Oh, a fair warning this will be pretty spoilery for both the movie and series, and while I'll avoid any major spoilers (like who the bad guys are, what their ultimate plan is, and how things are resolved), I will be discussing events that happen throughout all of it to make a point of how things are different and compare. I'll go into movie spoilers at the end of it, but minor spoilers will be sprinkled through the whole thing.
Needless to say it was a lot to take in, and considering that the series does't really have a soft starting ground (even in the original manga) starting off a major Hollywood film franchise was going to be difficult even if you had people who were willing to stay mostly true to the source material. For starters Hollywood is obsessed with backstory and exposition, and while GitS does provide these, one of the few times it near refuses to do so is with The Major. Giving her a backstory isn't necessarily a sin as she has more than ample character backstory hints dropped, nothing is ever spelled out to a point where you will know "this is who she was, where she came from, and why she is like this", and by leaving that out the series does something incredibly powerful, it lets you judge her for her actions and not her past.
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Needless to say the movie actually goes into this idea and really starts to dig up parts about here that really are better left buried and seldom discussed, mostly because it doesn't actually help to further the plot along and the questions that are asked like "Who is Major Mira Killian (Motoko Kusanagi)", "What is her past", "Why does it appear that she doesn't remember anything", and "How is Hanka involved" are mostly either redundant or just plain useless in terms of the larger scale. They're there just to advance what is honestly a poorly written plot in a forced direction that feels like the writers took every possible plot line from every piece of GitS in the past, tossed it in a bag, mixed it up, and pulled out the most coherent thing they could find, but even then parts of it barely held together and had me asking more questions than I was getting answers for. And if all that wasn't enough, the whole team dynamic that GitS HEAVILY leans on for its story structure, mainly to avoid Mary Sue characters that nobody likes, was noticeably missing this time around. I mean yea, the whole team is there, and you can kind of tell at one point it was something that was talked about in production, but was quickly given a "lol no fucking way" response and kicked out the door.
So while the whole movie more or less played out as 2 hours of ScarJo acting like a robot (or pretty much her normal shtick) until closer to the end when she finally decides to adopt her humanity because "she's not done here yet". Unfortunately this doesn't work well with the Major (also a HUGE thing that bugged me is that Major isn't her name, it's her rank, and while others leave out the preposition the from it, she NEVER does, except in this movie) as she is quite the expressive character, even in Arise, which is the canonical telling of her origins, she still displays very human reactions to not only the situations she's in, but also to the events transpiring around her. A prime example of this is that in both the movie and Arise she finds herself badly damaged after a fight needing repairs, in the movie her response is "Well next time maybe you can make me better" implying she doesn't see herself as human, but instead just a tool, while in Arise her response is along the lines of "Next time make this body a bit more durable then won't you", a response which indicates that she knows she is human and more than some machine, and while she may feel alone, she recognizes that her body is her greatest weapon and it should be held to a higher standard of production.
While these little details may not translate directly to ScarJos fault, you can certainly tell it in her portrayal from being genuinely nervous when she knows she's getting close to Kuze (something I will be going into later), which is something that is so out of character for her. The Major is nothing, if not confident. She knows and realizes that not every decision may be the right one, but she as a resilience and adaptability that not only stands to make her character more independent, but also to show her adversity when encountering and overcoming obstacles. She doesn't hesitate, instead every move is calculated and deliberately taken, and when something doesn't go as planned she corrects for it immediately and refocuses her efforts, this is a major part of her character that the movie lacked. In the movie not only does she have multiple scenes when she is hesitant, she also waits for obvious aggressors to make the first move, and not because she see's a strategic value in doing so, but because the director wanted to make tensions rise. And it's not just in one scene, she is constantly surprised and hesitant, showing a real sense of weakness to an otherwise very powerful character.
Something else of note, is that one thing GitS is really good about doing is not reusing established characters in related works. For example, The Laughing Man has never shown up again in a serious manner outside casual conversation or small relays to previous events in the series. This is something that the movie fails to realize. Hideo Kuze is one of the primary antagonists in the film with an entirely guessable plot context (as most of it honestly is). While I have been told that "it's a new universe, starting over isn't bad" normally I might be inclined to agree, but ask yourself how would you feel if it was revealed that Bowser was actually a human force evolved from a T-Rex? You'd probably be pretty mad that the koopa king was done such an injustice. So why is okay here? Kuze has an established purpose and meaning, and the film just kinda tosses that out the window with an attitude of "yea okay, but we need a name and this kinda works for what we want to do" like a poorly written 9th grade research paper. But here we are, stuck with an honestly subpar modification to who otherwise is one of my favorite antagonists of all time. And while other aspects of the movie really don't resonate well with me (for example Batou's eyes not being there the whole time, and Saito not even having a goddamned eyepatch) these were certainly the largest.
I would be remiss to nothing but critical of the movie however, as there were some aspects that I deeply enjoyed and honestly prevented me from writing this off completely. The most noticeable of these is the soundtrack. While I'm actually genuinely surprised by the use of Utai IV: Reawakening by Kenji Kawai it is one of the quintessential sounds associated with the series as a whole, but hearing that small part really made me smile on the inside. Overall it reminds me a lot of the Daft Punk soundtrack for Tron: Legacy but much much smoother and not made as a publicity stunt to sell tickets. Another aspect that I enjoyed was the costume design....mostly. Some of the costumes, like the Hanka technicians and the Majors stealth suit for example, are incredibly true to the original series, while others, like the Section 9 combat outfits go for a more modern approach, despite the fact that optic camouflage is a thing in the universe. Finally, I felt that the rendition of classic scenes were incredibly well done, from things like the infamous shelling sequence, to the Major ripping off the lid of the Spider Tank, for the most part Director Rupert Sanders did a faithful job of at least making these scenes true to their original form, even if the rest of it really fell out of place.
Overall I enjoyed Ghost in the Shell more than I thought I would, but sadly not as much as I should have. Seeing as it is one of the most near and dear to me franchises, with a history of well preserved plot lines across multiple renditions, thanks in no small part to Shirow Masamune, there is no reason for this fiasco to have entered into prominence on the big screen. Overall the movie wont stand on it's own, but hopefully it will succeed just enough for Hollywood to consider a more true to form remake in 20 or so years. Ghost in the Shell gets 2 poorly voiced dismembered cyborgs, out of 5.
Oh, you thought we were done didn't you? You thought that I completely forgot about the whole whitewashing thing that has surrounded this movie from day 1? Well nope, sorry I remembered that all too well, and this is also where the whole spoilers thing comes into play, so:
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Yea, the big Act 3 reveal in the movie, is that Major Mira Killian isn't actually a refugee like the movie suggested throughout all of it, but is instead a homeless runaway by the name of Motoko Kusanagi, and that Hanka Robotics too her and other runaways and used them for experimentation to create the next era of humans, robots with human minds and souls (ghosts), until they figure out that having a soul is actually a bad thing because it takes away control.
So yea, whitewashing is LITERALLY a plot point in the movie. Like, not in a subtle way either, it's a MAJOR reveal to who she is as a character that influences all of her choices at the end of the movie. couple this with the fact that ScarJo's makeup in the movie is designed to make her look more asian and you have me sitting here WTFing through the ludicrousness of all of this.
Oh and to further all of this, which makes the obvious detraction from the source all the more painful, is that of the two examples we see in the movie both were Japanese, and in order to perfect them, white people make them white. Like that isn't some obvious white supremecy white washing bullshit I really don't know what is. Is it a problem? Yes. Does it detract from the movie (for me at least)? Yes. Should Hollywood look to diversify and actually use resources avaliable rather than just jizzing on anything popular in pop culture? Fuck. Yes.
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