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by canadian_voter 3319 days ago
Indeed. Less a love letter than a cheap porn adaptation, IMHO.

As a long-time GITS fan, the new movie was a complete disappointment. It added nothing new or interesting, and dropped almost all of the philosophical content of the original.

If you haven't seen the original, start there. And then move on to the sequels, the TV show, etc. if you want. But avoid this new one. None of the individual elements (soundtrack, cinematography, etc) are the equal of the original and as whole it is utterly lacking in style and substance.
1 comments
exelius 3319 days ago
I don't think you can do GITS as a live action movie. The amount of special effects required to pull it off means the budget needs to be huge, but that also means you have to "dumb down" the plot for mainstream audiences to have a chance to recover your costs.
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firasd 3319 days ago
Well, you also can't have those lengthy expositions from the 95 anime. I think in a good film you would show the outlines to philosophical angles about consciousness without filling them in with so much prose. Of course GITS '17 went a bit too far in the other direction of keeping the dialog too simple, eg. the bad guy blurting out his clearly-bad motivations. I think Westworld achieved a good balance of throwing in monologues while keeping scenes lively...
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exelius 3319 days ago
Yeah; that's what I meant about "dumbing down" the movie. I agree that Ghost in the Shell in all of its iterations is heavy on exposition -- which makes it a difficult show for audiences to get into.

I also agree about your point about Westworld -- I think Ghost in the Shell could be pulled off as a live-action TV series because the exposition could be spread out across a whole season. Because it often doesn't have a guaranteed global market at the time of production, anime in general tends to be a balance between ambition and budget -- the compromise often being "recap" or "expositional" episodes focused on one or two characters (fewer voice actors to worry about) and using recycled animation. I get why they do it, but it's frustrating.

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