Forum - View topicNEWS: Deadline: Ghost in the Shell Film Will Lose At Least US$60 Million
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DangerMouse
Posts: 3983 |
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Great post Kikaioh.
I actually enjoyed it. It's unsurprisingly not as "deep"/questioning as the original but I still really quite liked it. |
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SWAnimefan
Posts: 634 |
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Hollywood loves to make all sorts of excuses than admit the real reasons. The movie failed because it had very poor writing and the advertising didn't sell the movie. Whitewashing boycotts really was a minor factor in losses.
Personally, I believe ScarJo was also a factor. She may be an A-lister, but she really doesn't sell as much as people like to admit. Some view her as overrated or a wooden actress. And believe it or not, but I know some people that didn't want to go see the movie is because of her political stance, like when she did those Hollywood Election videos. |
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#838774
Posts: 158 |
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After watching it again, you can really see a lot of touches throughout the film that didn't have to be there but were a love letter to the franchise. I think that everyone wanted better for this movie, but the script just was weak. With better writing, this would've been truly an impressive movie.
ScarJo did the best she could with the script, and I think one thing that worked against her was that spoiler[ her origin story. Instead of being the confident and strong Major that we know who has had years to come to terms with her reality, she has only been full cyborg for a year. Prior to her "accident", she was a young rebellious girl. This is a huge contrast to the existing source material and I don't think the rebellious teenager as a killer droid worked very well. However, that was the script that ScarJo was given and to that end she played the part well ] In the end, it was a beautiful film which was very Hollywoodized. I have no problem with the unique take on the story but man it sucks that it was so close to being great but fell apart with the writing. Though I wish it would've gone to a more seasoned director, I gotta say that Rupert Sanders impressed me considering his previous work. I hope that in time, people will look on it more favorably |
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azhanei
Posts: 79 |
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Agreeing with other comments. I gave it a B-, and that's because the visuals got an A+. I love action films. This didn't meet the baseline for what good action film should do, which is make you grip your armrests and fight to remember to breathe. The tension built some as the film went on, but everyone in the main cast can't be the flat character. Direction and Script, meh.These are good actors who could've better served their roles. I'm also more of a fan of the Stand Alone Complex version of the Major. I think that would've translated better to a 2017 audience. Had this been an awesome movie, the "whitewashing" controversy wouldn't have stopped word of mouth from bolstering it.
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writerpatrick
 Posts: 672 Location: Canada |
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I think some of the loss is simply Hollywood accounting. If they think a film will loose money they artificially inflate it's loss to reduce their apparent profits. This way they don't have to pay taxes and can save a lot on other payments.
Blade Runner made about $32 million, which with adjustments comes to about 80 million. Lifetime gross is around $90 million in today's dollars. Worldwide GitS has made around $75 million in it's first week so it looks to surpass Blade Runner with adjustments. It's also important to realize that DVD and BluRay sales for the film are likely to be quite high because all the GitS and other anime fans will want to have a copy. So what they loose at the theater they could make back in other ways. The film isn't doing as badly as it's being made out to be. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15313 |
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That same Negative Nancy said it's a money-loser, even if it gets to $200 million because of China and Japan. But that's enough to help push it in the black, with the help of home video.
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Ambimunch
 Posts: 2012 |
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Maybe the story sucked, but I suspect the anti-white hate train also definitely had an impact. The movie was better than all other anime live action adaptations we had before.
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2231 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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I felt horribly awkward sitting in a theater full of Japanese people watching this.
They even laughed out loud during the scene where spoiler[the major meets her mother]. I was pretty damn disappointed during the entire thing. They almost had a chance to make a very different film dealing with a transition to a post racial society or racial identity vs. physical appearance but didn't address any of that in any sensible way at all, and perhaps the thing that pissed me off the most: spoiler[They turned the final tank showdown scene into one where it was being remote controlled by the bad guy. This destroys the entire point of that scene, the battle was supposed to be between a true AI and the major, and shows why her "ghost" can be superior! Plus the "redemption" of kuze and it being a... love?... story made no sense, Kuze brutally murdered people who probably didn't have anything much to do directly with crimes, etc... And yet the movie thinks we're supposed to sympathize with him in the end?] People who said it was a reasonable action movie if you didn't think too hard about what it was trying to say were wrong in my opinion. It was a pretty bad action movie and a lame sci-fi movie, and it was filled with a world vision that seemed at least to me to be a group of westerners oppressing poor asian people who all live in slums or are grunt yakuza types. I really wanted to give this film a chance but I left the theater actually angry. |
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IG
Posts: 60 |
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Yah I disagree that he whitewashing thing had an impact. I think it might stop some people from going , but not a whole lot .Most people didn't care about the controversy . Media just make it seem bigger than before I think they lost 5% percent at most . Iroonically 13 % percent of the people who went to see it was asain themselves in America. |
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Lostlorn Forest
 Posts: 544 Location: USA |
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A Dog's Purpose suffered a far more damaging publicity scandal just weeks before release, which included celebrities and petitions pledging to boycott. In this case, which sets it apart from GITS, is that it was also battered with a myriad of bad, biased, clickbait press. If anything this scandal helped propel its success further, because it made $180 million against its $22 million budget. That's because it was still solid in marketing and its budget was modest. I'd like to see just how many people actually care about white-washing enough to contemplate whether or not to see a movie (especially of a property they are unfamiliar with) but I'd be willing to bet they'd find the abuse of a dog more offensive than an actress of a different race being casted. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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I don't know about Japan, but most reports peg the standard return from China as around 30% AT BEST. (ie. if the movie "grosses" 100mil in China, it only gives 30mil back to the producers It might be more like 10-20%, but I know returns from China aren't all the useful unless something does HUGE box office there. Like Transformers making $300mil and Furious 7 making almost $400mil (gross) are big deals. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15313 |
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samuel:
If you wanna feel awkward, watch Breakfast at Tiffany's with them. 
Given Japan's birth-rate issues, most of them were probably not even parents, anyway.
Well, in the film's defense, Obama didn't do a very good job in those areas, either.  And I haven't seen SAC, but as for how Kuze's portrayed in the movie, it's about the same inclusive and indifferent attitude which the Hollywood left shows towards people who crash planes into buildings or shoot up Olympics, so...
Heero: Mentioned it elsewhere, but if we're gonna go by those standards, than Beauty and the Beast isn't much more profitable than the cartoon. |
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Punpun's ghost
 Posts: 73 Location: Wales |
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Just saw it. It highlighted a few issues of remaking classic animes for a different audience. In this case they were wrong to have been so reverential towards Oshii's original. By keeping whole scenes, trying to maintain the whole tone of that first anime adaptation (including the music) while removing much of the philosophical arguments which made the anime so rich, the film ended up both superficial and poe-faced. I found myself thinking wistfully about Luc Besson's version of Valerian, which I'm sure will be nonsense but at least looks from the trailer like it means to have fun.
It did however make me reconsider the Major as a character. She's very contained; impressive, yes, and very cool in many ways, but also often rather cold. Her emotional arc is quite underdeveloped in all the adaptations with the exception of SAC's 2nd Gig. Batau does better in this regard, though he often gets cute secondary characters to interact with, such as the Basset and the tachikomas, which feed the viewer with examples of his empathetic nature beyond the gruff kick-ass exterior. The Major just gets Kuze; I can see why they went for him in this recent film, as well as try to develop a sense of an emotional journey for the Major, but it was clunkily handled. I also admit to missing the tachikomas. I want one! But they are the beating heart of SAC, and I can see why. As for the Major, I can also now see why the manga and the first SAC went overboard in their sexualisation of her appearance, creepy as it is: it's something for (some) people to engage with. Same with SJ's skin suit, which I just wish they'd avoided. For me, though, 2nd gig's solution works best for me in this regard, over all the versions I have seen so far. I loved the device of the paper birds - also resonant, because it made me think of the paper cranes in the Hiroshima memorial garden and the story behind it of the Hibakusha girl. As for the whitewashing thing, I was prepared to accept the elephant in the room until the Major met a key figure from her past, to which said elephant dropped a huge, stinking turd and the whole last 20 minutes of the film tanked for me I'm afraid. And the choice of both her and Kuze given their back story felt about as logical as Igor choosing Abby Normal's brain in Young Frankenstein. That's what I was thinking about as they were battling the spider tank. Not very helpful. Again, I think the film suffered a lack of goodwill because of this plus I think a lot of people are still resistant towards anime and anime adaptations. Unless it was utterly brilliant it wasn't going to sell very well, and sadly while I think the film makers deserve credit for trying - it felt carefully and earnestly made - they shot themselves in the foot through their choices. |
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GeorgeC
Posts: 795 |
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What do I think? 1) I completely agree with Johannson being a non-factor. I just don't think she's that big a draw... She IS wooden -- at least in everything I've ever seen her in! I think the failure of GiTS pretty much seals the deal on a Black Widow film. Not gonna happen -- not that there were any specifically great Black Widow storylines to adapt from the comics to begin with! 2) I'm in agreement that the "white-washing" was not that big a factor after all. 3) Yep... Japanese would rather see Caucasians play the major character roles. Sorry, but that jibes with personal experience and what I've heard from people whose judgment I trust. There are people here who still can't accept the non-politically correct reality of the world. 4) Probably most important -- anime is niche. The majority of titles have a problem topping 3,000 copies in sales in the US! A lot of them don't top over 1,500 which is a drop in the bucket compared to the major home video label sales of more recent films and perennial sellers. Like it or not, there are only a couple of series that have anything like "mainstream acceptance or recognition" and Ghost in the Shell is NOT one of them. The shows that were heavily rewritten and localized, the ones that were shown on local TV stations in syndication BEFORE Cartoon Network was a reality, when there were actually more venues on TV showing animation, period, had larger audiences than most of the shows aired on CN's anime block. Voltron, Robotech, and Speed Racer are far closer to mainstream than most of the anime released in the past 30 years. That's a bitter pill for some people to swallow considering they spend half their time online decrying any kind of dubbing and alterations to make it actually possible to air some of these shows in anything BUT a post-11 PM time slot! [I'm not saying I LIKE localization practices but those are just observations. I'm sure people-in-the-know have closer access to sales figures. I'd be very, very surprised if sales figures of the shows I mentioned weren't multiples of most, if not ALL, the "accurately translated" series post-1995.] Miyazaki's Ghibli films are closer to mainstream and mainstream in the video market for feature films in the States is generally considered a high fraction of a million copies sold. I think it's safe to say SOME of the Ghibli films have sold over 100,000 copies in the US and they made somebody money because Disney would not have bothered to license those films and pour seed money into Ghibli production if they didn't think they stood to make some money! |
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GATSU
Posts: 15313 |
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Heero: By your logic, the new Beauty and the Beast is actually not that profitable, relative to the cartoon.
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