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Ghost in the Shell bombs at the box office

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Chumley

Banned
LOL The Matrix is 100% cyberpunk.

No it isn't, and more importantly if you think the marketing even tried to touch on anything deeply cyperpunk, you aren't old enough to remember it. It's cyberpunk with a soft c, commonly remembered as a great action or sci-fi film.
 

Branduil

Member
No, it's not. it's superpowered action movie when in matrix and postapocaliptic when in in real world.
Cyberpunk is near future where society is changed by cybernetics. None of that happened in Matrix.
If Matrix is 100% cyberpunk then so is Fury Road because Furiosa had cyberarm.

???
 
FWIW, I saw this with my partner at the cinema yesterday.

We really enjoyed it. It was visually quite unique and rather spectacular I thought, I enjoyed the story for what it was. I take it as an alternative take on the setting in the same way I accept both 1989 Batman and the Nolan films.

I get why people would be upset by it, but after hearing the negativity around the film we both came away very pleasantly surprised by it.

I'd just have liked a little more focus on the rest of section 9 too.
 

Nanashrew

Banned
You also got the Animatrix that goes in depth into the past on the robots and their revolt. You got a lot of stuff on The Matrix. Lots of philosophical and religious ideas about life, humanity, the world, technology, "what is the truth." So much that can be found in the cyberpunk genre and how your are force fed information, leading a lie, and rebel against the technology, the people (or programs) that are enforcing this world.
 

Chumley

Banned
You also got the Animatrix that goes in depth into the past on the robots and their revolt. You got a lot of stuff on The Matrix. Lots of philosophical and religious ideas about life, humanity, the world, technology, "what is the truth." So much that can be found in the cyberpunk genre and how your are force fed information, leading a lie, and rebel against the technology, the people (or programs) that are enforcing this world.

Absolutely, but The Matrix was structured in a way that made it incredibly easy to hide all of that in it's marketing. It looked every bit like a wild new take on the action and sci-fi genre in 1999, if you showed someone the trailers for that and Blade Runner side by side they'd say they're not even in the same genre and have nothing in common. Gits wears the visual aesthetic of cyberpunk on it's sleeve and makes itself known as a weird fucking movie right off the bat, The Matrix in 1999 really didn't. Once it became a massive hit, it went deep into all that stuff but at that point it's audience was already locked in.
 

Branduil

Member
We wouldn't be having this absurd semantic discussion of genres if people weren't pushing the dumb idea that GitS only failed because everyone just automatically hates cyberpunk.
 

Einchy

semen stains the mountaintops
If The Matrix is cyberpunk then the definition of cyberpunk is pretty wide and it makes a shit ton of other movies now cyberpunk.
 

Chumley

Banned
We wouldn't be having this absurd semantic discussion of genres if people weren't pushing the dumb idea that GitS only failed because everyone just automatically hates cyberpunk.

It isn't a semantic discussion, and you haven't even engaged in it at all besides saying "you're wrong".

I've shown my receipts as to why people have historically not wanted to go see cyberpunk films. I named 5 films and can bring up even more if you want, and all you seem to have is The Matrix.
 

Branduil

Member
It isn't a semantic discussion, and you haven't even engaged in it at all besides saying "you're wrong".

I've shown my receipts as to why people have historically not wanted to go see cyberpunk films. I named 5 films and can bring up even more if you want, and all you seem to have is The Matrix.

RoboCop
Total Recall
 

Garruson

Member
It was a really good film. People are overly harsh and push agenda. It was well acted, well shot, well visualised and entertaining - as much as themes and world building could have been better.

If you remove the connection with previous Ghost in the Shells and the controversy about Scarlett, then there's not much criticism going its way other than it's 'boring' or they didn't explore things as well as they should have done, regarding the ending especially.
 
You can't expect the target audience to leave their anime dungeons.

Fans of the anime were no longer the target audience from the moment they cast ScarJo as Motoko.

In the end there were basically two teams on the "Wtf why is Motoko white?" side. One group didn't like it because of lack of asian representation and the other group didn't like it because it's not faithful to the original.
 

Nanashrew

Banned
Star Wars is a sci-fantasy space opera. Nothing wrong with that. It's just another sub-genre within science fiction.

Absolutely, but The Matrix was structured in a way that made it incredibly easy to hide all of that in it's marketing. It looked every bit like a wild new take on the action and sci-fi genre in 1999, if you showed someone the trailers for that and Blade Runner side by side they'd say they're not even in the same genre and have nothing in common. Gits wears the visual aesthetic of cyberpunk on it's sleeve and makes itself known as a weird fucking movie right off the bat, The Matrix in 1999 really didn't. Once it became a massive hit, it went deep into all that stuff but at that point it's audience was already locked in.

I don't know but this looks incredibly cybperpunk to me and very much like any cyberpunk trailer from 80's to now where they put more emphasis on the action and violence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8e-FF8MsqU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a94b1yZOBes
 

Theecliff

Banned
saw it last night. it was fairly decent if not a little bit forgettable. definitely not a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination

sadly, the way they incorporated the meta-narrative of adapting the original story for western audiences was about as tone deaf as you could get - practically guaranteeing that the whitewashing arguments are going to forever be a black stain on this movie even after the controversy dies down. which is a shame, because through the utter naïvety and stupidity of insulating that argument into the film itself a surprisingly well done (if not a little bit in your face) theme about consent is sort of flying under the radar.

as for the visuals discussion: the film has pretty exemplary cgi and set design coupled with some nice cinematography. but my problem with the visuals was that there was sometimes too much clutter on the screen, especially with the city landscape shots. i had no idea where to look during some of these since there were so many different visual elements thrown on screen at once and because of that they were not composed well enough so to be readable. i understand that the film is trying to depict a dystopian society full of vice and corporations etc. etc. but it becomes a sensory overload onslaught at times. there's rarely a shot without a lot of visual noise, even during the quieter moments (without spoiling the specifics, the underwater bay scene comes to mind) - sort of undermining them. i think it's a case of excess and not knowing when to stop, like painting a nice picture but then obsessively polishing and adding things, worsening it as a result. that being said this doesn't apply for all of the film - just something i noticed from certain scenes. when this film is pretty it's damned pretty.
 
Star Wars is Fantasy or Space Magic.
It's a Space Opera
It was a really good film. People are overly harsh and push agenda. It was well acted, well shot, well visualised and entertaining - as much as themes and world building could have been better.

If you remove the connection with previous Ghost in the Shells and the controversy about Scarlett, then there's not much criticism going its way other than it's 'boring' or they didn't explore things as well as they should have done, regarding the ending especially.
If you remove those there's still more than enough criticism to go. It wasn't that well acted for instance, Scarlet had a really weird walk for most of the movie, which isn't necessarily on her. The action is fairly generic outside the recreated scenes from the originals. All the cybernetic enhancements really don't amount to much more than shooty bang bang stuff. There never was much reason to care for any of the characters given outside of Batou's dogs. Even the moral lesson the movie crams down our throat twice is kinda dumb.
 

Spuck-uk

Banned
I kind of want them to move forward with a Miles Teller Akira or something, because the schadenfreude right now is pretty gratifying and it'd be even better if they keep plowing ahead, oblivious privileged white people style, into even more clueless failure

I mean, there's still the Battle Angel Alita adaptation lurking around somewhere in Hollywood planning..

(Although arguably, none of the characters except Figure Four are definitively Asian).
 

Gastone

Member
Gonna watch this tonight, and i'm really looking forward it. I'm expecting to be disappointed, but still..huge fan of GiTS. I loved the 5-minute preview from the opening, so hopefully the rest will be along those lines.
 

firelogic

Member
Star Wars is a sci-fantasy space opera. Nothing wrong with that. It's just another sub-genre within science fiction.



I don't know but this looks incredibly cybperpunk to me and very much like any cyberpunk trailer from 80's to now where they put more emphasis on the action and violence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8e-FF8MsqU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a94b1yZOBes

That first one isn't an official studio trailer. I never saw it at the time the movie was being promoted and it's way too high quality. Back in 1999 we were watching tiny low-res quicktime trailers.
 

Sou Da

Member
Of course it did, this movie is the equivalent of doing a new adaptation of 1984 and going "but what if there was a rebellion and in this movie they overthrow the government".
 

shintoki

sparkle this bitch
So the cinematic version of you?

dead2.gif
 

br3wnor

Member
It was always going to bomb. There didnt seem to be a lot of interest.


I dont think the casting controversies mattered.

I believe this as well but would be thrilled if Hollywood took the failure at least in part as a whitewashing issue and maybe help spur more diversity.
 

IbukiLordSA

Member
Damn it has such a big budget? Didn't expect that, no matter how good the movie was there was just no way it would draw in the attention to make that back. Barely anyone knows about the original anyway.

It is a shame though, this is such a fantastic movie that more people need to see, hopefully digital/disc sales make up for it. Everyone should give this a watch.
 
This feels like yet another casualty of the shrinking space for medium-sized movies in Hollywood. To retain the flavor of the '95 film, this should have been a more cerebral, art-house science fiction movie in the vein of Danny Boyle's 'Sunshine', Soderbergh's 'Solaris' remake, or something like 'District 9'. Something with inventive visuals, but at an economic, smaller scale. All this movie's problems stem from it being shoehorned into a lumbering Hollywood tent pole. At a budget of, say, $30 million, you could retain the philosophical ruminations and avoid the boilerplate self-discovery story that seems to be failing to connect with people. You could also, with far less controversy, cast an Asian lead with name recognition in the ballpark of Rinko Kikuchi. (This wouldn't even necessitate making it an all-Japanese cast - the New Port City setting does lend itself well to multiculturalism, and you could cast supporting roles like Batou with actors of other races to fill out a diverse looking movie poster, if you were hung up on Western marketability.)

But this is what happens when the people in charge of green light decisions are under the impression that the only types of movies are microbudget indies and $100 million plus monstrosities. See The Golden Compass for another smart, philosophical property that got crammed into a superbudgeted mold and stripped of everything that makes the source material resonate in the process.

Right now, the only place for medium-budget fare like this - projects that should be contemplative, offbeat, and led by someone other than the handful of bankable white movie stars at the top of the Hollywood hierarchy - is television.

Denis Villaneuve could have done an amazing job with GitS. Sicario has a very Oshii pacing to it with how it breaks up the military action with slow lingering moments. He could have made a very thought provoking sci-fi film about the human condition and identity. Oh well, Blade Runner 2 will satisfy that.

Yes - and his 'Arrival' ($50 million) is another good example of scale and tone that would have suited Ghost in the Shell. A very visual film, but at a contained scale, with a cerebral feel and deliberate pace. I don't know how anyone could watch Oshii's film and think "You know what this should be? A balls-out, punch in the face of an action flick."

vO6heAI.jpg


fuck yes, preach

GHOST IN THE SHELL with the focused tone, pacing and grounded atmosphere of Sicario, properly scaled

budgeted properly, some proper lead casting damnit, more effective and minimalist use of props as meaningful storytelling tools rather than spectacle fodder, this dumbass moneybags foolishness we got

Make it from the POV of Togusa, with him being like Emily Blunt's character in Sicario; the idealistic newcomer to the Section 9 team. Still mostly human, Togusa would be the perfect relatable viewpoint for the audience to experience the film.

Batou would be like Daniel Kaluuya's character to Togusa; the partner who's got his back and is there for him.

And let Major Kusanagi fill the shoes of something like Benicio del Toro's character; the absolute professional, reserved and who knows more than she lets on. 3 protagonists with Togusa as the anchor

And when fighting does break out? Let the movie show cybernetically-enhanced criminals to be fucking horrors for the police to deal with, thus apparently justifying the necessity of the hard rule-breaking Section 9 team compared to regular lawful agents like human Togusa with his shitty revolver, and you've got yourself a nice conflict to smartly explore besides the oh-so vaunted eye-candy
 

Akainu

Member
So you're saying the surrounding controversy around this film that has been dominating the discussion from its announcement up until release had ZERO factor at all? I'm not saying it's the ice berg that sank the Titanic, but it contributed.
Seriously i just got back from drill the other day and it was one of the reasons that people said that they didn't see it. And these are people that seems to be totally confused by the very idea of people being transexual.
 
The RT score might have depressed turnout, but by and large mass audiences rejected this on its face value.

The conclusion to take away is that general audiences don't want to see any Ghost in the Shell movie, and it wouldn't matter how high the RT score is or if it stars an Asian actress or not.

I also think you need a better pejorative for this movie than "bland". It's one of the most stunning looking movies of the year.

No, that's YOUR conclusion. Nothing about its performance even comes close to supporting that
 

GhaleonEB

Member
vO6heAI.jpg


fuck yes, preach

GHOST IN THE SHELL with the focused tone, pacing and grounded atmosphere of Sicario, properly scaled

budgeted properly, some proper lead casting damnit, more effective and minimalist use of props as meaningful storytelling tools rather than spectacle fodder, this dumbass moneybags foolishness we got

Make it from the POV of Togusa, with him being like Emily Blunt's character in Sicario; the idealistic newcomer to the Section 9 team. Still mostly human, Togusa would be the perfect relatable viewpoint for the audience to experience the film.

Batou would be like Daniel Kaluuya's character to Togusa; the partner who's got his back and is there for him.

And let Major Kusanagi fill the shoes of something like Benicio del Toro's character; the absolute professional, reserved and who knows more than she lets on. 3 protagonists with Togusa as the anchor

And when fighting does break out? Let the movie show cybernetically-enhanced criminals to be fucking horrors for the police to deal with, thus apparently justifying the necessity of the hard rule-breaking Section 9 team compared to regular lawful agents like human Togusa with his shitty revolver, and you've got yourself a nice conflict to smartly explore besides the oh-so vaunted eye-candy

I'll see this GitS eventually on video, but seeing how they blew up the action in the trailers was one of the turn offs for me. There's actually very little action in the original film - a lot of build up followed by brief bursts of high-impact violence. The opening scene is a perfect example of this - a few minutes of set up and one single shot of the Major's target getting blown to pieces.

When I saw the Major bursting through the window and running along a wall in the trailers, I think that's where much of my interest (what was left after the casting, that is) checked out. I am not a fan of GitS because of the action, it's because of how restrained it is, and for everything around it, and the trailers did jack shit to show me any of that.
 

Hydrus

Member
Nah why don't I continue calling out moronic comments for what they are.

Then I guess I will continue to view you as sensitive and immature. If you can't accept that people have a different opinion of this movie then you, then I don't know what to tell you. You view this movie as a "white washing" attack on minorities. I don't. I watched this movie without watching the anime. What I saw was a movie with a strong female lead and diverse cast. Hell, one of the main characters only spoke Japanese. I knew nothing about the source material. Same goes for the people I was with, and I'm guessing a good amount of people who watched this as well. From day one, people, such as yourself, attacked this film because of Scarlett Johansson and that alone. That is what annoys me. You assume that all the people going to watch this know the source material and are supposed to judge the film based on that only. Where's your outrage over Ishikawa being played by a Fijian guy who looks black? I can care less about about who plays who. Major could've been played by a transgender and it still wouldn't of changed my opinion of the movie. Whether people think the movie was good or bad, that's another debate. For never watching the original, I enjoyed this movie. It wasn't a great movie, but not horrible either.
 
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