the folks behind the scenes get screwed over (or they would if they didn't have unions ensuring some long-term consequences for producers acting in bad faith).
I have not seen the original film, but I quite enjoyed Ghost in the Shell (2017) for what it was - a big spectacle action film. The visuals were by far the best part and it is neat to see some of the work that went into them - if only the same attention had been paid on the script.
I wrote a longer (too long really) review of the film : https://sheep.horse/2017/4/film_review_-_ghost_in_the_shell_(2017).html
Adam Savage did a few Tested videos on some of the costumes and props which you may be interested in watching. (Either before or after you've seen the film if you care about that kind of thing.)
Adam Savage Behind the Scenes of Ghost in the Shell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KosBvDyWgnA
How Weta Workshop Made Ghost In The Shell's Thermoptic Suit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbCyXVEVpKk
How Weta Workshop Made Ghost in the Shell's Robot Skeleton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxUoqIrXd9E
All 42 hours of the Ghost In The Shell animations from 1995 to 2006 can be strung together into cannon. It's all compatible. Both the 2015 stuff and this 2017 movie unfortunately conflict which what came before. Disappointing to me as a fan that what was achieved over 11 years has been undone and forsaken in recent adaptations of the franchise. Frankly, I'm angry Holywood is making millions from this.
The cyberpunk tropes still had some freshness back in 1995, but today they're just done to death. While the live action film touched upon all the big ideas, I'm glad they didn't try unpack too much of it, I'd be bored to tears, I've already been there with dozens of previous books and films.
Even in 1995 the ideas in ghost in the shell had already been explored thoroughly, Dick and Gibson were all about that sort of thing. What made Ghost In The Shell exceptional was the story and the visual style.
The new film brought that style to life beautifully, I got exactly what I paid for. And even under the best of circumstances, a two hour film isn't enough time to do more than a superficial examination of some philosophical concept or another.
That's because the new one was essentially simplified to the level of a Robocop cliché. It was really embarrassing to see how limited movie producers believe our imaginations are.
The original Ghost in the Shell is still difficult for many to grasp because the core theme around the essential features of identity are not yet culturally available to everyone.
The "solograms" were an amazing addition to the movie. My friend and I both commented on them walking out of the theater.
The visuals in the film we're really well done, in my opinion. In fact, I really enjoyed the movie as a great throwback to coming of age on cyberpunk material such as Snowcrash, Neuromancer, Ghost in the Shell, et al., whitewashing politics be damned.
The proposal: "Premium video rental", at $30 - $50. Right. When VHS first came out, the movie industry thought that a video rental should cost about as much as a theater show for a family of 4, including popcorn. That didn't work, although the reason was the First Sale Doctrine, which allowed video rental without payments to studios and forced prices down. That doesn't apply online, and all the players are now huge near-monopolies. They can push prices up, but can't make people watch.
3D was supposed to save theaters. It didn't. (Incidentally, while "Ghost in the Shell" is reasonably good, don't see it in 3D. The director likes blurry backgrounds. 3D has negative value for blurry backgrounds.)
Lack of originality remains a big problem. "Four of the top 10 highest grossing films last year were based on Marvel or DC Comics characters." In theaters now, the Lego Batman movie. There are currently 69 more comic book movies in the pipeline.[1] Even the duds, such as Ant-Man, are getting sequels. Variety says consumers may be getting tired of comic book movies.
Some original ideas do make big money. Last year, "The Secret Life of Pets" — $875.4 million, "Zootopia" — $1.023 billion, "Finding Dory" — $1.027 billion, were in the top 10. They're all animated. Not one of the top 10 highest grossing movies of 2016 was a live-action non-sequel/remake. Maybe originality now requires a longer format than the one-off film. Consider Game of Thrones.
Meanwhile, I'm watching Korean drama and Japanese anime.
[1] http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/comic-book-adaptations/32829/69-upcoming-comic-book-movies-and-when-to-expect-them
Hollywood seems content to continue milking comic books and lately anime for storylines instead of coming up with anything original and then applying the same, cliched formula.
I can't wait for the demise of this system so that we can see fresh, original approaches to film-making where the starring actor/actress is the biggest expense.
Did they learn the lesson from the music industry? Namely, not to attack the consumer as the cause of its downfall before it was eventually swallowed up by a tech company (Apple). Perhaps if they transition graciously, Amazon or other firms will offer them a better deal. Or, preferably, they take the route used by Veronica Mars by getting funding through kickstarter, indiegogo or some other fundraising platform. This way, maybe fans won't be severely disappointed and movie adaptations of popular franchises aren't dumbed down and white-washed to appeal to as broad an audience as possible.
And, yes, I'm a bit upset after seeing the treatment Ghost in the Shell, one of my favorite franchises, received. Akira and Cowboy Bebop are next, but I actually like Jordan Peele and Keanu Reeves so I'm crossing my fingers.
This is an interesting story, especially considering the new Ghost in The Shell movie is coming out this week. It really makes me think that something like this might be possible. As we've discussed here before, technology moves really, really quickly and things that we never thought of 20 years ago are pretty common now. Even full on auto-drive cars are on the horizon in a very realistic way. Sure, we thought it would probably happen at some point but we are now within a couple of years of actually being able to purchase such a thing. And we all have pretty powerful supercomputers in our pockets. Is brain augmentation that weird.
Also, I've been thinking that we will need a new interface for our cell phones. The screens can't get much bigger without being uncomfortable, yet we need to interact with them more and more. I was thinking that a contact lens display would probably be within reach soon but maybe we'll just skip the physical stuff and go directly to injecting signals into the brain stem.
Patlabor is fun, and has some cool hacker-relevant stuff, but isn't a great and serious movie like Ghost in the Shell. I do recommend watching it, but with suitable expectations!
There aren't enough solid science movies to make a proper recommendation, unless you want to see a documentary.
Anime however, are plenty -
Rocket Girls, Moonlight Mile, the Ghost In The Shell series of films and episodes, Planetes have good science themes that will make you think.
It seems that Elon Musk used to read the ghost in the shell (攻殻機動隊) as well... which very soon will have a Hollywood version in every cinema. The problem I find on Elon words is that everything he says tends to be oversimplified and put in a dichotomy without much fundamental basis (just because something is plausible is not more closed to happen) this is in one hand great to create a vision, but I would say that at the same doesn't play well with the scientific method...
Have you noticed, how smartphones vacuum tangible reality?
How many of you have real alarm clock sitting on the table, for example. It lives on, but as more intangible presence, in each and every phone. Alarm clock has died, but lives. It is present, but not present at the same time, just the spirit continues, I would say.
Soon it will happen or is happening to other items as well, and perhaps one day our spirits will live in the machine the same way alarm clock lives now.
I wholeheartedly recommend watching Japanese anime Ghost in the shell movies as a nice peek to the future.
That's funny, I was just looking at a list of big budget releases in 2017 and I was thinking that sci-fi is making a comeback in a big way. At least half of the films in the list had some sci-fi element to them. Of course, the two biggest (blade runner and ghost in the shell) are unnecessary sequels/remakes, but any port in a storm, right?
Edit: Can we get a Red/Green/Blue Mars miniseries on HBO, please? That would make my decade.
Funny that I saw Ghost in the Shell when it was originally released in the cinema but for some reason didn't think of it as cyberpunk!
Time to dive into it again it seems!
Ghost in the Shell is a Japanese film, set in Japan with Japanese characters and you don't think casting the Japanese protagonist as Scarlet Johansson is not whitewashing?
On top of that, Paramount contracted a VFX studio which claims Paramount asked them to do some CG tests to make Johansson look more Asian. Paramount claims it was other characters and not Johansson but either way that is about as clear cut a case of whitewashing as there is.
Now if they're redoing the movie such that it is set in NYC and organizations and characters are all changed to reflect being set in NYC, it would be a little bit different, but it would it still be yet another case of Hollywood taking a story and purposefully eliminating people of color from it.
Good write-up on it. Probably one of its lasting effects was partial inspiration for The Matrix: the first, mainstream, "thinking-man's," action movie. It had audiences leaving with questions about themselves instead of just flat quotes from a movie. Had plenty of them, too. ;)
Always wanted to see more of this genre. I know they're doing a live action Ghost in the Shell. Have mixed feelings about that. Nonetheless, I'd like to see more movies that have enough tropes and cultural tie-ins to be successful but throw in those GitS or Matrix-style element to really get people thinking.
Most recent in get you thinking, but not mainstream, movies is Ex Machina. Whole movie, minus a few things, is essentially built on the acting and esp dialogue that questions reality. Kind of a budget film but I thought it was great. Just watch the movie not the trailers as there might be some spoilers in there.
Ghost in the Shell, the mangas, the two movies, SAC... are the kind of media that every home should have a copy of. Its not just prophetic, but really accessible and satisfactory from just a sheer nerdiness perspective, the same way Star Trek must have been to everyone in the 1960s.
> In two recent movies, Her and Ex Machina, filmmakers explored an intriguing concept: whether humans will fall in love with and want to have sex with AI or robots.
Never mind Ghost in the Shell throwing that idea about, like, 20 years ago already. It's always fun to be see folks late to the party.
I've tended towards criticism from the opposite direction (which can also apply to The Matrix). Its philosophical underpinnings have been done by other works of fiction to greater depth, but those stories tend to be impenetrable for most people, much more so than either Inception or The Matrix were. See Ghost in the Shell or Neuromancer, for example. Or even Nolan's own Memento.
Putting it in a more easily-digestible form is a useful thing to do, which tends to blunt this line of criticism. There are some philosophy professors who really appreciate these movies, because they provided nice reference points that their students already know about, making it much easier to teach certain concepts.
Of the recent Sci-Fi movies I've seen, I find that Ghost in the Shell feels the most like what I think the medium term future will be - Highly uneven distribution of ever more sophisticated tech and a much more gritty day-to-day existence.
It does take a while. I have a fairly fast drive but it still takes 2 hours for some BDs. I definitely wouldn't recommend doing it right when you want to watch the movie :) Generally I put it in right when I'm about to go somewhere else, so it's done or close to done when I get back. For the 7-disc Ghost in the Shell series, I just did it over 2 days, swapping out discs whenever I happened to remember.
Of course I also installed Win95 on floppy discs back in the day, so maybe I'm just crazy :)
1. Ghost in the Shell 2. Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex - series not a movie 3. Primer 4. Zizek The Movie 5. Pi 6. Gattaca 7. Waydowntown
I personally find the 'cyberpunk' sub-genre of anime fascinating.(According to wikipedia entry: "Plots often centered on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and megacorporations")
The prime example would be the "Ghost in the Shell" anime series and movies. The Wachowski brothers, makers of "The Matrix", have mentioned this series as an influence.