Ghost in the Shell Official Trailer 1

[bastardofmelbourne]

The visuals look good. The robot geishas are creepy. Building-sized hologram advertisements are a nice touch. Also, Scarlett Johansson in a skin-suit.

It looks to be following the set pieces of the original very closely (the skin-suit, the invisible water fight, the spider tank), but the voiceover narration implies that they're pushing for some kind of superhero origin backstory for the Major. She doesn't need that. From what I recall of the anime, she's just a cyborg special agent. It's kind of a point that she's not special; full-body cyborgs like her were commonplace in the anime setting. Here, they're all like "you're some super prototype with amnesia, now go on an identity quest."

Batou's eyes are a big fumble. They look too small, like he's shut his eyes and put buttons on them. It looks ridiculous. Should have given him larger lenses and animated them with CGI.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

The visuals look good. The robot geishas are creepy. Building-sized hologram advertisements are a nice touch. Also, Scarlett Johansson in a skin-suit.

It looks to be following the set pieces of the original very closely (the skin-suit, the invisible water fight, the spider tank), but the voiceover narration implies that they're pushing for some kind of superhero origin backstory for the Major. She doesn't need that. From what I recall of the anime, she's just a cyborg special agent. It's kind of a point that she's not special; full-body cyborgs like her were commonplace in the anime setting. Here, they're all like "you're some super prototype with amnesia, now go on an identity quest."

Batou's eyes are a big fumble. They look too small, like he's shut his eyes and put buttons on them. It looks ridiculous. Should have given him larger lenses and animated them with CGI.

The Major is kind of special but only in the sense that her cyborg body is military grade and has a lot of shit in it that most people cannot afford/legally own: kind of like the difference between Adam Jensen and most other Augs in Deus Ex.

 

[Zhukov]

Looks alright to me.

Not sure how I feel about them remaking iconic scenes despite this apparently being a new plot. Fans will hate it for not being identical to their beloved anime, non-fans won't recognize what's being referred to.

Not big on the hints of amnesia origin story. It's not the worst template ever but... could we not?

As others have said, Batou's eyes look wrong. They look like discs stuck on top of closed eyelids. They "should" fill his eye socket and look like they go back into his skull.

As for the Major, much has been said about Johansson in the role. "Whitewashing", "not pretty", "overrated", "can't act" yadda yadda yadda. Personally, the only thing bothering me is her voice. Sounds completely out of place for reasons I can't identify.

Eh, I'll give it a watch.

 

[Wintermute_v1legacy]

Weird, after seeing the trailer I'm less interested in this movie. The visuals are great, but Scarlett Johansson looks really bored, I don't know what it is. I liked her in the marvel movies and I think she's awesome in Lucy, but she's just not interesting here. I don't even care about the whole "whitewashing" thing. Alicia Vikander was great in Ex Machina, maybe she would be better here too, and let Johansson play Lara Croft instead.

 

[Angelblaze]

This...is exactly what people mean when they mean white washing a movie - or at least, 'adapting it to western audiences'.​

Spoiler: The Original gist of GITS and a breakdown of why this is going to suck for any fan who liked the original series for plot and symbolism reasons.

The original, entire point of GITS was about Major marking out her individuality in a world that was rapidly becoming a mass market wasteland of consumerism and copy paste design and creation. While some episodes did focus on other subjects, a large majority of the series was about Makoto essentially marking out her individuality in the face of overwhelming technological progress.


Simply put, there's a reason towards the end of the GITS movie that Makoto gets her ass handed to her by a giant spider tank and ends up in the same physical state as the AI in the broken body who wants to be an individual and there's a reason they become one: both want to mark themselves out as individuals - albeit in different ways. Makoto wants to meld into the ephemeral and spiritual while the artifical mind wants to become a human or at least, a physical, true being through the creation of a new life (which is the Makoto we see in the series' and movies following the original GITS)

(That is, assuming the blatant speech towards the end of the film wasn't enough of a give away.)

This resonates with Japanese audiences because of the quick and overwhelming technological advancement Japan had over a certain course in time.

Mass production, plastic surgery, a new culture of more and more technology and all of it coming down at once, all of that plays a part in pushing forward Makoto building individuality - she modifies the mass market body, switches bodies as she pleases, spends a majority of her time both flying through the net and hacking computers with ease (though thats more the puppet master's influence then not, depending on who you ask.)

This trailer, the moment it said 'First of its kind' outright rejected being that, instead choosing to play to the western audience's love of being special for being one of the first countries to try en masse democracy and glorification of the talents of the individual while painting assumed outside control by a small group as its source villainy. That's why this doesn't work - you can't be the first of your kind and be Makoto, especially not PRE-PUPPET MASTER Makoto (as they seem to be going for). Makoto was the first of her kind by design of both in world and out and after becoming one with the puppet master, this becomes even more clear. (By this I mean, she's first in that she intentionally goes out of her way to seek the Ephemeral, she drowns herself, she spends long times contemplating the state of her humanity, she wonders if she has a soul, etc)

Hell, in my personal opinion it would've been better if they focused on the more non-Makoto type story-lines to connect to the western audiences, such as the comparison the series often makes between old technology and retired veterans, especially considering the more recent events in politics.

But then again I'm one of those people who apparently takes movies too seriously even while they try to reach desperately for meaning by stealing other people's cultural touchstones and spitting in the face of their original meaning. Gonna be good to see Scarlett Johansson retain her undeserved monopoly of 'white action girl'.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

The original, entire point of GITS was about Major marking out her individuality in a world that was rapidly becoming a mass market wasteland of consumerism and copy paste design and creation. While some episodes did focus on other subjects, a large majority of the series was about Makoto essentially marking out her individuality in the face of overwhelming technological progress.

I think that they think that's what they're going for, with those lines about Makotohansson trying to figure out her place in society, but based off your reading of the anime they've missed the mark completely.

Instead, what they've got is "unique super-prototype cyborg tries to be like everyone else," which seems almost like an inversion.

Who knows; we're both probably reading way too much into a two-minute trailer.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Visually it looks alright, but nothing about the tone does. Reminds me far more of randomly violent action flicks then anything else, throw a popular star in there and you got yourself a box office hit...
They probably know selling the very depressing and confusing tone of GitS would be a hard one, so this is what they did instead.

Also Scarlet seems to be playing Scarlet, Makoto has a very different character.

 

[Asita]

"We cast a white woman cause this is now an international story"

*aggressively japanese setting, characters, aesthetic*

Yeah...that caught me off guard. Mind you, I actually felt that the international angle was a decent variation, but I was expecting them to jump around from country to country like in a Mission Impossible movie.