Hmm, even with the americanizing GitS could work.......long as the characters are kept close to the originals and the story is played out well....and ScarJo could make a good Motoko.

 

Street Fighter
Dragonball Evolution
Fist of the North Star
Speed Racer
Astro Boy

Yeah....I have no faith Hollywood will do any better with this one.

 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand there goes Scarlett's career.

I have to agree, if those movies based on various anime (except for Street Fighter, that was based on a game) couldn't work, what makes people think Ghost in the Shell will be the one that gets it right?

 

Better question, has there been ANY that was above average/decent?
I like ScarJo, love GitS, but am having trouble seeing how the anime could be translated well into a movie. well, american movie. They should take notes from the people who did Rurouni Kenshin

 

I'm cautiously optimistic. This really isn't whitewashing...yet. Motoko's a full-body replacement cyborg, so she can look however she wants; in the manga, I never thought of her as appearing ethnically distinctive. Same goes for Batou. Now, Togusa and Aramaki should be played by Japanese actors, especially Aramaki.
I'm certainly worried that they'll end up moving the story to Seattle or something, and change all the names, and then I'll definitely be pissed off. Till then, I'm holding out hope that a more worldly American audience combined with the newly influential Asian movie markets will persuade Spielberg that a Tokyo-set movie with Japanese-named characters will work just fine.

Honestly, I don't know why they didn't choose to make Appleseed, instead. It's naturally suited to a US audience. Fictional city, Caucasian main characters, powered armor, and some really interesting (but not too heavy-handed) takes on the "what does it mean to be human" trope.

 

So when is Scarlett going to start doing Verizon commercials?

No seriously, this is horrible casting. Couldn't they get someone Asian to do it? Hell, what about the girl from Pacific Rim? She would have been a much better choice if I had to choose an okay actress.

THis movie is just DB Evolution all over again. Hopefully this movie ends up being canned.

Yes, I understand Motoko is in a robot body, so that is the only saving grace. However, her name is MOTOKO KUSANAGI. It doesn't get more Japanese than that. They better at least get Japanese actors for the rest of the cast because I can't take a non-Japanese Yakuza member seriously.

 

Edge of Tomorrow (All You Need is Kill) turned out pretty well.

 

Why are the Yakuza being brought into this? Motoko works for the government.

 

That's what I was wondering as well  

 

incidentally, it is also the best video game movie of all time, too.  

i thought Fist of the North Star was pretty solid. it's clearly the "best" out of all the adaptions from japan. Speed Racer isn't much a speed racer movie, and more of hot wheel movie. and for what it is, i thought it was fun. if not just for the visuals alone.

astro boy was pretty much just boring. Street Fighter makes a great Gi Joe movie, and i still think the blood: the last Vampire, is an okay movie. it is at least average. it's rushed as hell, but it is still well acted, and well directed. it just feels chopped down to 90 minutes.

i think eventually hollywood WILL do one. it took awhile before american comic book movies started getting good. that didn't really happen until the 1989 batman movie. and even in the 90's, comic book movies were pretty much terrible. and didn't start getting good until recently. as recent as batman begins.

So i think hollywood does have potential to get one done right. and entertaining. just not yet. maybe 2 decades down the line. after trying. but i am surprised they're still going after all the hard to do, big budget ones. instead of the manga's that'd be completely easy to do. like gunsmith cats, or noir.

yet they still try to do the ones that are nearly impossible to do with the budgets they are putting into them.

also; we can't forget about Lion King.

 

I'm referring to Pazu.

The problem with Scarlett is that she can NOT pull off Motoko's male aspects.

 

i have yet to see Scarlett pull off acting. really.

 

She does a better job than Megan Fox and Kirsten Stewart though.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about this casting yet, but with Kusanagi being a cyborg, the race thing doesn't really bother me. I'd certainly be happy with someone like Rinko Kikuchi playing the major, but then they might as well just make it in Japanese with Eng dub... but they won't, so...

 

Since when does a person's name define the color of their skin and the shape of their eyes? I know a couple of European-descended kids with Japanese names. I know TONS of Asians with European names. My own family will, in coming generations, look less and less "Asian", but will most likely retain Chinese names. I have no problem looking at Scarlett and seeing a character named Motoko Kusanagi.

Rinko Kikuchi would be fine if the movie were a Japanese production, subtitled in English. Leading an English-speaking movie full of complex, rapid-fire dialogue is a bit much to ask (she was excellent in Pacific Rim, but her best lines were delivered in Japanese). I, of course, would gladly pay to see multilingual movie where everyone just speaks their native language, but I'm in a tiny minority in that regard.

I normally despise recasting of Asian characters; I've had to wait my whole life for Asian actors to get some recognition in Hollywood, and we're finally right on the cusp of that, even if it is, for now, mostly in comedy. There are most certainly dozens of Japanese-American actresses in Hollywood who would be excellent for this role, and thanks to star power, never even had a shot. However, in this case, I'm oddly okay with it.

Maybe it's because, for me, Masamune Shirow's works always seemed to transcend race. His fictional societies are so nonchalant about human-cyborg-AI-bioroid interactions, and his stories so focused on the larger topic of being human at all, that the whole topic of ethnicity just never really entered into it for me.

 

My guess is its due to various CGI movies that come out every couple of years, with the last one coming out last summer.

 

well that is because she is not annoying. lol like those two are.

 

You act as if that requires an incredible amount of skill

 

I think Black Lagoon could make for a decent Rated R action flick if it was in a grindhouse esque director hands with a big budget.

 

Well if nothing else it would be difficult as shit for a foreigner (no matter how skilled) to gain that level of security clearance in another government she would need to have the level of authority she does. Mind you a shitload of the backstory involves severe shifts in the geopolitical lines so it could be done. But yeah, so much of the meat of the story is what it means to be a human being that racial and ethnic divides are ignored.

Look, if you put a gun to my head, Scarlett would be my choice if I couldn't have a Japanese actress, but I'd liked to have seen one.