America's Ghost In The Shell film would be an otherwise forgotten reboot, like Robocop or Total Recall, were it not for the controversy around its casting. Ghost In The Shell, like the recent Ghostbusters remake, will be remembered more for the discussion around its casting, than for anything in the film itself. Not that the remake merits such discussion, but as far as live-action anime adaptations go, it's an important milestone.
The greatest enemy of this film is time. The original Ghost In The Shell anime movie came out in 1995. At that time, the idea of cybernetic bodies, sentient A.I., and manipulated memories still seemed shocking and prophetic, but now, after movies and shows like The Matrix, Westworld, and Ex Machina, anime like Macross Plus, Tehxnolyze, Serial Experiments Lain, and Psycho Pass, and video games like Persona 3, Metal Gear Solid 2, and Final Fantasy VII, these same ideas, presented in such a standard, deflated fashion, seem stale and oudated to a modern audience. Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima made this point in an essay for Rolling Stone, "In 2017, one cannot simply whisper, "The net is vast and infinite" and hope for the same impact that such as statement had 22 years ago when it was uttered by Motoko Kusanagi to such great effect. In 1995, the internet was a mysterious, brave new frontier; today, it's a known quantity. Smartphones are glued to our hands and we are constantly connected. For us, the net doesn't feel vast or infinite."
This is why the Ghost In The Shell television show, Stand Alone Complex, succeeded in keeping the series fresh. Instead of retreading old ground, it explored all the elements of society and humanity that would be affected by advanced cyborgs and sentient A.I. The American adaptation breaks no new ground in delving into the implications of a future we're already halfway towards. It's instead a washed out version of a more ambitious and striking film. We all know the famous scene of the garbage man who learns that his memories of a wife and daughter were implanted by the Puppetmaster. The film took its time to establish his memories and took its time in revealing them. After the initial shock of learning this man had no family, there's another, subtler shock of knowing how vulnerable cyberbrains are to hacking. In the remake, the scene is played by rote, but the garbage man isn't established as well prior, so we have less sympathy for him. Also, due the film's new priorities in direction, we don't think much about the implications of it.
Now, this isn't say one couldn't feasibly remake Ghost In The Shell. After all, while the original film has aged better than other anime classics like Akira or Perfect Blue, it isn't without room for improvement. The two major flaws of the original Ghost In The Shell are character development and the lack of Internet. Characters aren't fleshed out in the original film because that film was more about ideas than characters. We're more interested in the possibilities of Ghost In The Shell than in any of the individuals who inhabit it. The film also failed to see the supremacy of the Internet, which as absorbed so much of man's modern life. Lain, with its Net obsessed plots, feels far more relevant to our social media smartphone age. Even The Matrix, which took Ghost In The Shell as an inspiration, delved into the allures of virtual reality.
The American remake fails in both of these areas. Being a paint-by-numbers rehash of the original film, it decides not to take advantage of all we know about the Internet, smartphones, and social media. So it already feels dated-on-arrival. The other members of Section 9, outside of Motoko, Batou, and Aramaki, are given little more than cameo roles, with some like Togusa being near unrecognizable. Again, this isn't a far cry from the original, except that the remake is now a Bourne Identity knock-off, with Motoko trying to discover the truth about her past. This, again, doesn't work, because Motoko's past isn't why people like Ghost In The Shell, and Motoko's character is too poorly written and acted in the remake to make us care.
One would expect Scarlett Johansson to fit naturally into this role, having played Black Widow in the Marvel movies. She would just need to mime that performance here, as it had the right amount of iciness, humor, and camaraderie befitting Major Kusanagi. For some reason or another, her performance is dull and uninspired. The intent here may been to mimic Motoko's doll-like demeanor in the original film, but such a performance in live-action requires a subtlety and intrigue clearly out of ScarJo's range. Ghost In The Shell also runs a great deal on sex appeal, the original manga creator does hentai now (sadly none of it of the Major). Needless to say, ScarJo is the right actress for the job. Her sexiness, however, is undercut by the skin suit, which looked really hot in the anime, but looks really silly in live-action.
While we're on the subject, of ScarJo, we may as well get to the casting controversy that has dogged this film since its announcement. Many accuse the remake of whitewashing, saying that the role of Motoko Kusanagi should've gone to a Japanese-American actress. On the surface, this makes sense, given that Ghost In The Shell is a Japanese story set in Japan. Yet the remake is an American film, so the casting of someone of Japanese descent isn't necessary. It is common thing to take foreign stories and adapt them to your own culture. Throne Of Blood is based off of Macbeth, but Kurosawa didn't cast Scottish actors and set it in feudal Japan. Ponyo is based off of The Little Mermaid, yet is set in a Japanese coastal town and not Denmark. The British novel Fingersmith set in Victorian Britain was adapted in South Korea as The Handmaiden, set in Japan-occupied Korea. Bollywood has also remade god knows how many Western films and recast them with Indians. The West has also done this before with Japanese films. America remade The Seven Samurai as The Magnificent Seven, while Italy remade Yojimbo as A Fistful Of Dollars.
Now it could be argued that America has a more racially diverse population than either Japan, India, or South Korea, and thus, more of an obligation to be diverse wherever possible. Unlike The Magnificent Seven, there is little distinctly "American" about Ghost In The Shell, thus not casting a Japanese woman carries less justification. In any case, even if this remake had a more "American" context, "American" doesn't equal "white." So it behooves us to show that the Japanese are also a part of America, whenever their culture is concerned.
However, there's good reason to believe that ScarJo was cast for more economic reasons than racial ones. Anime is still something of a niche medium, and few outside of it know Ghost In The Shell. To sell science-fiction on film these days, star power is needed. Do you think anyone would've gone to see Minority Report if it didn't have Tom Cruise? Would as many people have turned out for Looper if Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis weren't in the starring roles? ScarJo is a sexy action star with a history of sci-fi roles, so it made sense from that perspective. I've no doubt that there are plenty of capable Japanese-American actresses working in Hollywood today, but would they attract the same numbers to the box office? With a niche anime product like Ghost In The Shell, Paramount Pictures wouldn't take the risk. Maybe they should have, maybe they should've worked harder to court Asian-American audiences, but one can't help but understand the underlying calculus.
I would not refer to Ghost In The Shell as a case of whitewashing, especially when you consider the subject matter. Ghost In The Shell is set in a more globalist future, where you could get a Caucasian named Kusanagi or a Japanese named Killian. The director of the original film, Oshii Mamoru, echoed this sentiment in an email to IGN, "The Major is a cyborg and her physical form is an entirely assumed one. The name 'Motoko Kusanagi' and her current body are not her original name and body, so there's no basis for saying that an Asian actress must portray her. Even if her original body (presuming such a thing existed) were a Japanese one, that would still apply." However, a lack of diversity is still an issue in Hollywood, and let's not pretend that whitewashing of Asians still isn't a problem. The film 21 based on the true story of Asian-Americans who made millions off of casinos by counting cards, cast white actors in the leading roles. This is a gross disservice to history that misleads audiences about the basis of the story. The film The Last Airbender cast Aang, Katara, and Sokka as white, even though in the original cartoon, Aang refrenced either Chinese or Tibetan origin, while Katara and Sokka refrenced Inuit origin. The solution is two-fold: get more Asian-Americans involved in the film industry, and criticize whitewashing whenever we see it. We might not always agree, but debate on these matters is preferable to silence.
That being said, Paramount and Dreamworks should've stuck by the new casting and moved on. Instead, they tried to appease the critics, and reshape ScarJo as a Japanese woman. The first shade of this came with reports that the studios considered digitally altering ScarJo's eyes to make her look more Asian. In a word, yellowface, but gratefully this never materialized. The filmmakers did something far worse, when they revealed that ScarJo's Major was originally a Japanese woman put into a Caucasian cyborg body. This half-hearted attempt at appeasing Asian-American critics feels more like a slap in the face with a wet fish than an olive branch. As Japanese-American actress Ai Yoshihara told The Hollywood Reporter, "Major's backstory is white people trying to justify the casting" (Sun). Further, the film missed out on a great opportunity. The concept of switching races by technological means is a titillating one. Rachel Dolezal aside, if we get to the point where racial skins can be put off and on like clothes, it raises a number of difficult questions about the idea of race itself, and how both society and the individual would approach. Of course, no such questions are explored in this schlock, because apparently Americans are too stupid for such things.
Many have praised the special effects in this film, which is warranted. The special effects, for the most part, are serviceable, with highlights being the robo-geishas and the lively city. And yet it fails to be awe-inspiring. The original anime film thrived on detailed realism, while this one often devolves into the realm of video game cutscenes. The city, even, is miniscule in comparison to the metropolis of Blade Runner 2049. Indeed, I thought a great deal about Denis Villenue's worthy sequel throughout my viewing of this oatmeal. They were both released in the same year, and deal with many of the same themes: the disappearing boundary between man and machine, the unreliablity of memory, and the persistence of inhumanity amidst technological abundance. The difference is that Blade Runner 2049 treats these concepts with the nuance, depth, and ambiguity they deserve. In any case, star power saved neither film from losing money at the box office, but only one will be remembered by future generations.
We get complaints about all the superhero films that come out nowadays, but little appreciation for how consistently decent they have become. In this decade alone, The Avengers, Captain America: Civil War, Logan, Wonder Woman, Black Panther, The Guardians Of The Galaxy, and Deadpool, rank among the most entertaining, imaginitive, and talked-about films of their respective years. Even the bad comic book films, like Suicide Squad or Iron Man 3, at least carry some visual resemblance to the source material. It took a lot of failures before we got to this point, and likewise, I think it'll take a long while before we can get consistently decent anime films.
Three major Western anime adaptations that come to mind are Dragonball Evolution, Speed Racer, and Death Note. Dragonball is such an off-the-wall anime with magic, aliens, androids, and super-powered fights, that a live-action adaptation would either look ridiculous or detached. The latter was the inevitable result, in a film that was little like the anime, had ugly special effects, and cliche-ridden plot that can't stand on its own. The film's writer, Ben Ramsay, even apologized to fans. I'd like to think that a proper live-action Dragon Ball would look like Kung-Fu Hustle. Speed Racer isn't much more engaging than its cheesy source, but the heavy amount of ice cream color CGI can certainly make it garish to viewers. The film has its fans, but the material is too extravagant to cull most anime fans to its side. Netflix's Death Note has camp value, for sure, with so much emo angst that I expected a cameo from Gerard Way. This film, like the live-action Ghost In The Shell, fails to utilize the core concepts within an American context. Further the rivalry between Light and L that was the meat of the original series is sloppily handled here. Lakeith Stanfield gives an interesting, though inconsistent performance as L, while Willem Dafoe steals the show as Ryuk. Death Note also suffered from a casting controversy, since Light Yagami, now Light Turner, is Caucasian. No controversy ensued over L being played by Lakeith Stanfield, because it wouldn't slice to accuse a black actor of "whitewashing" (even though it's kinda the same thing). Keep in mind that before the Netflix film, there already were several live-action Death Note movies from Japan with all-Japanese casts. In that context, is it really so bad for one Death Note film to have a Caucasian Light?
Now the Japanese have also made live-action anime films, and they suffer from the opposite problem that the American films do, they're too reverential. The characters all too often look "exactly" like the anime characters, which has the effect of making everyone look like cosplayers. This leads to another point of praise of the modern superhero film. The character costumes never look exactly as they do in the comics, which would be ridiculous. Instead the costumes are adapted to fit a live-action setting. The only great live-action anime films were Death Note: Light Up The New World and the Rurouni Kenshin Trilogy. Light Up The New World, still shamefully without Western release, tells a new story using the basic Death Note concepts. It does so with convincing special effects, inviting new characters who aren't cookie-cutters of the originals, and twists and turns worthy of David Fincher. The Rurouni Kenshin Trilogy is the gold standard of live-action anime, though much of that is due to the original setting, which fits perfectly within Japan's jidai-geki genre. It keeps true to the heart of the story, with over two hours of space to properly develop the characters, and impressive sword choreography. Honestly, anyone attempting to adapt anime into live-action should watch the Kenshin Trilogy.
Live-action anime adaptations need to fly somwhere between the worship of the Japanese and the sacrilege of America. Anime is more popular globally than its ever been, and it's inevitable that Hollywood's going to exploit that niche however it can. While we haven't quite reached the sweet spot, the American Ghost In The Shell is a step in the right direction. Whatever you think of the film, it deserves some credit for faithfully recreating scenes from the original film. Characters like The Major, Batou, and Aramaki look more or less like their anime counterparts. Kawaii Kenji's wedding chant from the original even reappears in the film's end credits. This is far more accomplished than either Dragonball Evolution or Death Note in being faithful to the anime. The filmmakers clearly enjoyed Ghost In The Shell and sincerely tried to adapt it.
Let's get back to that wedding chant. It is haunting and transcendent, but here, it feels woefully out of place. There is no marriage of woman and machine in this adaptation, and here lies the rub. It mimics the syle, but none of the substance. The original could border on the pretentious, but it at least carried some feeling of intellectual engagement. Nothing doing here, where you start to question if the lines were even read over more than once. One such line goes something like, "We are not our memories, but what we do." This line is so insipid because everything we do is shaped by our memories. The line should've been reshaped as, "Your life is less about your past, and more about what you do with it." The live-action Ghost In The Shell is enslaved to the memory of the anime. It replays old memories, but does nothing new with them, dwindling in its own nostalgia.
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