fix-the-spade said:
Cans of whitewash still experiencing strong sales in Hollywood...
However, if it must be whitewashed they could do a lot worse than casting The Black Widow as Major Kusanagi, begs the question who will play Batou and Togusa, I always pictured Batou as European simply because he looks European, but Togusa not so much.
I can't help but think that Hollywood will shy away from the heavier themes in GitS and that the film will suffer from it.
One thing I will say on the issue of race in asian comics and animation being adapted by Hollywood and its almost inevitable (and stupid) white-washing: It IS common for many characters in any given work to have hair colors and skin tones to indicate indeterminate race. So, often, they could just as easily - in live action - be played by people of asian, anglo-saxon, latin, hebrew, middle-eastern, mixed, etc. ethnicities (of course it doesn't work if culture and ethnicity is central to the message of the story though, which is part of why the live-action dump of Nickalodeon's Avataar was such a shit-show...). Kiki's Dilivery Service from Miyazaki could very well be in a place like Amsterdam and played entirely by European actors. BUT there ARE often indicators in Asian stories that would lead to the characters being thought of as specifically Japanese, Korean, Chinese, etc. Character names, locations, cultural idiosyncrasies, etc. can all indicate a character's implied ethnicity and culture regardless of cell color used to represent their skin. Certainly, this is the case with GitS. The appearance is of indeterminate race/ethnicity/culture. BUT we all know they are Japanese. And out of respect to the nation and culture of origine it would be nice for Hollywood to cast accordingly! If Speilberg was truly a fan, he would understand this! White-washing does a disservice to the source material.
And yeah - the GitS film was actually plenty watered-down from the manga anyway. They won't even touch the heavy stuff in the film or manga, and certainly not the manga's comedy (ex. the pranks the squad pulls, the funny tachikomas, Kusanagi telling off her superiors and making them punch themselves via hack, body swaps...). The Hollywood adaptation, considering Hollywood's track record with these things, is bound to be token, Hollywood action cyber-shclock, and will probably try to out-mood the GitS animated film, which is... pretty damn dark and moody.
