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How Do The Japanese Feel About Hollywood's Version Of "Ghost In The Shell?"

No one said she doesn't have a race. It's that her race doesn't matter. Other than her appearance and her name, what is one aspect of Major's character that is exclusively Japanese? Nothing comes to mind for me.

Sometimes race is merely a descriptive feature like hair or eye colour. It's a part of a character but doesn't influence the narrative at all. Say you have a black character whose arc is overcoming the racism of others. His race is the direct cause of conflict and so integral to the narrative. You couldn't turn that character white because if you did that conflict would disappear. The Major is a cyborg cop dealing with future crime. Her being white, Asian, male, or attack helicopter wouldn't change that basic premise.

Nah, I'd say changing Motoko into a man wouldn't affect much since she lacks any sort of femininity in the first place. Wasn't there a scene somewhere where she considered getting a male body? Personally I've never found her to be appealing as a woman.

When stuff like this happens people act like race/gender is the only important thing about a person. I wish more people would see that this attitude is just as problematic as the stuff they're rallying against.

One of the core messages of GITS was always about finding your humanity in spite of having a cyberized body

Hollywood made Motoko white for one reason only and that was for money and that backfired on them, but let's at least stop pretending like Hollywood cared about being faithful to the original vision.

CCTakato wrote:

One of the core messages of GITS was always about finding your humanity in spite of having a cyberized body

As I've said before, the anime fails at this with the Major because she acts like a heartless machine 99% of the time. I never got the impression any potential loss of humanity bothered her. Heck, in the original she was all too happy to merge with the Puppet Master and become something non-human.

Let's at least stop pretending that Hollywood as an entity is equivalent to the director and his team who made the movie. The design work is absolutely gorgeous and a lot of work went into rendering the cityscape. The story has classic GitS themes, but made less pretentious and more accessible to a general audience. They also included scenes and elements directly from the source so it's clear the film makers were familiar with and have affection for the original. It's certainly one of the better anime adaptations out there and is far from a bad movie on its own.

But unfortunately the deck was always stacked against it. Cast an unknown Japanese actress, no one will see it. Cast a big name who happens to be white, people will boycott it. There is literally no way they could have won.

@ Vaisaga: true, but even though the movie underperformed, I think it would have made even less money with a Japanese actress instead of Scar Jo. From a strictly business standpoint (and probably creatively because I hear Scar Jo did a good job), the film-makers made the right choice, but there was never going to be a way to avoid the white-washing backlash.

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@ Vaisaga: true, but even though the movie underperformed, I think it would have made even less money with a Japanese actress instead of Scar Jo. From a strictly business standpoint (and probably creatively because I hear Scar Jo did a good job), the film-makers made the right choice, but there was never going to be a way to avoid the white-washing backlash.

Does Rupert Sanders want a participation trophy or something?

@ Vaisaga: true, but even though the movie underperformed, I think it would have made even less money with a Japanese actress instead of Scar Jo. From a strictly business standpoint (and probably creatively because I hear Scar Jo did a good job), the film-makers made the right choice, but there was never going to be a way to avoid the white-washing backlash.

So you don't think Rinko Kikuchi, aka Mako from Pacific Rim, could have attracted people to the film? An actress from a very popular film that's big with nerds AND very anime and kaiju-movie inspired? Something super popular with both general audiences AND the weeb demographic?

You've basically created a system where Japanese actresses can't get cast in leading roles... ever. No matter what. Because they can't get cast in leading roles until they're well known enough, and they can't be well known enough unless they're cast in leading roles.

But what I find interesting is all the people saying essentially "you can't cast a Japanese actress in a leading role like this, they'll all too unknown!" Well, if studios are completely unwilling to cast Japanese actresses even for roles of SPECIFICALLY JAPANESE CHARACTERS, then how the heck is a Japanese actress ever supposed to get known?

You've basically created a system where Japanese actresses can't get cast in leading roles... ever. No matter what. Because they can't get cast in leading roles until they're well known enough, and they can't be well known enough unless they're cast in leading roles.

I have no idea what this means.