I'm curios to hear if you have any specific critics.

I actually quite liked the movie, once you get over the fact that you are comparing it to the original anime, and the new elements it brought in, despite it being a bit too much dumbed down for hollywood audience.

I also never understood the SJW critics of white washing it, and it was in fact mostly white hollywood people that got offended. The Japanese themselves absolutely loved Scarlett Johansson in the role, and funnily they were more annoyed with Takeshi Kitano and why he spoke Japanese as the only one (he apparently even has a rep of being hard to hear what he says, so they joked that they missed subtitles on the Japanese part).

There are some valid criticisms, such as Kusanagi (as just Major, as they call her) being a too obvious emotionally considering she's not in a human body anymore, and it differed quite a bit from the original content. Some other things too.

I ended up walking out about halfway through it. I had no problems with the casting (I though Scarlet did a good job), and the visual effects were stunning. It was the writing and plot that weren't good. I found it missing all the implied sub-plots (it was overly simple - as you said - dumbed down).

I also found myself missing the interludes from the animated film. The scenes with the canals, the jet passing overhead between the buildings. They all had a beauty to them and they let you reflect on what happened in the previous scene. This film proceeded too quickly from one scene to another, likely because the studio was afraid people would get bored if something wasn't happening every single moment.

I agree, I was actually hoping the montage where she walks around the city with no dialog would be in the movie. Even without that, it felt like they rushed the tempo and deleted scenes. But: I also saw casual viewers say the movie was boring, they were falling asleep in the theater, etc. So it seems like GITS 17 tried (and failed) to balance to be a Hollywood blockbuster and GITS at the same time.

I recommend watching this[1] PBS Idea Channel interview, which addresses this issue specifically.

> The Japanese themselves absolutely loved Scarlett Johansson in the role

That's discussed at 10:40 in [1]. Briefly, Japanese films don't really have a whitewashing problem, so it's easy for the people in Japan to accept this film. In Japan the casting isn't reinforcing representation and visibility problems (asian erasure). Those problems do exist in Hollywood.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkfrZ91jA_0

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-be...

I have some sympathy for Paramount in this. First the social-​justice types went after them for not casting an Asian lead, then the critic reviews were unkind, then it really under-performed at the box office, and now people are upset about the music not being released… Some marketing exec over there is probably like “I don’t want to hear about GITS anymore, ever!”

No sympathy whatsoever. They kinda inverted the main plot.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

What they made: A (slightly technophobic) very human and involentary cyborg fighting for humanity and letting the equally human anti-hero die to keep on fighting for the human race against digitalization and greedy other humans. Also: strange human trafficking sob-story.

What it was: The first cyborg without any human tissue remaining fighting for justice and falling in love with the genderless anti-hero who is first machine gaining conciousness. They fall in love, unite in death, are reborn as a child and are the first thing far beyond humanity: a human soul and AI hybrid, the first life-form beeing native to the physical and the digital world. Also a loveletter to technology.

Other than the "love", you've hit exactly on why I dislike the movie.

I don't care who they cast or recast if they would just get the point of the story, but western media has no concept of how to do a proper narrative about identity and can't accept any story involving technology that isn't bemoaning it and "exposing" how dangerous it is to us and society as a whole.

In other words, western media becomes a drooling idiot when discussing either of these topics.

That is very true. I kept hearing about how they copied the original so closely. But they changed the story and characters, besides the size of Major's boobs. I would have gotten past the distractions if the core of the story had been there.

> ...western media has no concept of how to do a proper narrative about identity...

I must be misunderstanding your complaint, because it seems that everyone's favorite metaplot is about identity these days. Off the top of my head:

- Frozen: choosing own future and identity over what was given you

- Dark Knight: projecting an inaccurate identity to protect people

- Zootopia: overcoming prejudice by breaking glass ceilings

- The Crown: how to manage contradictory identities (head of church, head of state), overcoming prejudice

Especially on the nose:

- Westworld: I don't want to get into too many plot details, but there are absolutely questions of identity, both for humans and for artificially intelligent machines.

Just because it's their favorite, doesn't mean they do it well. Some of your examples are perfect for a surface look at identity. They focus on how our concept of identity affects our day to day life and how we can manipulate that to help or hurt. Others, like Frozen, really have little to nothing to do with identity and instead are that tired plot of "figuring out who I am" which, yeah that's kind of what identity is but it's not really looking at the concept of identity.

But that's not what GitS is about.

I'm referring to a more philosophical approach, even an abstract one. GitS specifically is looks at identity as a malleable thing. To a "western audience", in the original film, The Major is no longer The Major at the end. Or at least, they'd be reassured by her familiar voice and reassure themselves that it really is still her and they haven't lost their protagonist. "Well, she sounds the same and seems to act the same, must be the same person."

This is again a very surface look at identity. I'm not saying this is bad subject material or even wrong, but it gets very old when every movie throws in you face how deep and interesting they are because they're about "identity" when really they're just about "stuff people do in situations" or applying a rigid concept of identity to some character's struggles.

Westworld is a really interesting thing. They partly live from what they (ironically?) criticise: Boobs and Gore for entertainment. Incerdibly well made though, I hope the "us against them" of machine and humans will blur a bit further.

A good summary. The original and the movie have nothing in common aside from the setting and some character names.

The visuals were amazing, but the movie might as well have been named "cyborgs in hong kong".

Let me first say that I'm one of the last people anyone would call a SJW. I subscribe to Gavin McInnes and Milo Yiannopoulos on YouTube. But replacing the Major and Batou with white people bothered me. It's not that I think it's wrong. But it was distracting for me, and got the whole thing off on the wrong foot with fanboys who would have been the primary audience. What if they casted Gandalf as some Indian guy? Or replaced Tarkin with a completely cgi character? Oh wait, they did do that...

I think it's reasonable to object to the casting, especially for those who enjoyed the originals. People form an emotional attachment to stories.

What I find striking in this whole culture wars thing is how asymetrical it is: there's no principles, it's always white/western people being wrong (well, I suppose that's a principle too). Example: when fans of Stephen King's The Dark Tower objected to casting a black actor for the white gunslinger, these same people who complain about white-washing called the objecting people racists and what not. They even went as far as stating that it was only in the fans' minds that the gunslinger was white, that he could equally well have been black, thereby betraying that they'd never even read the series.

Personally, I enjoyed Ghost in the Shell despite its flaws, and I'm pretty sure I'm also going to enjoy The Dark Tower, despite the fact that it's radically changing a central part of the plot of the books.

Well, like I said. For me it's not a matter of what's right or wrong, just the fucking with of characters that I care about because the same Hollywood stars in every other movie have to be in this one too. I grow tired of the monotony.

The Gun Slinger was definitely white in the long series of comic books which Stephen King helped create, so I'm not sure how anyone can say that it was just in their minds. But any adaptation of a epic series of novels into a couple hours of film is going to have to change drastically anyways. And I'm usually excited to see Idris Elba in something. GITS was already in movie format, and the core of the story could have been done justice.

I definitely get the casting issue, but I also don't think it's a reason to dismiss the whole movie. (I saw a lot of people on Twitter who were excited that GITS underperformed Boss Baby.) My view is that, weak script and other issues aside, in terms of visuals nobody can deny it's a labor of love (and a love letter to GITS fans). I just realized last week that that the triangle shape and glitching motifs in the GITS '17 branding were a homage to the opening credits of GITS 95.

I suppose I agree with you. And as to the original point, the music was still great. I'd like to hear this original soundtrack. GITS is just one of those things that meant a lot to me, so I probably take it too serious. I was just as upset when Stand Alone Complex added silly talking tanks to the cast. I guess had high hopes when I heard it was supposed to be so much like the original.

I didn't want it to fail, but I've seen Hollywood shit on too many things I cared about growing up. First they turned Spock into a action hero, now they do this to the Major. Geez, maybe I am a fanboy.

I'm not a social-justice type, but I did choose to not see this movie for casting a caucasian actress as the lead. It's not quite as egregious as the Bruce Lee biopic where the protagonist isn't Bruce Lee [1], but I still believe GITS supports Hollywood's overall whitewashing problem.

It might be hard for someone non-Asian to appreciate what it's like growing up without a single Asian role model in Hollywood (I'm not even east asian, I'm south asian but I'll take what I can get). I'm not demanding that every movie or show have equally diverse casts, and I don't expect the next Spiderman or Bond to be black, but if the original story was Japanese with all Japanese characters can we please not make the lead caucasian every time?

[1]. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37570803

Absolutely, I understand. I didn't mean to be dismissive about the casting issue.

Why would you have sympathy for Paramount? All of those things are pretty much their fault.

1) Just cast an Asian lead 2) Make a better movie 3) See 1 and 2 4) Just release the music