I don’t review movies, cuz I’m not a film guy. But sometimes I have thoughts on things? And I grew up with cyberpunk, the original Ghost in the Shell, and Stand Alone Complex, so I went to see the movie, and I thought a few things.
No Spoilers:
I really liked it. It was cyberpunk as hell, and for the most part felt very GitS-y. The interjection of a traditional american villain was meh, but aside from that, was very close to the earlier works in feel and theme.
And ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS visually.
I had a hard time getting into it at first, because it’s a reboot, and I’ve had so much of the earlier versions in my veins that it was hard to separate. But once I fully internalized that this is an alternate-universe story, it really clicked for me.
It was unfortunate that they tried to recreate several of the classic scenes, because you just can’t force in something that like. The recreations were OK, not as good as originals. Anywhere that the movie stuck to new stuff it was quite good!
One sorta-spoiler below, stop here if you want to avoid it!!
*
**
***
**
*
I was surprised that they addressed the “ScarJo is white” thing! On the one hand, it’s not really an excuse, and it was slightly immersion-breaking. But on the other, it demonstrated they were at least aware of the issue? Dunno, kinda weird.
2 Responses to “Thoughts on new Ghost In The Shell movie”
Leave a Reply to embrodski Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
I think the party line is that lampshading a thing doesn’t excuse it.
If the rest of the work doen’t speak for it you are in the same place you would have been if you hadn’t lampshadesd it.
It’s funny, because the entire point of lampshading is that it does excuse things. That’s the reason it’s done. Acknowledge it and move on. But I agree that it felt kinda weird. Lampshading is, I think, only supposed to be used to excuse narrative convention. “Yeah, it’s dumb that we fight a new monster every week, what are the chances?” The audience knows that this is a silly thing that is dumb, but is being ignored for the sake of making the story possible. The creator is assuring the audience that he’s not a boob who doesn’t realize this is dumb, and won’t they just play along anyway?
It doesn’t seem to work for things that the audience actually has a real problem with. So trying to use the lampshade for that purpose felt… weird.
That being said, the rest of the movie really was pretty darn good, I would’ve been fine with it even without the lampshading as long as they hadn’t changed the Major’s name. The name change really irked me. The lampshading removed that irritation about the name, because it basically acknowledged her real name is Kusanagi, but left me feeling conflicted.