I have to give my two cents. I've have been a die hard fan of the franchise. I've seen multiple times: all 4 movies (original, Innocence Solid State Society and "The new Movie), the 2 animated series (SAC) and the OVA (ARISE).
The live action ironically failed for me because it tried to please the fans too much. Literally more the half of the movie scenes were taken from one of the source materials I mentioned above. This would be OK, but for someone that noticed where they came from it felt like they were all forced.
I loved the series because every new iteration added to the one before. However, for this one it seemed that they were just lazy.
Plot wise it was on par for GitS, because most of time it's not very interesting. Whats interesting of the series is the possibilities and consequences of the tech they introduce (plugging your brain to the net, hacking eyes, cloning pigs with human organs, uploading your ghost to the net, trafficking prosthetic, etc)
<rant> One last thing, they didn't add the chopper/airplane fly by at the beginning of the film. All series/movies since the 1995 original start with a chopper/airplane fly by. That really messed with me for some reason. It's like something you expect. </rant>
I thought it was stunning film too. It's rewarding to see someone else who felt that way. Both at the nerd end and the not-nerd end of things GITS find little reception, which makes me disappoint for the full-condition of humanity, in way I'm not to articulate well.
I can't speak for the general public, but as for the nerds (ok, specifically for me): probably because the new movie was not on par, either in style or philosophy, with the 1995 movie?
The total running time of the remake was more than the original movie, yet somehow said a lot less. Aside from the visuals, the movie was embarassingly mediocre.
Sound was good too. Can't recall what they named the antagonist, but failed experiment dude's voice was 10/10. Such a perfect addition to sell the "this is one fucked up Android" message.
And that is where they went wrong (the nerds that is). This is a new work, you should evaluate it on it's own merits and not how it compared to a artifact in what is essentially a different medium.
It's almost as if many critics forgot about all the different versions of GitS. Starting with the manga.
When the first movie came out people were complaining that it is not the manga. I'm pretty sure if they'd made a 1:1 copy of the 1995 movie, the same people would complain about that.
There is no way to please everybody. People will find reasons if they feel they need them.
It's true you can't please everybody, but at least in my case this doesn't apply: I own both the manga by Shirow and the movie by Oshii, and absolutely prefer the movie -- in fact, I don't like the manga very much. Back in the day I didn't complain the movie by Oshii wasn't like the manga, I celebrated it because it was so much better! Likewise, the new movie fails not because it's not exactly like the classic '95 movie, but because it's not as good as that movie... and makes me wonder why it was needed at all.
Well, this "as good as" is more of a personal opinion though.
I love the '95 movie. It was the first anime I watched and it showed me that there is not only tentacle porn and little girls there. But I've also seen everything else that was branded GitS and I have the manga here. Therefore I liked the movie because it was just another interpretation of the general idea that is GitS.
Because of that, I find that harsh and kind of orthodox criticism quite over the top.
I didn't like it not because of previous work, which I haven't seen in ten years, but because it was hamfisted. Scarlett's acting and the "moral of the story," shoved down our throats with no subtlety. Luckily other characters absolutely slayed it.
Loved every minute of it until the last 5 minutes, where they went so far away from the original story line, it would be like remaking Star Wars and having Luke turning to the darkside.
I remember thinking that whoever made this movie must have hated the original movie.
I guess it is a gamble the director has to take: to be remembered as a great director, you can't simply remake movies verbatim. You have to put your spin on it and hope people think you made something greater than the original.
The movie did not capture the feeling of the original movie nor did it seem convincing as a future reality the way the original does.
Btw, hologram ads featured in a COD Advanced Warfare Tokyo map a few years ago. Given the color scheme of the movie and that of the map, I would not be surprised if the map was a bit of inspiration for the movie's designers.
That's not why they were bad. They built up decades of expectations and not only dropped the ball, but threw it to the ground and decided to write what sells toys instead.
Isn't that what Luke does? Later, like in the movies coming out now. I thought in the EU, he ends the Jedi Order and merges the teaching of Light and Dark into one discipline. but I'm no SWexpert.
I'm going to take an unpopular stance here but I must disagree, at least to the extent that whilst details were done relatively well (although no better than, say, Total Recall's recent remake) the photography was not.
Here's a simple example: the chase scene to the water [1] vs [2]. In the first, you have a whopping 3 layers of background, the white water, the dark slum, the city in the back (and perhaps an extra layer of city) giving the scene immensity and depth. Even the proportion in which these layers cut the screen (each increasing in height and implied size with distance) help give further depth. The main character is clearly contrasted (including earlier [3]) and thus easily followed, with the eye naturally falling upon the action.
The drawing is neat and the spirit carries over to the sound: the fight is punctuated by long periods of silence both of the ear and of movement ("Music is the space between the notes." - Debussy - to say nothing of the enormous importance of empty space in both Chinese and Japanese art e.g. [5]).
I'll let you take a look at the movie version and see if you can find an understanding of these elements.
Here's an unrelated example of what I mean by the spirit being done well: [4]. Listen to both the steamroller-like momentum, and the way in which the lower voice emerge from the texture about halfway. It is actually incredibly difficult to play like this reliably despite the relative technical ease of the work, Gilels almost makes it sound like he took one, maybe two breaths only (a subtle change of texture splits the work).
Another example stolen from reddit (this is one of my favorite scenes in the movie, opening montage to the original was one of the most beautiful things I saw on a movie theater screen this year):
