That’s when a human being experiences a BSOD for real.
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I knew a guy who was had a phobia of paper. Made things quite difficult!
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I remember watching a TV show once and there was this guy who was afraid of bananas for some reason.
Did he spend a long time in jail? …
… I’ll see myself out.
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No, he didn’t. He had to seek therapy though.
I hate to use this as a platform to complain, but allow me to indulge.
So, I’m going to put this in a pseudo-essay format. I found the Ghost in the Shell Live action remake to be an affront to the intelligence of the viewer. Each and every turn they took it was operating on the assumption that the average viewer is too dim to be entertained by a deep concept, and the dedicated viewer will be too dim or lazy to know better.
I’ll address the casting choices first.
Hollywood does this special little thing where they manage to pander to white folks in a way that is pedantic towards white people, while ignoring all minorities that you can’t ‘make a dime off of’.
It took Hollywood decades upon decades to recognize that Black and Hispanic viewpoints, outside of the lens of a caricature, were a marketable source of income. I don’t so much blame them for their moral flexibility towards a population they purported to support, as they are a business in the end, but rather for how late they arrive at the game.
Now I feel the same can be said about cultures other than our own. Often times, when Hollywood makes a film about a foreign culture it is always through the lens of how it pertains to our own.
Film about Samurai? Add Tom Cruise, some how make him the last Samurai.
Series about Kublai Kahn? Make Marco Polo some how the titular character.
47 Ronin? Neo’s got you covered folks.
Gods of pre-Ptolemaic Egypt? A Lannister always pays his producers.
I don’t even chalk it up to racism but rather the assumption that Americans (and Westerners by Proxy) are not interested in something they cannot immediately relate with, and why is that assumption made when they are rarely ever presented with it?
Why is that assumption made? Look at the length westerners go to in order to better understand the often difficult to grasp (due to cultural differences) themes from Miyazaki.
So, a recap. The characters, who played them and how they were horrible.
Major Motoko Kusa… wait, Mira Killian? What the hell is a Mira Killian? Played by Scarlett Johansson.;
Scarlett Johanssons lack the ability to play the Major correctly. I decided to look past the fact that she was meant to be played by a Japanese woman, and how important it would’ve been for Asian women in general to see one of their icons portrayed on the silver screen. I decided to look past it. But what I couldn’t look past is what they turned Motoko in to. In both the movies and the series, the most amazing thing about the character is she completely lacks certain tropes. Motoko is always incredibly reserved and in complete control of her emotions, the opposite of Batou. There are a few instances where she loses her cool, but it is usually expressed as rage, not fear or despair. Her sense of mortal detachment makes her unique in the world, having never really been human in her own eyes. Scarlett Johansson was completely incapable of playing that role. Her transitions between overtly emotional and ‘Beep-Boop I am a robot, watch me talk weird.’ Were grating to the eye to watch, and piercing to the ear, even if you had no concept of the character prior to that.
Batou as played by Pilou Asbaek, a.k.a. Euron Cybereyes;
First of all, who in the hell chose a 6’0" (as tall as I am) person to play some one who is meant to be the ‘overwhelming muscle’ of Japan’s most elite police force. I imagine the same person who decided to skip ‘everything-day’ and beef up Pilou with a mix of camera angles and really puffy jackets. See, I am not even going to speak as to whether or not Pilou could properly ‘act’ as Batou, because Batou was allotted absolutely no personality in the film. His lines of dialogue were written in such a way that he wasn’t speaking to Mira, but rather, Motoko. So there was this unbearable detachment, as you saw Pilou speak to the real ‘Ghost’ in the plot, which is Motoko; a phantom in every scene who was removed from the script hastily. His ‘badboy’ brash persona didn’t exist, as it had been adopted by the entirety of the cast, bar none, in order to ‘Americanize’ the film, which left Batou with nothing.
Aramaki played by Beat ‘subtitles’ Takeshi;
Perhaps the only adequate casting choice in regards to getting the look and talent down, and it was run in to the ground by more errors than I’ll give myself leave to mention in a single rant. Let’s look past the awkwardness of a single character speaking in Japanese as the entirety of the cast operates exclusively in English (while in Japan). How’d they mess up the simplest task? Aramaki was always one of my favorite characters in the series, and the reasons are plentiful. He provides the necessary political clout and, with a sense of humanity, displays the pragmatism which is necessary to handle situations that exist wholly in moral gray zones. Beat Takeshi accomplishes none of that. He is given a muted role, as some taskmaster who provided no wisdom whatsoever. His role could’ve been covered by a video game style mission map pointing you towards the next objective. Takeshi was the one tool they could work with, and they failed.
Togusa played by the rest of the cast’s Dad;
On the topic of detachment, if you ever want an interesting lesson in poor film making view all of the scenes in the film where the cast is speaking to Togusa and see whether or not you recognize who they’re speaking to if the camera doesn’t cut directly to him. Ironic that they’d fail to flesh out the only all flesh character in the plot. The ‘rookie cop’ is played by the oldest cast member speaking English. The persona swings back and forth between how he was originally written, to how the actor and circumstances on set demanded he be played. Creating moments of pure hilarity where you wonder whether Togusa is being ghost hacked as he is clearly being possessed by two different entities both of which are vying for screen time. One of my favorite moments is when they left in his aversion to cybernetics but forgot that they’d changed the plot to have Motoko as the only ‘full-cyborg’ and under distressing circumstances known to everyone. It made Togusa’s lines go from the impassioned naivety it was meant to have directly towards; ‘hey, why does that guy keep picking on the crippled girl?’
Ishikawa played by ‘See, we’re not racist. We’ve got a minority right here’;
I think one of the most offensive things about this film is the contrived contortions they made in bleak attempts towards not being perceived as racist. Ishikawa, the intellectual powerhouse of Section 9 is played a Fijian actor who is given very little to work with. Ishikawa’s role is almost removed in the film, and he exists only as a nod to the fact that he existed in the manga/movies/show. What little interaction he does have, he comes off as some what glib and cheeky. I would’ve even accepted a full rewrite of the character of Ishikawa, were it not for the fact that he adds nothing to a plot other than another lifeless body.
Hideo Kuze played by an argument being had in living rooms as to whether he is related to Brad;
NO. NO. NO. How do you drop the ball on this one? It was so simple. Choose another antagonist of any kind, at all. 2501 would’ve been perfect for this as he technically doesn’t have a race, you could’ve gone white and everything would’ve been alright! I cannot stress the level of incompetence on this one, but I really do feel like I would like to play it out for you. At some point in the process, they were wondering who the villain is going to be, considering the plot had already been changed dramatically. After what I imagine where a few suggestions (as it had originally been the Laughing Man), they went with Hideo Kuze. They went with it. They could’ve made a villain called Steve Harper, and the entire movie could’ve been about a new case, and the fans wouldn’t have made a peep. But okay, Hideo Kuze. They went on to cast a white person for that role. At this point you must be thinking; ‘Well, perhaps they couldn’t shake off all that white love they were feeling, but still needed the character depth already created by him.’ Nope, they completely rewrote the character in to something absolutely unrecognizable. I’m going to leave off with this. Three of the most powerful moments I’ve seen in episodic television history are ‘The Spoils’ (Rome), ‘The Rains of Castamere’ (GoT), and ‘Grass Labyrinth’ (GitS:SAC). They had immeasurable wealth to work with when it came to Kuze, and they managed nothing.
Plot.
Now, we’re going to make the leap and say that there was a ‘plot’. I’ll condense it for you and explain to you it’s inanity.
There are roughly 20,000 films whose major premise is; ‘Noooo, but who am I really?’ Identity is a pretty important thing and the ability to deny that from a human being makes for some pretty easy to follow plot line.
At it’s core, Ghost in the Shell is about existentialism and the qualifications of personhood. Can humans create something which qualifies as human by something more than the reproductive methods we’ve been given, and when do we ourselves cease to be human? Can you come to sympathize with, or even care for something that is a product with no inherent physical form? If we are the product of our thoughts and our beliefs, can something which perpetuates those thoughts and beliefs be our attempt at immortality?
The above are the basic aspects of Ghost in the Shell universe, and it goes far deeper than that. It asks questions on the justifications of violence, the necessity for thought control to keep the peace, the role of government and technology in our daily lives. Just to name very few.
None of these are brought up by this shoddy remake.
In this film the Major is the first of her kind, but not really! Because it turns out she’s about the 90th, the other 89 were failed experiments. So immediately we’re shifted from the traditional world of GitS where the major threat is the normalcy behind cyberization and the degeneration of self. The to one where the drawbacks have been decided for us to be far greater than the benefits.
In line with your typical action film these days, the evil entity in this is Umbrella… err Hankar corporation who has decided to do unthinkable things in a clandestine way because money is good. Money driven corporations always existed in the GitS universe, but they knew better than to make them the topic of contention. At best they would provide a means for the perpetuation of a plot as part of an entire host of moving parts.
But even then, we never really see what is occurring in such a way that it makes any real sense. Everything is presented to us by way of exposition, nearly everything. We actually see very little of what is going in so far as police work goes, and even the ideas are not implied or shown to us, they’re told to us.
We aren’t presented a paradigm, we simply have one described to us.
Mira: "GEE I WONDER IF I AM STILL REALLY HUMAN."
Batou: "You totally are, because I’ve got swirly eyes and I am rad."
Mira: "Thanks Batou, you always know what to say and take as long as a Treant to say it."
Kuze: "BUT DE TERK YER IDENTITY."
Mira: "DEY TUK MY WHAT?"
Kuze: 'DEEYYY TEEERK YER IDYTITIES.'
Mira: "WHO WAS I?"
Kuze: "YOU WERE ASIAN,BUT THEY WANTED YOU PERFECT SO THEY MADE YOU WHITE!"
Mira: "Whoa dude, not cool. You’ll offend Aramaki.
Aramaki: 馬鹿
This goes on for nearly two hours, where we’re provided a level of reasoning between fight scenes that is reminiscent to 2D arcade games explaining why you need to take out M. Bison.
And all of this is done under this umbrella of ‘look at the art direction’!
What art direction? The only impressive scenes were taken wholesale out of the anime and seem completely out of place in a plot line that doesn’t set them up. You’d receive the same level of art direction by asking a graphic design post grad the opportunity to make a 4k demo of what GitS would’ve looked like if it were produced in 2017.
In conclusion;
Everyone responsible for the film should be absolutely ashamed of themselves, absolutely ashamed. There isn’t an aspect of what makes film important in our society that managed to make it’s way to the final cut of that film.
And I am not going to completely chalk it up to racism. I really won’t. I don’t think that the producers, writers, and cast were all sitting around the traincar listening to Lili Marleen blasting from their record player.
But what this shows is the genuine disregard and disrespect that so many of these companies have towards their users.
They assume we’re too stupid to introduce us with a plot that requires us too think.
They assume we’re too self-centered to relate with a character different from ourselves.
They assume we’re too eager to avoid buying their product.
They assume that they get to call all the shots.
I have a blacklist of people I refuse to give a dime to.
Names like;
Tom Cruise
Roman Polanski
And a few more. I wonder if I should be updating that list.
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10:44 PM - billthebetta: unless i’m stuck in the car
10:44 PM - billthebetta: i try to have something to listen to/watch while I’m breeding
10:44 PM - billthebetta: right now it’s guys screaming about a really ■■■■■■ anime
10:44 PM - Stouty22: Hmmm
10:45 PM - billthebetta: once this finishes up, I think it’s
10:45 PM - billthebetta: "guys screaming about a really ■■■■■■ movie"
10:45 PM - billthebetta: but before that
10:46 PM - billthebetta: "guy calmly screaming about video game"
10:46 PM - Stouty22: NINGAN
10:46 PM - billthebetta: holy ■■■■ a lot of my youtube feed is “guys screaming”
I feel like I should change something about my taste in video entertainment, but I do have a good time with it all…
I should probably mention that “breeding” refers to breeding pokemon, not, uh. Yeah. Ok.
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Finally got around to putting Linux on my desktop. Been meaning to do it for ages due to various… dissatisfactions with Windows. It’s not a huge effort although I’ll have to reinstall my Nvidia stuff. Quite a few games need Windows but not Borderlands so I should be able to phase into this as my primary OS.
Oooooh, yeah that makes more sense now.
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Been making my way through HL1 for the first time, it’s sure is an adventure
screw that helicopter though
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I love that game. My first FPS… good writing.
I mean for where I am atm there’s not a whole lot of writing…
Everything went bad get to the military, ok.
Military bad help others and yourself to escape, ok.
shrug
I just like Marc Laidlaw’s tone and conceptual pacing. NPC dialogue is scant but has flair… and some decent cutscenes, I like the last one a lot. I prefer Half-Life 1 to 2 actually.
I never played the original Half-Life. Back in 1998 I was busy with games like Zelda OoT, Turok 2, Resident Evil 2, etc.
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It’s currently like 0.9 bucks on Steam and runs almost flawlessly for me, win10.
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Thanks for the tip Twister. I may go get it.
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Yeah, my story on that one is weird too. I played it online for Counterstrike back then, but I didn’t actually play the campaign till Black Mesa a few years back.
It’s hot