So apparently Scarlett Johansson is officially set to portray Major Motoko Kusanagi(?) in the long-gestating live-action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell:
Margot Robbie, from the Wolf of Wall Street, was also rumored at some point not long ago. I'm angry at the whitewashing, but that's to be expected. Johansson could do it well, I don't know, but I fear that when casting superstars like her, everything else will take a back seat, and it won't be the Major Motoko Kusanagi (I can't even imagine how they would justify naming her a japanese name... maybe prosthetic body but... nah... nor any substitute for the name) but "Scarlett Johansson plays a cyborg cop in a future that blah, blah, blah...". I think that the only good way in which they could have done this movie in Hollywood and kinda making it more western, would be that the movie was set in GITS' version of North America with the American Empire's government needing the services of a bunch of the Japanese Section 9 agents. Kinda like the standalone episodes in which members of the Section 9 visit London or Berlin. They would just need to cast japanese actors for Motoko, Batou and Aramaki, and then they could make an american stand-in for Togusa, an almost completely human character which can serve as a bridge between an audience which knows nothing about the world of GITS and the line of work of the Section 9 cyborg agents.
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