Joined: Apr 2001 Posts: 121,384PanzerMeyer
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PanzerMeyer
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Can you make a faithful film adaptation of Ghost in the Shell with a budget of less than 40 million? I ask that because that's pretty much what a studio would need to do to insure profitability. If you want to make a sci-fi film with a bigger budget you HAVE to make it have broad appeal.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
... The early screenings confirm this is not a movie for the fans. It plays homage visually to the anime, but fails to go deep enough in the deep themes that made that anime stand out. It seems it is more focused on the action than in the story.
i know some might say that that is for the benefit of appealing to mainstream audiences. Not false, but that is not a strength, but a weakness. .
The crux of the matter is money. If you are going to make the film appeal mostly to the hardcore fans and thus keep it relatively esoteric then no studio is going to give you a big budget to make the film.
If you are willing to make the film more "mainstream" by adding more action scenes and dialing back the philosophizing then studios will be more willing to take the risk and give you a budget of 100 million or more.
That's just the way the movie business works.
Del Toro had the same problem trying to get "At the Mountains of Madness" made. Del Toro wanted to make it true to the source. The studios wanted to make the story better by having a more up ending and a romance. Standard studio meddling.
Joined: Apr 2001 Posts: 121,384PanzerMeyer
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PanzerMeyer
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Originally Posted by Jedi Master
The BIG problem is the film takes place in Japan. Yet there are only a few Japanese actors in it, the rest being white, black, and otherwise.
They couldn't cast supporting and background actors to fit the location? I'm sure there are lots of blacks and latinos in Japan.
The Jedi Master
Yeah really. That's fricking absurd!
I can't believe that neither Hiroyuki Sanada or Ken Watanabe are in it.
Last edited by PanzerMeyer; 03/29/1702:17 PM.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
They probably didn't have the budget for Watanabe. As for Sanada, maybe he was too busy that day?
Every culture has an actor like him. England had Christopher Lee. America has Sam Jackson. Japan has Sanada. Never met a role too small, a film too weak, a job too sad to say "yes" to.
The Jedi Master
The anteater is wearing the bagel because he's a reindeer princess. -- my 4 yr old daughter
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Bib4Tuna
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This was OK.
It is Ghost in the Shell light. That was expected. Characters lost a lot of complexity.
If people forget the original anime once, it will be considered a classic someday just for the visual elements.
NOTE: The movie never says where it takes place (the original does take place in Japan). Also, a poll in Japan had results where most of the audience preferred that The Major was not Japanese. Again, this is prestigious for an oriental movie - that a main character is a Westerner.
Call me nuts or a heretic or whatever, but I've never understood the "thing" people have for Ghost in the Shell. I watched the anime again after two decades and still don't understand why it is a "thing." It is stylish, yes, but the plot is rather bland and the main character is even more bland. I just don't understand, and nobody has ever been able to explain why. FYI I dislike Akira, too, but I love anime in general--I grew up watching it. Take Evangelion, for instance, it is one of the greatest anime series of modern time, in my opinion, modern being post 1990. There are tons of great anime made before 1990...
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Bib4Tuna
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That's actually OK. There is lots of Anime I do not care for, even some that is considered seminal or classical. like ummmm....enjoy... https://youtu.be/Dm9WVS5shJo
It is like sci-fi. it has grown with may themes and stories, so you can choose what calls to your preference.
Basically it deals with themes of when does a cybernetic enhanced human stops being human, or can it ever stop being a human if it retains their consciousness. When does technology as a tool to improve us, becomes an agent that affects our own sense of humanity. Similar themes were later explored by The Matrix (what is reality, if you can make an artificial one that is indistinguishable from the natural one).
Also, for it's time, the combination of computer generated and drawn animation was unique.
That video you linked... I found funny. But I picked up on a lot of the inside humor, having a background in martial arts and healthy doses of Fist of the North Star and Ranma 1/2.
I understood Ghost in the Shell when I saw it--but the plot, like Akira's, seemed rather canned and going through the motions, unlike (what I consider) superior series such as Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Macross, etc., or PC games like Snatcher and System Shock. There's many others I could list, but if you've seen those, maybe you'll see what I'm getting at.
lol, as a flight sim site gathering we here are inevitably biased towards space, mecha and fighter planes --> well for myself at least hell yeah!
i consider GITS a beauty but not exactly on a pedestal. you also gotta consider it was made in the mid 90s whose subject has been explored over and over since then. maybe back then 'twas the movie for nerds and now the topic has finally saturated enough for the masses to resonate with..
but the hollywood movie for me is like.. meh. probably enjoyable but don't have high hopes. Originality is really important for these, one adaptation i found really great was "the Departed", which was awesome but probably the exception. last adaptation i've seen is "Secret in their eyes", from the Argentinian flick of same name and watched both. it was like night and day difference.
for good animes just check myanimelist.com or similar IMDB equivalent sites. current top 1 rank movie was pretty new, watched it in theater, was quite nice. one doesn't always have to chase the mass marketing hype.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
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Originally Posted by Raw Kryptonite
Overseas? I think this was made more for the Eastern market.
It's only doing slightly better overseas but it may not be enough for this movie to end up in the black. Remember Warcraft? That made a huge amount of money outside the US but the planned sequel was dropped anyway.
Honestly though, besides sci-fi/anime enthusiasts, who had heard of "Ghost in the Shell"?? The movie adaptation should have never been made. It's a niche subject/property and it will remain that way.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
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Bib4Tuna
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Yes. When you lose the weekend to "Boss Baby" it's time to pick up your bags and go home.
GitS had so much against it in terms of writing, directing and casting that is understandable it ends up being a disappointment for fans of the original. Grounding your marketing on what the movie is based on, instead on what it is on its own failed to attract people unfamiliar with the subject.
However, its visuals are unique, and once it comes out on BR and streaming it may gain track as a cult classic on the basis of visuals alone. Took a while for people to catch up to Blade Runner back in the day.
2017 has not been kind to sci-fi in movie's box office. If Valerian bombs, we might be going into the dark age of space sci-fi (although Valerian, like Star Wars, is more fantasy themed).
EDIT: Interestingly, its PG-13 rating might have hurt the movie too. Lately, obscure or niche superhero and sci-fi movies with adult subject matter seem to do better when released with an adult audience in mind.
I think the reason sci-fi often bombs is Hollywood doesn't "get" sci-fi. Sci-fi isn't about kitschy gadgets or spiffy-cool gizmos and stylish outfits, sci-fi has always been about big ideas, philosophies and concepts, things with a bigger meaning than the characters that comprise the plot. Often, these ideas are thought-provoking, inspirational, dark or paradigm shifting. From what little I saw of Ghost in the Shell, it looked as if it fell into the Hollywood superhero bullcrap trap.
That ain't sci-fi.
We want 2001, or the original Blade Runner, or The Martian, Contact or Interstellar. Granted, some of these had a sense of style about them, but they also had /plenty/ of substance. Sometimes, that substance can be combined with more mainstream elements and work, such as The Fifth Element(which never gets old, but is an amazing work of editing and character dynamic art)--but simply, "Hey, guns and explosions and robots and hot chicks in tight outfits are cool!" Doesn't make for awesome sci-fi. It scares folks like myself away.
I need steak. Not cotton candy.
I saw an awesome sci-fi film last night from 1982 called "Android." It was awesome. And I think the budget was only 500k. Most people would scoff and dismiss it. But the film "got" what sci-fi is about. Granted, it borrowed a little from Blade Runner, but later films like Terminator and beyond borrowed from it. I won't give away much, but it is worth a watch from true sci-fi fans.
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Originally Posted by Mr_Blastman
I think the reason sci-fi often bombs is Hollywood doesn't "get" sci-fi. Sci-fi isn't about kitschy gadgets or spiffy-cool gizmos and stylish outfits, sci-fi has always been about big ideas, philosophies and concepts, things with a bigger meaning than the characters that comprise the plot. Often, these ideas are thought-provoking, inspirational, dark or paradigm shifting. From what little I saw of Ghost in the Shell, it looked as if it fell into the Hollywood superhero bullcrap trap.
That ain't sci-fi.
We want 2001, or the original Blade Runner, or The Martian, Contact or Interstellar. Granted, some of these had a sense of style about them, but they also had /plenty/ of substance. Sometimes, that substance can be combined with more mainstream elements and work, such as The Fifth Element(which never gets old, but is an amazing work of editing and character dynamic art)--but simply, "Hey, guns and explosions and robots and hot chicks in tight outfits are cool!" Doesn't make for awesome sci-fi. It scares folks like myself away.
You make some very valid points. I think the fundamental reason why "Ghost in the Shell" failed at the box office is because no one had ever heard of the original anime film except for hardcore scifi geeks like us. This is essentially the same thing that happened to "John Carter".
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
John Carter was a stupid name. I don't know if adding "of Mars" would've helped or not, but the marketing seemed off from the get go.
That said, the film itself was off. We got it, Andrew Stanton made brilliant animated films and you thought he could do the same with a live action film, but he can't. The process is very different. This is why few directors can do both. Spielberg's BFG? No. Jackson's Tin Tin? No. Zemeckis' anything? No. All of them do great live action but not animated.
The whole time I watched John Carter I thought "why do I not care about this?" I never figured it out.
The Jedi Master
The anteater is wearing the bagel because he's a reindeer princess. -- my 4 yr old daughter