Movie Discussion! - Page 387

So, a western adaptation of a much-beloved anime series. Let me start this off by confessing that I was never into the Ghost in the Shell anime. It was always on at 2AM on Adult Swim and what I saw of it was really disjointed, and often involved those annoying-voiced-Tachi-fucking-koma. So I'm not super into Ghost in the Shell, I'm not super knowledgable about it, and I only vaguely care to go back and kinda watch through the important stuff in the show.

With that out of the way, heres my thoughts on Ghost in the Shell

The movie starts out with 'ol Major getting her cybernetic body, it looks great, the movie is good looking, the CGI is solid for the most part, the city as seen throughout the movie is pretty cool, the floating hologram-ads are badass and the world seems, well, cool. Not fully fleshed out, not necessarily real feeling through most of the movie, but it's pretty cool and you get the VIBE of it. You get the point.

The first 20 minutes to 1/3 of the movie, the Major kind of irritated the hell out of me. I dunno if it was the dialogue itself, or Scarlet Johansson's performance, but Major really came off as an edgy, stoned-faced-sarcastic, teenaged, existential whiner. I'm not sure if the point was to make her feel semi-emotionless, or to make her bitter, or what, but it came off in an irritating way. I imagine they were going for "shes a machine so shes like, stone faced" but they didn't really accomplish that, it's a fine idea but it just didnt portray well, the weird-sarcastic-self-harmy kinda thing she has just feels edgy. I think it could have been played off well, highlighting the dysfunction shes perceiving between her mind and her body and all of that (and the movie WILL REPEAT THIS AD NAUSEUM AT YOU) sadly I don't think it was done well, and the only reason I really got the point that she was that THEY REPEAT THE WORDS GHOST AND SHELL FREQUENTLY, AND EXPLAIN WHAT THEY MEAN, AND YEAH I FUCKING GET IT, GHOST = MIND/SOUL, SHELL = BODY. I DIDNT NEED THE EXPLANATION. I GET IT.

The movie is really kind of blunt with it's main idea, I think this is partly because it doesn't really do much to explore it in any real capacity until the latter half of the movie (and the movie gets better as it goes on.) The later scenes where the Major meets her mother and they kind of work that weird personal angle was kind of interesting, it's interjecting some actual humanity into the movie's point. The "villain" is solid with regards to the movie's central idea, Kuze is pretty interesting. Hes kind of... weird? He wants to kill the scientists who made him like Major, but want to kill him, and I'm not reaaaally sure I buy it, I think hes just a wee bit crazy? He also mentions uploading his ghost into a network and living on through that, I think thats a more interesting, tangible goal than the weird Frankenstein's monster thing he had going on (the network thing is kind of in passing and not really a focal point, despite the idea of a fully digital consciousness being pretty intriguing and relevant to the philosophy the movie wants to drive home.) Overall though, Kuze is a solid illustration of the kind of frayed mental state left from the transition from human to machine and brain to data, his character has the kind of appreciation for a purity of consciousness that I feel like Major was lacking through the first part of the movie. Now, another key part of the movie (at least during the early part of it) is the notion that the Major isn't really human anymore, and that shes kind of "othered" herself through her transformation into a fully robotic shell. I think this is a cool point, and I think this is where casting Scarlet Johansson should have been a pay off.

So yeah, I can't talk about this movie without talking about the whole race thing. I didnt strictly have a problem with casting Scarlet Johansson as a japanese character, the digital-japanese-ification thing is a little weird, but I didnt actually notice it much so I dunno. That being said, I wish they had just used a fucking japanese actress BECAUSE THIS MOVIE IS WEIRDLY DIVERSE FOR BEING SET IN FUCKIN' JAPAN.

Asia is a super homogeneous place, and yet there are black people, white people, asian people, and for some reason most of the important roles in this ARE PLAYED BY WHITE PEOPLE. Its weird! I didnt like it! This would have been a FANTASTIC opportunity to have a fully Japanese cast (save Kuze and Major) because part of Major not feeling like she shares what the people around her have (memories/purity of consciousness/humanity/wtfever) would have been FANTASTICALLY easy to visually hint at by using the extreme homogeny of Asian society to single out the two fuckin' people in the movie who are in full-robot-bodies rather than just Deus Ex-enhanced cyber parts on a human body. Kuze is white, Johannson is white, the visual distinctness from the people around them, and the connection between them would have been a great way to keep the movie feeling like its really Japan and while also driving home the visual point of "MAJOR IS DIFFERENT." The Chief is a TOTAL BADASS in this movie, he speaks exclusively japanese for some fucking reason (I liked it though, I actually wish more of the movie was just in japanese to kinda keep with the "MAJOR IS DIFFERENT" thing, just have them switch to english when they talk to certain characters, and then japanese with every other conversation. Would've felt more considered.) Theres so much to play with with regards to race in this movie, Asian countries are considered highly homogeneous and are often considered "robot-like" to the west (and this movie is played for a western audience, and believe me you fuckin' FEEL it.) You have an entire japanese society with all of these cultural associations already built into it for western audiences and you dont do shit with it! The idea of the homogeneous mass of "real humans" alongside the white-lady-"not real human"-Major would have made for some cool interplay, shes still a fuckin' Japanese person in the movie, but shes got a fabricated body, she can look white and be japanese and play to that dissonance between body and mind. But they never take the opportunity to play that up, so I'm bitter. TL:DR too many black and white people.

The latter part of the movie is where is started to get kinda good, Major meets Kuze, they kinda come to an understanding about their mutual disdain for their impure-consciousness and Major lets Kuze go and she goes on her little solo-stint from Section 9. My favorite scene in this movie is the Major getting her memories back and going to the home she had before getting her brain put into a robot-body. She meets her mother, it's very personal and it's got this heart-wrenching weirdness that this sad old asian mother is talking to her now-white-robot-probably-daughter. Major discovering her previous identity offers a bit more of a character building set for the Major, whereas in the beginning shes kind of emotionless and irritating, she really becomes a more likeable character in the latter half of the movie. I suppose whats shes really missing in the movie's eyes aren't really "memories" or "humanity" but "identity," I know these are abstract concepts, and they all kind of tie into one another, but I feel like they don't particularly establish that humanity is about identity, or that identity is about memories, they kind of hint that its about a certain "human consciousness" but it's such a broad multifacted idea that its kind of hard to understand what they're attributing to human consciousness, it kind of seems like they attribute lots of things to it and I never quite got a concrete idea that the movie knew what it was thinking or what it wanted us to think, or even if it DID want us to think.

Also, the action isn't great one scene is ACTIVELY hell to watch, its a bunch of people with fucking tazers zapping SUPER brightly in the dark, so its lots of quick bright flashes and it really hurts the eyes to watch. Can't even tell whats happening during the fight sequence.

The movie is at it's best, in my humble (re:crappy) opinion, when it's not being an action movie. If the movie would let the Major be just an apathetic-robot with general rumblings about her consciousness and let that build through Kuze, I think they'd accomplish more with Major as a character. Like, I'm still kind of thinking about the nature of what the movie considers human via the lense of that scene with the Major and her mother and I just find it interesting, it's an engaging scene, the weird dissonance between white-girl with really-asian-mom just kind of FEELS right for the scene, it's kind of awkward to think to yourself, "shit, thats Scarlet Johannson's mom... they look SO different, but Major IS japanese," its that kind of feels-wrong-but-feels-right sort of situations that I think this movie could have capitalized on more.

BTW, I don't approve of Batou's casting, ALSO he has his fucking eyes in for a fair amount of the movie, and they get damaged IN AN EXPLOSION SOMEHOW, fuck that was weird and shoehorned in and I HATED IT. I mean the actor did a fine job, but he just doesnt look right, doesnt sound right, a gruff japanese dude would've been way better for that role. You know what other casting parts I fucking hated? The real main villain, main-dude at Hanka Robotics, Captain Evil White Guy, WHY WAS HE WHITE? Hanka Robotics is just FILLED with fucking white people and I cannot begin to understand why. Is this an American or European corporation? I don't get it, maybe if the movie wasn't overall so diverse it wouldn't feel so weird that almost EVERY relevant character was white, Batou, Major, Ouelet, Dailin, Cutter, THEYRE ALL WHITE AND I DONT QUITE UNDERSTAND WHY. Make everyone japanese, make them speak japanese and I seriously think you're arriving at a more coherent movie, at the very least it'll visually cohere, because seeing all these white people, black people, asian people in fuckin Japan just feels weird, every random person who is important is white, theres a scene where Kuze hijacks some random fucks off the street and THEY HAPPEN TO BE WHITE? This is Japan god dammit, please make it feel like Japan, they're not even TRYING to make it feel like "well it could kinda be anywhere," the fuckin' Geisha scene at the start is ABSURDLY japanese, they're obviously intending to highlight the fact that the movie is in Japan and yet they seem to make every casting decision to suggest they're living in fuckin' futuristic US of A!

Man, that movie was a mixed bag. I'll give it a 6/10 because it had no Tachikoma (god I hate their lil voices in the damn anime), and I'm WILLING TO BET that they plan to put those into the sequel, which I'm also willing to bet they aren't going to make.

The movie is worth a watch, I can imagine people hating this movie, I can imagine them liking it a fair amount, it's worth it to give it a watch yourself and come to your own conclusions. I'm not a writer, I don't make stories, I'm a visual artist, so I kinda went in with that lens mind, so you might enjoy it, but it DOES have problems.

Feels like they tried to really make a Hollywood Blockbuster out of it, and it feels like almost noone along the way questioned many/any of the decisions they were making that lead to it feeling like a Hollywood Blockbuster.

nobody knows who is infected, etc.