Its one of those downward spiral effects, the more money Hollywood makes, the more money they pump into the movies, the more profit they make, the more money they pump in, over and over, but then the risks become bigger and bigger, and they start playing safe, and tightening the purse strings. Then they'll play too safe, the movies will start to suck, people will bitch, they'll reassess, let franchises hibernate for 20 years while they give indie directors a chance, then it'll start all over again.
From what I have gathered by sitting through panels by Japanese artists is that the Japanese see the characters as Japanese unless otherwise noted. In most cases non Asian characters are drawn differently especially if it is to make a point to show they are foreign. Some of the artists have expressed they do not mind if non Asian people see the characters as white. In some cases the cultural identifiers are not particularly strong. GitS seems to me like it could just as easily take place in a future big city anywhere. There will always be a bit of a cultural filter based on the different way the writers portray military. I think that is because of Japan's isolation and that they are restricted to a defense force due to ww2 regulations. I think SJ can pull off the attitude and mannerisms of her character. We have seen her do similar things. The idea of GitS is more about technology and it's relation to humans. It also seems like an easier live action adaptation. DBZ or avatar were going to be disastrous because they are cartoons. You can see the same problems with turtles adaptations and movies like g.I. Joe. It is really easy to become campy. This is because animation uses different tropes than real world acting. If you look at how characters shift in design to denote mood or feeling it cannot be the same with a real actor. So really you would have to really rewrite a lot of it with real dialog and actors in mind. I think that is where anime adaptations fail more than not casting Asian characters.
Looks like a scene for scene remake with some tinkering to the third act to accommodate the "I want my memories back", sub-plot.
Huh. I'd heard that the plot was going to be more about the Individual Eleven plot from the second season of the TV series, but quite a bit there looks like it's directly from the first movie with a bit from the second.
When you say WOK you mean Wrath Of Khan? Or something else? Because I don't remember Brando on the bridge of the USS Reliant. "He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round perdition's flames before I give him up!"
Seriously. What would people do today if this showed up in theaters? A hopelessly straight white male? Dressing up as a woman. The meltdowns over that would be glorious.....
International trailer. Still keeps looking like a straight redo of the animated. Not that that's bad, if that gets non-anime people to watch, fine and dandy.
Gits is good, and it delves into some pretty deep areas of human relations with machines. However I always preferred bubblegum crisis 2040. It explored issues of machine self awareness and bursting from slavery much better than the matrix. It also delved into how the men saving the damsel in distress issue could change with machine enhanced fighting. It also does not say women are better than men, it just happens the knightsabers happened to be women because of their leader. I thought BGC was so much more creepy and philosophical while also giving some much more memorable characters. I can barely remember a lot of the gits episodes and characters, but there are a number of bgc episodes I remember well, and I do not think I lost memory of most of the bgc characters even if they were not very present. GITS does make a bit more sense from an economical position as it had a lot more exposure.
Pretty much what the last trailer said. Seems they're going out of their way to emulate the look of the first two movies while completely ignoring the source material or any of its adaptations when it comes to the story in favor of a Total Recall style amnesia/revenge story.
Yeah. I saw the trailer during The Expanse and said to my wife, "That's... not the way the story goes."
I plan on watching it, but at this point it's only so I can talk about it in a panel I'm running about anime adaptations to live action.