Film is dead, the real art is going on in television now.

Chuckman wrote:Film is dead, the real art is going on in television now.

That is true and carries weight because I heard that all the really good directors and writers are leaving Hollywood to write in series and shorts as they say they have more creative control.

I don't know if it's going to collapse, but there'll definitely be a jarring shake-up that will force them to adapt or die. This isn't the first time such a thing has happened in that industry.

Ah, the ole "Film is dead. TV is where all the art is at" argument continues to resurface it's myopic little head. And as always it's dead wrong & made from a place of falsehood. The fact is great art is flourishing in both cinema & television but the people who genuinely believe (or even in jest) bring up this falsehood of "TV good, Film bad" usually only see the broadest of films in the theater. Joking "film is dead" (an argument that almost always rears its head the ugliest in the summer) based off of 'Ghost in the Shell 2017' is akin to saying "TV is dead" after watching the latest episode of "The Big Bang Theory".

When it comes to real art there's still a ton in the theaters right now.
Baby Driver, The Big Sick, The Beguiled 2017, It Comes At Night, Beatriz at Dinner, even Wonder Woman as a pop culture success.

It's true that Hollywood, the merchandizing machine, is going to have undergo a drastic change within the next few years to adapt but they always do. It might take a while for quality to change because while domestic audiences might be staying away from theaters the foreign audiences are larger than ever now & eating up the usual garbage, even a veritable flop like THE MUMMY 2017 is being saved due to foreign audiences. Usually these "doomsayer" premonitions come along once a decade. People were saying the big Hollywood film world was doomed in the early 90s then CG graphics came along in Terminator 2, Jurassic Park & Independence Day. Then Hollywood was doomed in 2005-2007 as it looked like the comic book craze was finally dying down then The Dark Knight & Marvel happened. Now the same thing is being said because Hollywood foolishly has allowed themselves things to fall into an obvious release pattern cycle (the releases in Summer 2017 are shockingly similar to the releases in Summer 2014) but something will come along & turn things around. I think it will be embracing more diversification in big films. Latinos account for 17% of the US population & 32% of the frequent movie watchers (someone who pays to see more than one movie in a theater a month). African Americans & Asian Americans also do huge repeat business at the movie theaters. Once Hollywood starts representing people better on screen - both in front of the camera & behind it crafting the story & feel of the film - things will probably turn around again. Get Out was a huge success in large part because it was a well-made horror movie that was made by, starred & about African Americans.

Maybe if "Ghost in the Shell 2017" had actually been made by Asian Americans it wouldn't have been a giant (but pretty) turd both critically & commercially.

Ah... All this talk about Hollywood and I stumbled upon this older article (while looking for Mario fics o_O). Heh I blame everyone who popularized deconstructions of beloved concepts. Yeah that includes your lord and savior Anno :P

Anyway, maybe Hollywood will get to it...

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-beloved-i ... ty-reboot/

I agree that many dark reboots tend to miss the point. But I freaking hate cracks snarky " you might as well not even try to make something that touches on real world issues fictional things would cause" attitude.

I agree with them on the whole prostitute thing though.

Stillborn wrote:Heh I blame everyone who popularized deconstructions of beloved concepts. Yeah that includes your lord and savior Anno :P

First of all, Anno deconstructs genres, not intellectual properties. He didn't do a gritty reboot of Gundam, he just built his own IP from the ground up and used it to deconstruct the entire mecha/kaiju genre.

Second, Eva's colors are the brightest and most vivid of any post-apocalyptic show of movie I've seen to date. Every square inch of every surviving piece of original film strip/digital master of Eva, from the OP before Angel Attacks to Eva Q, is brimming over with bold colors and bright chromic contrasts. No washed-out colors there.

Third, anytime Anno adapts a pre-existing IP, he more or less keeps the original tone and doesn't provide an overabundance of extra angst. (At least, not any that doesn't already exist in the original work.)

And finally, deconstructions of concepts aren't always grim or gritty. The best ones usually aren't.

Mono-tone muted colors and cry-baby storylines aren't the sole trademarks of a deconstruction, it's just the modern Hollywood's half-considered abuse of digital color-grading technology and meager attempts at the mere appearance of importance. That's the true issue with storytelling in these quick cash grabs, whether it be Ghostbusters 2016 or Suicide Squad. I don't care if a narrative is a deconstruction or a celebration of anything; just so long as it's sincere, its worth watching.

EDIT: Also, why is this point being made in a GitS thread? EVERY rendition of that has had gritty elements to it, even the considerably more fun to read manga. Hollywood's GitS has nothing to do with a deconstruction of an original IP, it's just Hollywood forgetting what it is that GitS is actually about. Filmmakers have to be knowledgeable in any given IP before they can even accidentally deconstruct it, and it's clear that the American GitS didn't even do that little.

^

That's a good point that people gloss over with Masamune Shirow's work: even in works like Appleseed, which can have some very light-hearted elements (sarcasm and banter among teammates, pranks, our beloved badass characters acting like dipshits and making mistakes, a very fun romantic relationship between a girl and her ten-foot tall eight-eyed, combat-chassied cyborg boyfriend), he delved into dark stuff (assassinations, human trafficking, child prostitution, loss of identity, brainwashing, exploitation of the third world by the first world, extra-legal police actions). Something he often addressed in interviews was that, technically, Section 9 in Ghost in the Shell are the BAD GUYS: they're a black-ops assassination unit masquerading as a hostage rescue unit for funding (the Major and Ishikawa actually arranged for a seventeen year old to be murdered by his father). They exist because, according to Masamune Shirow, the system failed. If the system was working, then there wouldn't be room or justification for such a unit, and they sure as hell wouldn't be able to act as they do without some sort of oversight (beyond what happens when one of their ops ends up in the news).

Having to make a darker and grittier Ghost in the Shell isn't necessarily wrong, but I feel like it's something a lot of movies are doing wrong: they feel that, for the sake of drama, they need to make things heavy, dreary, and dark. EVERY action becomes a pivotal, philosophical, essential moment of introspective weight, and that's just...not real. Actual commandos, who conduct deep raids and kill terrorists? They like to make fart jokes.

If you watch a Special Operations unit when they train or are out of actual field actions, they look a lot like a frat house. Granted, the GitS movie was following the example of the deeper and darker anime, but...can't we have a return to the manga's tone at some point? The TV series brushed the surface of it, and it felt so damned GOOD.

Gob Hobblin wrote:(the Major and Ishikawa actually arranged for a seventeen year old to be murdered by his father)

While I never was optimistic about S9 in the first place, I don't remember that piece. Granted, it's been years since I delved in anything remotely associated with GitS. When did that scene actually happened or was mentioned?

Gob Hobblin wrote:If you watch a Special Operations unit when they train or are out of actual field actions, they look a lot like a frat house. Granted, the GitS movie was following the example of the deeper and darker anime, but...can't we have a return to the manga's tone at some point? The TV series brushed the surface of it, and it felt so damned GOOD.

After watching Oshii's Patlabor animated works from the late 80's, I often wondered how his GitS film came about to be as "serious" as it was. He had the ability to tell light-hearted stories, while Angel's Egg proved he could direct more seriously-minded works as well. How that didn't mesh into a more honest interpretation of Shirow's manga is beyond me.

Paul Verhoeven is probably the only live-action film director who could come close to capturing that balance of humor, levity, and bleak storytelling found in Shirow's manga. And even then he could probably only do it best in the late 80's - early 90's. Shirow's works actually tend to read more like Verhoeven films than they do anything else. Modern Peter Jackson could have probably given it a good shot if he hadn't blown all of his positive creative energy on the LotR movies, since he used to be a genuinely fun slasher film director at heart.

Stillborn: I can't remember the chapter number, but it was the one involving the Think Tank, and the Major's boyfriend from Section...6, I think it was? She referenced how the kid had tortured one of her men to death, but it was still a deliberate murder setup, and she made no bones about that (she acknowledged that she did it for revenge more for justice, and that it was a teenager she was setting up for murder: the picture shows her crouched over a hogtied, bagged individual with a block of explosives taped to his back). The manga was ridiculous fun, but it was also very brutal at times. That same chapter had Kusanagi straight up kill members of the opposing Section (who were assisting said drug lord in trying to kill her for POTENTIAL information that could help them in their own intel operations), so it was a chapter covering internal killing between police teams in the same Bureau, for purposes tied to their own internal operations.

That's messy shit right there.

I think if someone wants to make an actually thoughtful movie about commandos they absolutely need to be lighthearted and likeable before they start doing horrible shit.

I think one of the better movies to get it right is Hyena Road.

It's not quite these guys, but it's close.

Shit, even Sicario kind of got it right. As dreary as that movie is (and really doesn't do a good job of personifying FBI SWAT operators: not to generalize, but your average operator would not really be in the mindset of 'let's bring this guys to justice,' but more 'are we cleared to kill some of them or all of them' after being the victim of a bombing like that. For better or worse), and as little of the Delta operators as we see, we see glimpses of what they're like off mission: they're sitting around watching cartoons.

That might be a commentary on the childishness of manly men who do violence for a living (Denis Villeneuve is deep enough to be pretentious), but it's not too inaccurate: commandos, operators, and combat troops simply lack filters.

Nerdwriter: How Not To Adapt A Movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2soHxEN79c

A good insight into where the GITS 2017 film fails vs the original.

Expecting it to live up to the original is a mistake to begin with. Why would anyone want it to? The fact that it's different medium, made by different people, for a different audience guarantees it won't be the same or even close. So why do people give themselves this expectation that an adaptation needs to do these things? I promise you it won't. Go watch the original if you want the original.

I liked ScarJo's GiTS. Its not great, but it's not bad either. It's nowhere close to Oshii's film, but I never wanted it to be. What it does have is a neat aesthetic, and it definitely captures the proper visuals. My biggest issue with the film was the pacing, which felt rushed at times, which in turn caused certain plot points to get brushed over. However, it was basically what I expected: GiTS lite lead by Scar Jo. It's the perfect movie for when I want a quick visit to the world of GiTS, without the commitment or gravity of the other versions.

Also, GiTS 2: Innocence is a great film, don't get me wrong, but Scar Jo's is a much more entertaining film. Take that as you will.

Ray wrote:Nerdwriter: How Not To Adapt A Movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2soHxEN79c

A good insight into where the GITS 2017 film fails vs the original.

I do agree with what this video said about the trash man's story which as they said was throw away and not really treated respectfully at all in the movie. I didn't think about the colours in the building vs the drabness of the movies city till they pointed it out and they are right the animated city might have looked decaying in places but its really colourful despite this. I also couldn't agree more with the thing about city disconnect as I felt that really strongly in the movie that I wasn't connected to the people of the city and the few shots you get don't feel like real people because there framed around sleazy clubs with dancing holograms which is one element of the city but not the whole thing.

It also illustrates how modern Hollywood has misunderstood the classic Blade Runner movie and keeps misunderstanding it along with the Ghost In The Shell animation. In that they have these sweeping city shots in these types of sci fi movies but zero real shots of people just living out there daily lives and doing things normal people do and you do get this in the classic Blade Runner movie as the main character is getting lunch at a restaurant while people shop around him and it makes you feel like your there in the moment.

Why would you NOT want it to live up to the original? This is an entry into a franchise that has several very good properties attached to it, which means flaws in the finished product are going to be glaringly highlighted. Trying to phone it in by hitting on the surface imagery of the franchise, without actually digging into the universal themes that tie it together, isn't going to just make a good product pale in comparison: it turns a good product into a mediocre product by being in the same franchise as better products.

Take Godfather III: as a standalone movie, it's not a bad mafia film. It has flaws, but it's still an enjoyable movie that, as a whole, is superior to many other films. Unfortunately, it's a Godfather movie: when compared to the first two entries in the series, it's flaws become glaringly and shockingly bad.

What you've said is exactly why I don't expect them to live up to the original. I don't want to experience franchise bias. I don't want to put them side by side and judge them. You said it turns a good product into a mediocre product. Why can't I just enjoy the good product AND the better product, without making the former mediocre? If I want to dive into the heavier themes, I'll always have the original. But don't get me wrong. I want the adaptation to be good as possible. I just don't expect the same thing as the original, so I don't get upset when it's not like the original.

Also, I don't quite have this same opinion of sequels. Just adaptations.

^ How would a lack of franchise bias frame your view of a Godzilla movie with no giant monsters in it? Or a James Bond movie where it's merely a slice-of-life movie of an old country man named James Bond living in retirement? I'm genuinely curious.

That's extending my views too broadly. If something is marketed as Godzilla, I expect at least a Godzilla.