
Ghost in the Shell - cryo
http://ashthorp.com/ghost-in-the-shell
======
mathewsanders
A theatre in New York was showing the 1995 film, so I watched it for first
time on big screen on Wednesday, then saw the live action on Friday (first
time I can remember going to a film on opening day in New York and having an
almost empty audience).

I was prepared for a new interpretation of the material, and that never
bothered me because between the films and TV series it's always been a bit
confusing to me if there ever has been a cannon story, but have always really
loved the match of philosophical ideas of mind and the visual atmosphere (and
the spider tanks are just great fun).

Opening sequence of this film I was really excited because it was visually
stunning, but 5 mins later I was questioning if I should stay or leave because
the dialog was really really bad.

I stayed because I really wanted to like this adaption but I felt like it was
2 hours of my life wasted, I wouldn't recommend any of my friends to watch
this, even later when it's released digitally.

~~~
mathewsanders
But as a positive note, I love that science fiction has become mainstream.
When I was a teenager I used to be embarrassed to say I read/watched science
fiction and it felt like any given year you'd be lucky to have more than 1-2
science fiction films, but look at the line up for releases this year:
[http://screenrant.com/our-most-anticipated-sci-fi-movies-
of-...](http://screenrant.com/our-most-anticipated-sci-fi-movies-of-2017/)

~~~
digitalzombie
"Science fiction" films.

I think sci fic tv series are getting main stream.

But all too often I see just action films masking as sci fic such as the
current star trek incarnation.

I want those space opera and space ship and hard stuff.

~~~
losvedir
> _I want those space opera and space ship and hard stuff._

I've been watching _The Expanse_ on SyFy lately and it's quite good! I enjoyed
it so much I'm now reading the book series it's based on, and really enjoying
that as well. They're slightly different, but both good in their own way.

~~~
glenneroo
I feel there are a lot of things wrong with The Expanse which make it really
hard to enjoy. Personally I find the dialog often very weak and the acting
very forced and obvious, but that's just my personal opinion. I seem to only
be reading endless praise on reddit/HN.

As for the world, there seems to be a lot of nonsense tech such as see-through
cell-phones? No way to even hide what you are doing, even crucial characters
and VIPs have see-through communication devices, whilst they steal/look at top
secret information? Why is AR (using HUGE eyeglass-like devices) reserved only
for very special engineers/scientists? Haven't the shows creators heard of
Hololens? It's like they took VR/AR and took it back to the 80s. Why do they
need to do so many things manually, yet not completely manually e.g. control
an antenna, but they can do it remotely they just have to be within 20 meters?
How can they open solid metal doors without electricity in zero-g? It feels a
bit like Star Trek back in the 60s, before they had any clue about what was to
come, except it's 50 years later and they are still using similar ideas
without adding anything new. I understand compromises need to be made to adapt
to the screen so that viewers can understand the world, but it seems like
there are tons of areas where a bit more creativity should be order.

~~~
Shorel
> As for the world, there seems to be a lot of nonsense tech such as see-
> through cell-phones? No way to even hide what you are doing, even crucial
> characters and VIPs have see-through communication devices, whilst they
> steal/look at top secret information?

I'm sure that's just for TV viewers to be able to see their screens. It is
better than projecting the screen over the face or reflecting it on the
glasses of the actors like other TV shows do.

If you don't like it, that is OK, no one is forced to like anything. I don't
like The Walking Dead, and it doesn't mean a lot of people is wrong, just that
we have different tastes.

But to be fair the show is ages ahead of Star Trek TOS in terms of
plausibility.

In fact, the lack of the fantastic technologies indistinguishable from magic
that are present in Star Trek is very much part of the appeal. Is what makes
the show more real. There's no faster than light space travel for a start.
They have to use orbital mechanics to move around. They have to accelerate
half of the way and deccelerate the other half. They have to dock very
carefully instead of saying 'beam me down'. It is a very welcome change.

------
pdkl95
I don't know if I can watch the new live action movie. I saw GitS in 1996 in
the only theater in the Bay Area that actually had the original 35mm release
(before Manga Entertainment's first VHS release). A friend of mine and maybe
three other people were in the audience in the small theater in downtown San
Jose.

Seeing GitS that afternoon had a huge[1] influence on my life. How big was
GitS's influence? During the ~decade I spent trying to make several anime
conventions more efficient and sane, I learned (out of necessity) SQL, Ruby,
Postscript, and the art of improvising[1].

With the comments about how they watered down the story in the new live action
version, I suspect I should probably ignore it, even if it looks great.
Regarding visual quality, however, I suspect most people that saw the original
animated film saw it in _standard definition_ (VHS, DVD, _etc_ ). Those
releases ruined a _lot_ of the detail. The city backgrounds had an
_incredible_ amount of detail in the full 35mm version or modern HD re-
release. I highly recommend watching (in 1080p) nerdwriter1's brief
discussion[2] of Mamoru Oshii's use of detail to define the _space_ of the
city as a cyberpunk _heterotopia_.

[1] "What do you mean you forgot to buy the right labels for our badge
printers?! There are over 4000 people in line and we're about to open! ...
Fine, send anybody available to the two nearest Fry's and buy out their stock.
In the meantime, I'm going to see if I can rewrite the Postscript template to
work on last year's printers with different size labels in the next ~15min."

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTnl1FVFBw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTnl1FVFBw)

~~~
equalunique
You're not the only one who will not be seeing this new film. I learned this
after Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As someone who has absorbed much of the
Extended Universe eratta, it physically hurt to watch that movie. The story
overrode much of what Disney relegated to "Star Wars Legends" \- this is an
experience not worth re-living with GITS.

~~~
amorphid
If it helps, I saw it. If you hadn't need the original, you might think it was
OK. I was mildly entertained, but not impressed.

------
Pica_soO
I think the problem the movie crew faced, was that GitS basically needs
something like the Marvel Universe stretching to retell the story. Most of the
episodes of GitS2 would have made for a Stand Alone movie. So what to do? The
original is in particular running against the usual hollywood conventions.
There is no visible villain, until late, then the villian turns out to be a
grey area guy, hunted by other grey area guys.

>the culture series is longing for a movie

Honestly, i hate it when book SciFi gets put into movie shape. Its rarely
looks like i imagined it.

~~~
digitalengineer
I am surprised no-one mentioned "Ready Player One" yet. It is a NY Times best
seller and Steven Spielberg is set to direct it in 2018. Great book, often
referred to as a NERDGASM ;-) [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/books/ready-
player-one-by-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/books/ready-player-one-
by-ernest-cline-review.html)

~~~
endgame
I found that book to be dreadful and couldn't make it through. The initial
worldbuilding was interesting but then it seemed to turn into an endless loop
of "HEY DO YOU REMEMBER THIS THING FROM THE 80'S WASN'T IT AWESOME?".

~~~
ghaff
I think you really need to appreciate and get into the 80s nostalgia. If that
doesn't work for you--or you just don't have the cultural background--the
[EDIT: book] probably isn't for you.

If it was about a topic or era where 90% of the references meant nothing to
me, I don't think I'd have liked it either.

Personally I loved it even though I was never a hardcore gamer in that vein
and I know others in the same boat. But I certainly get your criticism.

~~~
endgame
I generally enjoy that stuff, and I think that it made the book worse for me.
Example: Referencing Tomb of Horrors as some kind of forgotten lore?
Preposterous! That module is iconic. Whatever module he used should have been
something I'd never heard of.

------
YCAU
The effects were cool, but I wish they hadn't randomly remixed elements from
the franchise with a story that directly goes against the themes of the
original. Then ending was diametrically opposed to the ending of the original.
While I think the effects were great, the intellectual treatment reminds me of
the knife throwing scene in the Starship Troopers adaptation...

~~~
andreyk
Interesting. As a big fan of the original and to a lesser extent the show, I
actually liked and was impressed by how deftly they combined and remixed
elements from different incarnations of Ghost In The Shell. Many seem to
criticize this adaptation for not exploring the same themes or reaching the
same conclusions as the original, but I was pleasantly surprised they did
something new and did not just try to replicate the original. It's different,
but to me also seems to be very much 'in the spirit' of the source material.

~~~
YCAU
That's what's confusing to me. Why recreate so many scenes if they're trying
to tell a new story? Why use Kuze's name and some details of his backstory,
but put him in the place of the Puppetmaster with a wholly new theme to
explore? Why is it important that Batou not have his fancy eyes until halfway
in, rather than many years before, or if you're changing it anyway, why have
them at all?

If they made an original story with the same setting and characters, I might
have liked it more. But it seemed like they just included some iconic scenes
from the original to draw in the fanbase and gave a bait and switch with
something new, and conclusions I found much less profound and interesting. I
found it... lazy. Like the writers didn't respect the original, and just said
"what do we have to make up to get from set piece remake 1 to set piece remake
2?" "oh hey let's use this name I heard from way later on in the story because
IDK." Again I must compare it to the slipshod work of the Starship Troopers
adaptation. Certainly nowhere near as bad (I do think this movie was good in
some respects), but they made many of the same mistakes in terms of reusing
and deviating from source material (Why did you make X change? Ignorance, rule
of cool, deliberate tone shift? It's unclear.).

Oh, and she blinked. ;)

~~~
Corrado
I really liken it to the script writers playing the telephone game[0] about
GiTS and it's history. The things you point out, as well as not
explaining/introducing anyone really bugged me. I guess Pazu and Borma were
there somewhere, and Togusa had some screen time but you didn't really know
who he was. Saito finally made an appearance near the end of the film as was
on-screen for 10s of seconds. And why did everyone speak english except for
Aramaki?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers)

------
make3
I really liked this movie.. I truly don't understand all the flack it's
getting.. Probably because I expected very little (because of the review
scores) and it was really not close to as bad as I expected..

~~~
pound
I just returned from watching it. I on purpose haven't read any reviews (had
to pretty much ignore facebook for couple of weeks) and first 15 minutes I was
ready to be upset. Dialogues were not very promising, visually movie didn't
felt deep and dark (nice pretty boy Batou, overdone holograms in city-scapes,
no distinct music). But then it became so much better. References to GITS and
GITS:Innocence are plenty but nicely done. Visually it became feast for my
eyes, I really enjoyed it after all. THough still: holograms are not needed
and there is no OST at all.

~~~
pound
And soundtrack is actually big part of both original gits movies. Not sure why
its' absence is not really noticed.

------
gnicholasgreen
The "solograms" were an amazing addition to the movie. My friend and I both
commented on them walking out of the theater.

The visuals in the film we're really well done, in my opinion. In fact, I
really enjoyed the movie as a great throwback to coming of age on cyberpunk
material such as Snowcrash, Neuromancer, Ghost in the Shell, et al.,
whitewashing politics be damned.

~~~
ideonexus
The whitewashing didn't bother me, but the stupidwashing was offensive.
Hollywood took one of the deepest, most brilliant cyberpunk classics and
dumbed it down to the point of being insulting.

I've been recommending to my friends that they stay away from this film to
prevent them having a bad impression of GitS. Instead, I am recommending they
watch every episode and movie in the original GitS. Watch many of them
multiple times to appreciate just how innovative this series is even today.

~~~
cuillevel3
Well it was only 106 minutes long. Actually felt more like 90 minutes. I think
it was great, I didn't expect a cinema blockbuster to perfectly sum up more
than a decade of GitS canon.

I want to see it again, just for the visuals.

~~~
spectistcles
They didn't need to sum up the full canon, they needed to like... have any
part of it? The original animation accomplished more with the story in less
time.

------
jonah
Adam Savage did a few Tested videos on some of the costumes and props which
you may be interested in watching. (Either before or after you've seen the
film if you care about that kind of thing.)

Adam Savage Behind the Scenes of Ghost in the Shell:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KosBvDyWgnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KosBvDyWgnA)

How Weta Workshop Made Ghost In The Shell's Thermoptic Suit:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbCyXVEVpKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbCyXVEVpKk)

How Weta Workshop Made Ghost in the Shell's Robot Skeleton:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxUoqIrXd9E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxUoqIrXd9E)

------
equalunique
All 42 hours of the Ghost In The Shell animations from 1995 to 2006 can be
strung together into cannon. It's all compatible. Both the 2015 stuff and this
2017 movie unfortunately conflict which what came before. Disappointing to me
as a fan that what was achieved over 11 years has been undone and forsaken in
recent adaptations of the franchise. Frankly, I'm angry Holywood is making
millions from this.

~~~
jzelinskie
>All 42 hours of the Ghost In The Shell animations from 1995 to 2006 can be
strung together into cannon.

Can it?

[https://anidb.net/perl-
bin/animedb.pl?show=rel&aid=61](https://anidb.net/perl-
bin/animedb.pl?show=rel&aid=61)

~~~
equalunique
Everything to the right on that diagram came after 2006.

I don't believe the story line to GITS 2: Innocence excludes Stand Alone
Complex. If the person who made that diagram believed there was a reason, they
omitted it in the diagram.

------
chx
Every time you are making a movie you need to answer the question: why am I
making this? Especially when doing a remake, what I have found missing from
the original material that I think requires filling. Perhaps there's a prequel
story to be told (Planet of Apes), perhaps I want to depict a version closer
to how it could've happened in real life (True Grit) and so forth. If your
answer is "well I want to make money" then don't do it.

Tell me true, what is the answer for this one?

Ps. If your answer is, well the original movie was funny but didn't have
enough crotch jokes then _especially_ don't do it.

~~~
radley
The irony is that GitS has done massively well with updating the premise and
finding new plots that leverage the society and technology of the era.

Some folks didn't like the Arise OVA - I loved them, especially the 5.1
opening credits music. I found it to be a fresh and unpredictable prequel -
which is rare this late in the game.

The Hollywood movie - nobody was talking about what made GitS click. It just
seemed to be lots of tribute for the original. So much more has happened since
1995....

------
netrap
Pretty much no way I can enjoy the hollywood version... The 1996 movie is a
watershed moment in anime to me. Its up there with Akira and the like. Same
thing goes for Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, watched the swedish version first
and cannot get through 10 minutes of the hollywood one.

------
josteink
I haven't seen the new Live Action remake of movie, but I have (like most
others in here) seen and love the original.

When I saw the ads for the remake, the only thing featured is a semi-nude
Scarlett Johansen, crashing through windows, doing things which exposes her as
a semi-nudi Scarlett Johansen. No tech. No "ghosts".

That tells me everything I need to know about what the _movie studio_ thinks
is important about this film. My wife already has it categorised as a "new
Tomb raider". She's _not_ interested.

While the original movie had its fair share of semi-nudity, it was really down
deep a cyberpunk-story and didn't compromise on that. Looking at the ads for
this remake, I have no such expectations this time around.

~~~
douche
> When I saw the ads for the remake, the only thing featured is a semi-nude
> Scarlett Johansen, crashing through windows, doing things which exposes her
> as a semi-nudi Scarlett Johansen. No tech. No "ghosts".

I wish I had more than one upvote. As someone who knows nothing about the
source material, this is the only thing I've been able to glean from the
trailers. For all I can tell, this is semi-robot Charlie's Angels in skin-
tight bodysuits.

~~~
AndrewStephens
I've seen the new film (but not the original) and the nude suit is distracting
(not in a good way) in a live action film. But to allay your fears, the film
does feature a ton of tech including nigh-invisibility.

------
nialv7
The visuals of this film is stunning. It's probably justified to watch the
movie just for the visuals.

------
ngcc_hk
I quite like it as a story telling and thought provoking one. It is different
yes. But movie is different.

The original one is deeper but more confusing ...

This simplify a bit. It is ok. Sad it is doing so bad in theatre.

------
dewey
This looks a lot like the screen savers that are currently running in Apple
stores. I tried to extract it at some point because it looked great but
couldn't find the file on the machines there.

------
darod
adaptation after adaptation after adaptation. it seems as if hollywood has
lost new stories to tell. i thoroughly enjoyed the first one and, based on the
trailer alone, refuse to see the remake especially considering who was cast
for the lead. I love scarlett but she is not the major.

------
sergj
Yes the effects were great. Especially the city, but come on how could the
story in the movie be sooo weak! Instead of an kickass army verteran we got
Scarlett Johannson playing a little girl.

~~~
kbenson
> Instead of an kickass army verteran we got Scarlett Johannson playing a
> little girl.

Isn't that canon? IIRC, in Stand Alone Complex they talk about how the Major
is most at home in her cybernetic body and has been there the longest because
she was forced to as a small child.

Then again, I haven't seen the movie yet, so perhaps I'm not quite getting the
extent of the difference.

~~~
slavik81
In the backstory of Stand Alone Complex, they showed she struggled with her
body but through practice eventually mastered it. She came to lead the Section
9 team due to the skills she honed.

In the live action movie, she's the best solely because of the unique
technology that she's given. She doesn't see herself even as having the
ability for self-improvement.

I found the changes to her character to be very depressing.

~~~
maxsilver
> In the live action movie, she's the best solely because of the unique
> technology that she's given. She doesn't see herself even as having the
> ability for self-improvement.

Is that not how it's supposed to be?

I haven't seen any of the other works or the new live action movie, so perhaps
this was retconned. But I did watch the 1995 original just last week.

In the original film, she talks and acts just as you describe -- that she's
"the best" because of "this body", which she doesn't _really_ consider hers.
She seems totally aloof about much of the rote mastery she performs, and talks
about her physical form as though it was just issued out like procedure,
similar to the way a police unit might hand out badges and guns.

~~~
slavik81
It's been a few months since I saw the original, and I've been watching SAC in
the meantime. The Major is a little different between the two, but they're
similar enough it's hard for me to remember the differences. I could be mixing
things around, but I believe in both she regarded her cybernetic body as just
a tool that she was very skilled at using.

The live-action movie goes beyond that. She feels that not only is her body a
product of the people who created it, but that her mind is too. When she's
chastised for a poor decision she made, she literally responds "Well, maybe
next time you can design me better."

More broadly, I think the difference between the two films are very clearly
reflected best in her IMDB quotes.
[http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0010863/quotes](http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0010863/quotes)

------
donretag
I would love to know what the song/music being played during the video is.
Soundhound and Shazam both came up empty. Very Philip Glass-esque.

EDIT: skimmed through the Spotify playlist. Not there.

~~~
mathewsanders
The composer is Kenji Kawai, check out this live performance:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z64HCi2rQkE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z64HCi2rQkE)

Edit: oops just realised you were referencing the music in the post video,
which I don't know the origin. But that live performance is still really good
:)

Edit #2: The track is 'Plastiglomerate & Co' [https://soundcloud.com/b-e-b-e-
t-u-n-e/plastiglomerate-co](https://soundcloud.com/b-e-b-e-t-u-
n-e/plastiglomerate-co)

------
toyg
Having read the manga more than 20 years ago, I barely remember it beyond a
few bits, so I've decided that I won't watch this movie until I've re-read the
source material. To be honest I wasn't a big fan of further stuff like Stand
Alone Complex and found the second film unintelligible (but it might have been
bad subtitles), so I'm not exactly a zealot.

~~~
aminorex
It is not a retelling, so the plot doesn't help to refresh. It is an attempt
to capture the vision and feel of the action scenarios and art work. In that
it was brilliant. I will see it again.

------
bcks
Any idea what software stack he is using? I searched around on his site as
well as learnsquared and couldn't quite figure it out.

~~~
lebek
Looks like Cinema 4D and OctaneRender.

------
Animats
Great concept art. Blurry final output. The director, for some reason, wanted
the backgrounds blurred. The parent article shows the detail was there, but
it's not in the final film. I saw it in 3D and XD (midway between regular and
IMAX), and it was kind of painful. Avoid the 3D version.

~~~
mrob
Before I was born, many directors tried to keep as much of the shot in focus
as possible. Deep focus is both a technical challenge, because it requires
brighter lighting, and an artistic challenge because it makes composition of
the shots more difficult. You need to pay attention to the background so
there's no distracting things behind the actor's heads, for example. You can't
get away with shoddy sets. And it's more difficult for the actors. They can't
improvise movement and let the photographer track them, they have to exactly
follow their planned movements so they line up with the background correctly.
I don't have any statistics for it, but it seems shallow focus is more popular
now. But I think shallow focus is lazy and insulting to the audience. If your
foreground action isn't compelling enough for me to watch then the solution is
to make it better, not blur the background so I have nothing else to watch.
Deep focus looks more realistic. In real life I can choose to look at the
background details, and I want that option in film.

I want to see more use of deep focus. With the availability of high CRI LED
lighting the technical challenge is much reduced now.

~~~
mnw21cam
Shallow focus is (I believe) one of the main things that stops 3D working
properly, and causes eye strain. The 3D part means that your eyes are
expecting the focus distance to be a certain distance, but then it isn't, and
when you try and look at the background and focus on it, it still stays
blurred.

So yes, please no more shallow focus. And no more shaky-cam.

------
AndrewStephens
I have not seen the original film, but I quite enjoyed Ghost in the Shell
(2017) for what it was - a big spectacle action film. The visuals were by far
the best part and it is neat to see some of the work that went into them - if
only the same attention had been paid on the script.

I wrote a longer (too long really) review of the film :
[https://sheep.horse/2017/4/film_review_-
_ghost_in_the_shell_...](https://sheep.horse/2017/4/film_review_-
_ghost_in_the_shell_\(2017\).html)

------
bane
I haven't seen it yet, but have been hearing about the story changes. My take
is that the original story is fairly complicated for many audiences to grasp.
I had to watch the movie a handful of times to really start to get the
philosophical ideas in it. It's likely they wanted to simplify and clean up
the ideas to make it more palatable to a wider audience.

Probably a mistake IMHO, the Matrix after all showed that huge audiences will
turn out for awesome action scenes and setting and philosophical jibber jabber
without complaint.

------
whywhywhywhy
Shocked Ash Thorp had anything to do with the remake, thought he understood
the original film better than this. Taking his self initiated GITS project
into consideration.

------
hd4
I just want them to keep their hands off Berserk. In fact, I hope Miura comes
out and says a live-action Berserk shouldn't happen.

------
irln
Just saw it tonight and can't understand why all the critics panned it. By
today's standards of what makes a good movie I thought it was great.

~~~
godmodus
Most if not all GIS fans have seen the original. There's no use to compare it
to lower standards. A reference point already exists, and makes it difficult.

------
xiii1408
Why does this include the skyline and flag of Hong Kong...

I thought Ghost in the Shell was in Japan.

~~~
zhte415
The original was also in HK.

~~~
jungletek
From the Wikipedia page:

"Oshii based the setting for Ghost in the Shell on Hong Kong. Oshii commented
that his first thought to find an image of the future setting was an Asian
city, but finding a suitable cityscape of the future would be impossible.
Oshii chose to use the real streets of Hong Kong as his model.[9] He also said
that Hong Kong was the perfect subject and theme for the film with its
countless signs and the cacophony of sounds.[6] The film's mecha designer
Takeuchi Atsushi noted that while the film does not have a chosen setting, it
is obviously based on Hong Kong because the city represented the theme of the
film, the old and the new which exist in a strange relationship in an age of
an information deluge. Before shooting the film, the artists drew sketches
that emphasized Hong Kong's chaotic, confusing and overwhelming aspects."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell_(1995_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell_\(1995_film\))

------
godmodus
I'm just going to ignore this movie exists tbh.

------
draw_down
The visuals in this movie were incredible, particularly the cityscape.

~~~
Taylor_OD
I saw the 4:00PM 3D showing at the IMAX theater near Time Square. It was a
truly amazing experience seeing that city and then stepping out into a city
that was different but not quite that different.

~~~
camperman
I had the same experience after seeing Blade Runner in the theater.

~~~
AnonNo15
Our current world can be reasonably described as full-blown cyberpunk scene.

~~~
lolive
The scenes in the movie depicting the "real" Hong-Kong (i.e no CGI) were a
shock for me. As a citizen of medium-size european city, I cannot imagine such
inhuman cities exist for real.

