Ghost in the Shell Live Action - March 31, 2017

[Hikuro]

That's fairly sad, I heard the numbers this morning on the radio and I wasn't to surprised it tanked but thought it's atleast be a bit higher. I say that since when I went the room was atleast a quarter filled compared to power rangers last weekend and being 1 of 5 in there....2 adults and 3 kids.

i dunno if it'll be well accepted overseas imo, the purists are going to avoid it due to the white washing and reviews state side. Then again something like pacific rim did a lot better over seas than it did in the states right? Who knows....

i do feel that characters were miscasted and the only one I thought worked well was batou. Hell even the guy who was togusa I went "wait wasn't he the accountant in batman?"

[kajnrig]

This is the only article I've read that has any sort of numbers for the international gross so far, and it paints a grim picture for its success, though I predict it'll be mildly successful in the end.

NOTE that it dives into the whitewashing issue insofar as it affected returns. (tl;dr - Not very, or at least unquantifiably.) I know we've had our fair share of discussion on the matter, so I'll quote the only relevant part below: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/ghost-shell-how-a-complex-concept-whitewashing-critics-kept-crowds-away-990661

Internationally, where Ghost opened in 53 territories, it did somewhat better. Ranking second on the weekend, the pic collected $40.1 million and was No. 1 in 11 markets, including Hong Kong and Taiwan. The film, directed by Rupert Sanders (handling his first movie since 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman), is set to open in Japan and China on Friday, and given its performance in Hong Kong, it could make up some ground there. But, produced on a budget of $110 million by Paramount, DreamWorks and Reliance, Ghost now looks as if it will end up in the losing column.

It will have to make up some $50-60 million in China and Japan to cover its production budget, and another $100 million for marketing (at least that's what I'm guessing; apparently it's common practice to ballpark marketing costs at 90-110% of production costs). That's a slightly more daunting task than I originally thought. I doubt it'll make much in Japan, since Japan just isn't big with theater (Pacific Rim, since someone mentioned it earlier, had a total of $14 million there), meaning China will be the one to look at (Pacific Rim in China made $112 million). (Numbers from Box Office Mojo.)

[Nightbat]

Well, being acquainted with the certain circles where outrage is created at the drop of a hat, this has flown much more under the radar than "Exodus: Gods and Kings"

 

I think looking at it more realistically, if GitS didn't have Johannson, it would have probably done worse in the west

[azrael]

I'm betting it will make up the production budget. Plus the Marketing budget? Maybe or break even. I'm guessing this flick will make it just a few ticks north of breaking even. It's now below 50% on RT. That will leave a mark...

[M'Kyuun]

If it didn't have Scarlett, it most likely wouldn't have had the budget it had, and would have been a direct to video release. It's a virtually unknown property here in the States, and probably in the rest of the Western Hemisphere, so they needed a well-known actress to leverage what was otherwise an absolute losing gamble. As with most movies in this genre, the Asian market is where it will make its mark both financially and in popularity. I hope so, enough to justify a second. I felt it succeeded, just that it was very derivative. I thought Scarlett carried the picture well, and that she and Pilou (Batou) embodied their characters and their characters' relationship very well. I'd like to see the rest of Section 9 fleshed out more in a new movie with an original plot and mecha, and maybe a Tachikoma or two thrown in there.

Azrael- yeah, that's lower than I'd expected for a big movie with Johansson headlining, but then again, if people don't know what "Ghost in the Shell" is, they're just not gonna pony up for theatre seats, but wait for Netflix or Redbox. Reality.

[Big s]

I have to agree that most people don't know what this even is. I think the fuchicoma or tachicoma or whatever would have felt more like a shoehorned in comedy relief and glad it was left out, but imagine how many more people would have seen it if the previews had silly spider tanks having an awkward conversation.

[sh9000]

https://www.comicbookmovie.com/anime__manga/box-office-ghost-in-the-shell-doubles-domestic-earnings-abroad-a150129

[hachi]

2 hours ago, sh9000 said:

https://www.comicbookmovie.com/anime__manga/box-office-ghost-in-the-shell-doubles-domestic-earnings-abroad-a150129

Funny comments...(unfortunately the discussion soon degenerated)

>>And for some reason Scarjo didn't move her arms when she walk?

I too found it weird and then realized it was her way of acting like a cyborg. Still weird. And good to know I wasn't the only one who didn't like the director and the music. If they make enough money to justify a sequel I hope they get a new director and an above average composer. They got good actors but ruined it with the choice of director.

[hachi]

5 hours ago, Big s said:

I have to agree that most people don't know what this even is. I think the fuchicoma or tachicoma or whatever would have felt more like a shoehorned in comedy relief and glad it was left out, but imagine how many more people would have seen it if the previews had silly spider tanks having an awkward conversation.

Fuchikoma would have been better (tachikoma's were the ones with the silly conversations). Imagine a trailer showing tank vs tank action! You probably wouldn't need ScarJo to sell haha (but then the production cost would also go up..)

[electric indigo]

Just watched it, it's the Cyberpunk movie I've been waiting for for 30 years. Great visuals, design concepts, cinematography & 80s electronics music.

People who complain about the slow pacing probably wouldn't survive Oshii's movie. I would have preferred less explanatory scenes, but those were to be expected. Loved the actors for Section 9, and ScarJ did a great job on the Major.

Spoiler

Biggest letdown was the Big Bad, the movie would have worked better if they'd dropped that character completely. 

 

[Scyla]

Saw it today. It was ok I guess. However now I feel the need to watch the Movie from 1995 again but I only have the VHS release and no VHS player anymore. 

Onwards to Amazon.

[sh9000]

I enjoyed this movie.  It was slow in some parts but overall not too bad.  The visuals and nods to original scenes were great as well.  My wife thought it was boring though.  

[Slave IV]

The original movie is my top two all time favorite anime movie along with Ninja Scroll. Seen both nearly 100 times and been anticipating this for a while. Got a bit worried due to some criticism and knowing how Hollywood often messing things up. But man did I enjoy that! It was basically the original movie with more emphasis on action but still had a lot of the underlying story told in a more clear way. Fantastic job by everyone involved! My wife liked it too! A bit scary for my daughter but her eyes were glued most the time.

[renegadeleader1]

I wonder how GiTS will sustain this coming weekend. Anime Boston took place the same weekend as its debut. That's roughly 30,000 people this film was aimed at that were otherwise indisposed.

[hachi]

5 hours ago, renegadeleader1 said:

I wonder how GiTS will sustain this coming weekend. Anime Boston took place the same weekend as its debut. That's roughly 30,000 people this film was aimed at that were otherwise indisposed.

I hope it makes some more money. It was not that bad visually.

How some visuals came to be:

Ashthorp.com/ghost-in-the-shell

[Big s]

This film does deserve a sequel more than most franchises. I hope it gets more cash this weekend and does better when it opens in China and Japan. World of Warcraft was saved mostly by the Chinese so one can only hope.

[Marzan]

im not that surprised by the lack of traction of GITS in the west. This kind of sci-fi no longer sells well (unless there's a gargantuan name behind it a la James Cameron/Spielberg). Big sellers now have big recognizable properties, ensemble casts, lots of comedy shoehorned in etc.

[kajnrig]

Saw it against my better judgment the other day (didn't pay a dime, though, because frakk these guys) after finally going through the '95 original. I also have the original manga, though I still have to get all the way through that. And in the time it took me to write all this off and on, I've now seen the first two episodes of SAC.

This movie is about what I expected it to be. Completely middle of the road. That's about it. Anywhere between 4 and 6 out of 10 seems fair. It's something you won't remember in a month's time. 50 years from now, it'll be just a footnote in Hollywood's political history.

 

I've been trying to suss out the "ghost," if you will har har har, that was lost in translation and made this movie 1) just another generic sci-fi action thriller, and 2) not Ghost in the Shell. And I think I've narrowed it down to two things:

1) Oversimplification, sometimes to the point of insult. It's everywhere in this movie, and runs the gamut from a mild dumbing down of the world (people mark a distinction between "human" and "machine" and express a shared preference for the former, more on that later) to just outright stupidity (most notably the mere existence of The Evil Corporation and The Evil Corporation's CEO). GitS is nothing if not a fully-realized world(s). The world presented in this film is nothing of the sort.

2) Like I said before, people in this world still mark a distinct separation between human and machine. Ghost in the Shell is unique among its cyberpunk siblings because it goes waaay further than any of them in blurring the line between human and synthetic; in fact, it's more accurate to say that the line 1) barely exists at all, and more importantly 2) isn't relevant at all, that more important than "human" is "the presence of a ghost." This movie shifts to a more Western/Christian idea of humanity - the greatest of God's Creations, lord over all nature - and that subtle hierarchy, where to be human is the desired state and anything else is lesser, changes everything about the way this society interacts with the technology it creates. This Major spends a great deal of her time and energy consigning her identity to her humanity. The Major(s) spends a great deal of her time and energy consigning her identity to the interplay between her "ghost" and the world around her.

---

And while I'm on the subject of This Major, she really does feel like a separate character from The Major(s). Mira Killian has no agency. She makes one consequential decision in the entire film - she decides she will no longer be used - and otherwise spends the entire story being done onto. She gets kidnapped, gets forced into a cyborg body, gets lied to, and so on. This doesn't make her a bad character per se, but it certainly doesn't resemble any incarnation of The Major, who chose the life she lives. In fact, This Major feels like a victim in a case that The Major would investigate.

I actually think that would have been the more interesting route to go. Keep the sort of "prequel" setting if you must, keep the Western man-machine separation philosophy if you must, but have This Major, Mira Killian, be just an unfortunate victim at the center of an investigation led by The Major (sans cybernetics and plus above Western philosophy) into Hanka Robotics. As the movie progresses, Mira learns about her past (oh also, lose the Japanese girl bit, that was dumb and tone-deaf and dumb) while the Major, an accomplished and skilled computer hacker who sees herself in lines of code more than she does in the eyes of others, comes to a similar epiphany as she does in the '95 movie and decides to undergo cyberization.

It's still not an "ideal" adaptation, but it would still do a better job maintaining the "ghost" of GitS.

Yikes, that ended up being way longer than I originally intended. Spoiler tags ahoy.

Edited April 7, 2017 by kajnrig

[electric indigo]

^ I dare to say that the '95 Major would make a pretty bad live action experience. When watching animation or reading comics, we accept a high level of abstraction and stylized characters. I love the Jin-Ro anime movie even more that the GitS movie, but having the same plot & dialogue acted out by human actors would have me cringing all the time. '95 Major would be a hard-ass soldier and executioner who, by her own choice, gave up her human body until only her brain was left. Detached from society, she cuts her faint ties to humanity and merges into the digital realm. Outside of the SF nerd circles, people would have a hard time sympathizing with this character. I fully agree with you that the evil company part and especially the Cutter character is extremely dumb, but the spin of making the Major a victim, struggling to find her place (like Logan in the X-Men movies), is something the movie does right IMO.

[kajnrig]

2 hours ago, electric indigo said:

^ I dare to say that the '95 Major would make a pretty bad live action experience.

I agree that a 1:1 translation wouldn't work, but there's more than the '95 movie to draw from. My first exposure to GitS was the movie, but didn't consume any of it until the manga, and I was surprised when I went back to said movie a few days ago to find her character very different, and then again when I started SAC and she took another turn. But the crux of my argument is that all the Majors, different as they are from each other, exert themselves upon their world as much as the world exerts itself upon them, and whose sense(s) of identity is tied to the world around them, not a more passive character whose identity is tied to her humanity.

5 hours ago, electric indigo said:

I love the Jin-Ro anime movie even more that the GitS movie

Jin-Roh is weird. I know I like it, but I always forget why until I watch it again at least once every year.

5 hours ago, electric indigo said:

'95 Major would be a hard-ass soldier and executioner who, by her own choice, gave up her human body until only her brain was left. Detached from society, she cuts her faint ties to humanity and merges into the digital realm. Outside of the SF nerd circles, people would have a hard time sympathizing with this character.

All the more reason to have her be a side character, no? Have OC Mira play the "straight character" that the story revolves around, and the Major can be part of the supporting cast.

[Big s]

I think the idea here was to establish her as a main character and deal with the flaws of her personality as a beginning story rather than an established character to create a franchise where she becomes a much stronger character. We may not get that chance unless the overseas numbers grow. Most of the other characters in the film felt like an earlier version as well and had room to become something more.

[M'Kyuun]

I felt the same, that this was a bit of an origin story for the Section 9 characters, esp the Major and Batou. They invented a plausible reason for his sealed eyes, as introducing him with them probably would have confused folks with no GiTS background. The one thing I didn't care for was that , aside from an implant here or there, all of Section 9 are human except the Major, who was fully cybernized. In every incarnation I've seen, Batou has always been full cyborg like the Major. I like that, as it gives them a commonality by which they can empathize with each other. I am resigned to the idea that this is its own story apart from what's come before, even with all the borrowed scenes from the '95 film.

[kajnrig]

I'd agree with that assessment. And it goes without saying that I think it was the wrong way to go in the first place, and an awful (okay, not awful, but certainly not memorable) execution of the plan in the second place. They played everything as safe as can be and got burned because of it. That strategy reflects all the trends in big-budget Hollywood movies nowadays, and clearly it was a losing strategy. They should have looked outside the conventions of Hollywood for ideas about what story to tell and how to do it.

But speaking of overseas numbers, it looks like my prediction (the movie would break even) was wrong and the movie might not even make up its production cost: https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2017/04/07/box-office-china-cant-save-scarlett-johanssons-ghost-in-the-shell/#4e4f29ab18c9

Ghost in the Shell began its box office sprint in China yesterday, with a mere $7.8 million on its opening day. The film also debuts in Japan this weekend, so we'll have a much clearer picture of how the film will play out by the end of the weekend. But, for the moment, the Scarlett Johansson sci-fi thriller is playing like a relatively conventional Hollywood biggie in the world's second-biggest moviegoing market.

It's an okay opening, and this means it will possibly surpass its North American total. But it's not big enough to turn a bomb into a hit.

At a glance, a $7.8 million opening day (including online ticketing fees) means a $23m opening weekend and a $47-$51m total. Considering the $110m-budgeted film (although it is rumored to have cost much more) won't top $45m domestic and isn't burning up the charts elsewhere, that's another case of a decent performance in China not being enough to change the narrative and put the film into the black.

[arbit]

Disappointed that its failing.

You would need a really talented director to pull this off. 

I thought they knew what they were doing. Turns out that the Hollywood treatment with an Avengers level budget isnt right for this franchise. 

This loss will make it difficult for more anime live-action properties.

[Big s]

I thought it was a good sign that Hollywood was taking anime more seriously, but the sad returns will probably hold that back another decade. I'm still hoping for better numbers this weekend, but not holding my breath.

[kajnrig]

I wonder what Christopher Nolan or Darren Aronofsky could have done with this property, if only for the fact that they've acknowledged anime influences in their works (notably Satoshi Kon's works). Apparently Spielberg was the one really pushing for this to get made, so maybe he could have done something with it as well.

 

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

I felt the same, that this was a bit of an origin story for the Section 9 characters, esp the Major and Batou. They invented a plausible reason for his sealed eyes, as introducing him with them probably would have confused folks with no GiTS background. The one thing I didn't care for was that , aside from an implant here or there, all of Section 9 are human except the Major, who was fully cybernized. In every incarnation I've seen, Batou has always been full cyborg like the Major. I like that, as it gives them a commonality by which they can empathize with each other. I am resigned to the idea that this is its own story apart from what's come before, even with all the borrowed scenes from the '95 film.

Essentially it's own "Stand Alone Complex".

I think a considerable issue here is that they are not getting the way that the world of GITS works and why. Every universe, bizarre as it may be, has something of a rhyme and reason to it, even if it doesn't make much sense to most folks. Things work a certain way, things exist the way they do for a reason, and characters are who they are and do what they do for reasons and events that shaped them (and continue to do so for some time to come).

The movie makers tend to ignore this in many instances and force their own "story" on it that allows for explosions, "bullet time" scenes and whatnot and discard the sensibilities of the series to the wind. While I understand that some concessions do need to be made for the sake of the movie and the audience, too many or ones made in critical areas of the story will ruin what brought the idea to the table to begin with.  Anime is not the same kind of "beast" that Hollywood is used to, and movies made of the series/ OVA's we love need to be handed in a much different way than your "average blockbuster".

As for "borrowing scenes"; while that can help connect the movie, it's kind of like taking parts off a VF-1S to deck out another valkyrie: unless you know what the parts do and why, it's just taking what looks good and slapping it onto a very different "airframe" as so to speak. They scenes may look good and provide action and story, but without the underlying reasoning (as mentioned before) that operates their universe, it's just parts removed from a frame and pasted en-masse onto another frame of a different structure and reason.

 

...and if none of this makes sense, then it's the Pepsi throwback I drank tonight.

Edited April 8, 2017 by pengbuzz

[hachi]

5 hours ago, arbit said:

Disappointed that its failing.

You would need a really talented director to pull this off. 

I thought they knew what they were doing. Turns out that the Hollywood treatment with an Avengers level budget isnt right for this franchise. 

This loss will make it difficult for more anime live-action properties.

On the bright side, maybe they'll think twice before doing another anime to live-action movie. We can then avoid having our favorite anime being butchered in the live-action version. And I hope they learn the lesson that they have to get a good director and writer to start with.

[sh9000]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B06XT8SXTS/ref=tmm_blu_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

[kajnrig]

I like how there's already 15 reviews. Like, you don't know, they could have printed an entirely different video onto the disc...

[azrael]

11 hours ago, kajnrig said:

But speaking of overseas numbers, it looks like my prediction (the movie would break even) was wrong and the movie might not even make up its production cost: https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2017/04/07/box-office-china-cant-save-scarlett-johanssons-ghost-in-the-shell/#4e4f29ab18c9

It's still possible to break even, but over time.They'll likely (eventually) break even on the production costs, but marketing costs will likely be a sunken cost.

[technoblue]

I saw the movie Friday night. It was good, for a Hollywood adaptation of Oshii's two OVAs. And I can enjoy it for that, but part of me also wishes it had taken some risks to find its own voice while also creating some of its own memorable scenes. Also, Kenji Kawai's music should have played during the opening shelling sequence.

Ars wrote a good review discussing Johansson's robotic, blank take on the character. Even with all the other stuff, I have to agree that was the one thing that stood out as being really different in this film. With Oshii's original OVAs, SAC, and even Arise, I never got the feeling that Major Kusanagi was disconnected--even in Innocence where her role was rather unique. 

https://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2017/04/how-ghost-in-the-shell-got-its-main-characters-wrong-and-why-it-matters/

 

[Nightbat]

12 hours ago, Big s said:

I thought it was a good sign that Hollywood was taking anime more seriously, but the sad returns will probably hold that back another decade. I'm still hoping for better numbers this weekend, but not holding my breath.

 

The only thing Hollywood takes seriously is money, and being creatively bankrupt are trying to source material from other means of entertainment

Seems like GitS (being a 'success' amongst anime) was made to test the waters if this niche market could be exploited (exploited in the business sense)

[UN Spacy]

Gonna catch a matinee next Mon or Tues.

[Chronocidal]

1 hour ago, Nightbat said:

 

The only thing Hollywood takes seriously is money, and being creatively bankrupt are trying to source material from other means of entertainment

Seems like GitS (being a 'success' amongst anime) was made to test the waters if this niche market could be exploited (exploited in the business sense)

What's sad is that they're just as inept at understanding how to successfully adapt an anime as they are at picking franchises that will adapt well.

If they're so obsessed with the actiony popcorn flicks, they need to pick something less cerebral to begin with.  There's plenty of anime like that out there.  It just doesn't stand out, because that's the stuff that probably doesn't do well in Japan.