Media: Cyberpunk 2077 Movies

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PARAMOUNT PICTURES AND DREAMWORKS PICTURES’ “GHOST IN THE SHELL” IS IN PRODUCTION IN NEW ZEALAND



HOLLYWOOD, CA (April 14, 2016) – Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures have announced that production is underway on “GHOST IN THE SHELL,” starring Scarlett Johansson (“AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON,” “LUCY”) and directed by Rupert Sanders (“SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN”). The film is shooting in Wellington, New Zealand.

Paramount Pictures will release the film in the U.S. on March 31, 2017.
 
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Let us hope (tho it's probably on vain) that someone in Hollywood actually read/watched Ghost in the Shell ...
 
I think that either the movie doesn't meet the spirit of the manga/anime or it does meet the spirit and than it flops because the typical Hollywood movie watcher won't get it.
 
Let us hope (tho it's probably on vain) that someone in Hollywood actually read/watched Ghost in the Shell ...
have a brother who is an actor, i do some reading when there are a lot of scripts to get through. read a version of the Gits Script. it was pretty good. clearly from the manga rather than just retreading the 1995 film. is it the same script? possibly not. will it survive the director? possibly not. did they at least come from the right place? yeah i think they did.
 
Now we just need Will Smith to play Batou.
I'm not so upset about the "white washing" than the fact it's coming from a big american studio, and by so, it'll be so "PG13-washed" that it'll make you want to puke rainbows.

Just look at the difference between Dredd 2012 (independent) and Robocop 2014 (big studio).
Now, think about Universal adapting a big-hit-japanese-licence with Scarlet-freaking-Johanson-whos-hot-that's-why-she's-in-the-movie, scary isn't it?

Here is the trailer:
In a soon future, Scarlet Johanson is back, but not in Avenger, or Captain America or Iron Man or a Luc Besson movie (the guy who can makes 3000 different movies involving the same story about an innocent girl having to be saved by a dark and mysterious man from ninjas, or the opposite or whatever, just put them in any order it works too)
In neo-Tokyo, a girl, named Lucy, ex-special agent, codename Black Widow had to change her life because it makes the plot works better like this, and guess what?
Now, she's a cyborg-cop, in a cyborg future, doing shits cyborg-cops do in a cyborg future.
Why? Because she's Scarlet Johanson, the woman who can play everything, everytime, everywhere.

Get ready for Scarlet Johanson in "Ultraviolet 2.0"

Seriously, aside from the movie having 99,9% chance to suck, is she the only actress in hollywood?
She's been in so much movies lately, it's just overkill.
Oh, yeah, nude scenes, that's why.
 
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Is it really whitewashing? The major is Japanese but from American ancestry as far as i know. And even if you don't mind this detail, in GITS most of the people have cyborg bodies and even the faces are artificial. So I wouldn't give visual racial differences that much importance.
And at last, one of the producers of the anime said that they never thought about a Japanese actress to play Motoko (sry I currently don't have the source, if I'll find it, I'll post it).
 
Is it really whitewashing? The major is Japanese but from American ancestry as far as i know. And even if you don't mind this detail, in GITS most of the people have cyborg bodies and even the faces are artificial. So I wouldn't give visual racial differences that much importance.
And at last, one of the producers of the anime said that they never thought about a Japanese actress to play Motoko (sry I currently don't have the source, if I'll find it, I'll post it).

It's never implied that she's of American ancestry in any version, so it shouldn't be assumed. Her whole mystique, in fact, is very tied to Japan. Her surname Kusanagi I wouldn't think is a very common Japanese surname and it is a reference to the sword of Kusanagi, one of the supposed three sacred treasures of the Imperial House of Japan. GITS also, in many incarnations is very much a product of its time, a cyberpunk seinen of the 80s and is as critical of things like the USA's foreign policy as, say, Akira can be.

The manga has the Israeli Mossad performing terrorist attacks in Japan to thwart economic cooperation between Japan and Islamic countries and an AI created by a Japanese government agency that goes rogue and is officially believed to be an American hacker (also the plot of the first movie). The SAC universe includes things such as a handful of lobbyist characters (some as important as Goda) trying to push forward a security treaty that will leave Japan in a subaltern position to the USA, a plan that includes the genocide of asian refugees with a nuclear strike... a nuclear strike that uses as an excuse a lie, that the refugees have weapons of mass destruction they don't really have (sound familiar?)... also some very odious CIA agents that are of japanese ancestry. The new GITS movie based on the Arise universe is very much about the role of the state, and the Japanese one at it, in the midst of a generalised trend in the privatization of the military. All the spiritual ghost stuff is very much based on Shintoism.

So, yeah. Those I think are plenty enough reasons to be worried about this product. I don't even mean it like Japan or the japanese can play saint. I'm just saying that for one it was so refreshing watching and reading a manganime that did geopolitics (among other things) so good from an alternate perspective than the so pervasive Hollywood US-sanctioned one... and now we're either going to see a perversion of all the things the previous iterations stood for... or just a generic Hollywood cyberpunk blockbuster that, at best, is going to talk about "what makes us human".
 
I'm not as worried about the whitewashing of the GITS cast as I am of the whitewashing of the plot and subtext there is going to be.
A concern is the vast majority of the movie audience isn't as familiar with Japanese culture as most of us game/magna geeks are. Some very important, to a Japanese audience, points are totally missed or misinterpreted by Joe/Jane Average from the USA//Germany/Turkey/Wherever. Like it or not American culture is fairly universally understood (even if disliked) so a certain amount of "white washing" by any movie studio is going to happen if they don't want their movie to appeal to only a niche audience.
 
This whitewashing business seems to become a trend:
Zendaya Among Finalists for James Cameron's 'Battle Angel' Movie (Exclusive)



James Cameron is producing and Robert Rodriguez is directing Fox's adaptation of the popular manga.

James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez are zeroing in on their female actor to star in Alita: Battle Angel, Fox’s ambitious adaptation of the popular manga graphic novels.

Rodriguez is on board to direct what is envisioned as a big-budget tentpole, while Cameron and his Lightstorm Entertainment partner Jon Landau are producing.

The movie has not been greenlighted as budgetary issues are still being worked out while the studio seeks to bring it down from the $175 million-$200 million range.

The following trio tested for the film, The Hollywood Reporter has learned: Maika Monroe, who starred in It Follows and will appear in this summer's Independence Day: Resurgence;Rosa Salazar, who appeared in Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials and recently wrapped shooting Warner Bros.’ big-screen take of CHiPs; and Zendaya, the Disney Channel star of K.C. Undercover who is one of the female leads of Spider-Man: Homecoming. Bella Thorne, who starred with Zendaya on the TV series Shake It Up and appeared in Alvin & the Chipmunks: Road Chip, also tested, say sources.


Sources say that Cameron and Rodriguez want to create a star-making vehicle akin to Cameron’s Dark Angel, the TV series that ran from 2000 to 2002 and became a platform for Jessica Alba. Sources also say that Zendaya could be the frontrunner for the role, but that scheduling issues with her hit TV show present a stumbling block.

Alita: Battle Angel tells of a female cyborg that is discovered in a scrapyard by a scientist. With no memory of her previous life except her deadly martial-arts training, the woman becomes a bounty hunter, tracking down criminals. The action-adventure story is meant to serve as a backdrop to themes of self-discovery and the search for love.


A decision on the actresses is expected in the coming weeks.
 
Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. Plenty of fine Japanese or other Asian actresses.
Sure are, but how many that have the necessary skills for the role (and not just the acting ones) also speak decent English (so they can at least understand the director and interact with the crew)?
 
Sure are, but how many that have the necessary skills for the role (and not just the acting ones) also speak decent English (so they can at least understand the director and interact with the crew)?

I haven't checked, but knowing the Japanese...dozens to hundreds.

I just checked - http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/03/28/editorials/disappointing-levels-english/#.VyBe_0dHS1E

Probably not hundreds. So put the effort in and find a good one.

Or hire a Korean?

http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/the-future-of-english-in-korea/
 
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A concern is the vast majority of the movie audience isn't as familiar with Japanese culture as most of us game/magna geeks are. Some very important, to a Japanese audience, points are totally missed or misinterpreted by Joe/Jane Average from the USA//Germany/Turkey/Wherever. Like it or not American culture is fairly universally understood (even if disliked) so a certain amount of "white washing" by any movie studio is going to happen if they don't want their movie to appeal to only a niche audience.

I get what you mean, but again it's not helping change things, it's not helping people understand more other cultures and points of view that we do this. And there may be other things that make it easier to understand for the general public than just that pervasiveness: we are after all talking more about a western audience, which includes the rest of the Americas and Europe, and so, a country made up mostly of a majority of descendants of European colonists is going to be easy to understand to this kind of public.

But nothing special made me understand GITS a bit better than other people: I don't know jack shit about Japan's language, history, geography... I don't take more interest in it than in any other culture... in fact I wasn't into anime until I got to GITS SAC. I just made the effort, which wasn't that much to do, to try and understand it. I made connections with things that are closer to what I know of my own or other countries, their history, politics, news, technology, trends...

Take for example the Laughing Man (which they say may be the plot they go for for this movie). I had read the Catcher in the rye, although I didn't really appreciate it. Until very advanced in the plot I didn't know there was a connection but there was an episode that started giving me vibes of the book's tone and, big reveal, there was a connection. Then the character and its memetic element has a lot to do with Anonymous:

there isn't one but many, as a group it's so disgruntled that each of them has their own incompatible agendas, they hide their identities behind a kind of mask whose origin is as detached from their hacker personas, their origin is hard to trace. In the end it's all a thing of memetics: who was the first Laughing man? Was it Aoi who did that kidnapping stunt in front of the cameras, the person who released the data that Aoi found and made him take on this crusade, the designer who created the logo?

Why did Anonymous take the persona of the Guy Hawkes mask? Did they take it from V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, about an anarchist terrorist in a dystopian London? From the movie adaptation? From the real Guy Hawkes who served the Spanish Crown and the Vatican, not to bring anarchy to England, but to bring it under the influence of the Catholic Church?

Being forced into security treaties or trade agreements is also something that I can understand without being Japanese, because other countries can also live things like that.

I think what really pisses me off is that producers look down on and talk down to their audience like they can't understand the world is bigger. We've come to a point where we ourselves end up justifying that the western editions of Pokemon have to shy away from teaching children what onigiri, a traditional Japanese snack that could just be simplified as "a rice cake", is, that there are other cultures, the culture that created the franchise... while we don't shy away from, well, teaching them the names of the Pokemon themselves, their techniques and which one beats which other one, which isn't even cultural knowledge.
 
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You're NEVER going to be able to understand every cultures nuances. These days many places besides Hollywood are making good movies (thank god!) but again unless your target audience is only a niche audience film makers need to adopt a set of norms most people understand (again, it doesn't necessarily mean they like them, but they understand them).
 
You're NEVER going to be able to understand every cultures nuances. .

Okay. But GitS was an international success and the nuances weren't an issue. Just find a good (preferably Japanese, Tao Okamoto as 227 said) actress who looks, you know, Japanese.
 
Rinko Kikuchi could work.

She played Mako Mori in Pacific Rim. Thought she did a good job really... of course I really liked Pacific Rim, so I might be a bit biased there. XD Did see 47 Ronin as well... but don't really remember much about her acting there.
 
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