Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Theater Whore: Ghost In The Shell


Ghost In The Shell 2/10

In all the controversy surrounded the new Ghost In The Shell movie people seem to be overlooking the most important fact: this movie was dull as hell. Its a movie where every once in a while I went “Oh, that looks kinda cool.” Other than that it just felt like a convoluted mess. I was not a huge fan of the anime and recently watched one of them on Netflix having no emotional attachment. But I am a huge fan of Scarlett Johansson. I am also not plagued by having problems with one race portraying another. Yeah. I'll be getting into that soon enough. So I was the perfect person to watch this movie and give it a fair shake.


In the future shit looks weird. The world is a combination of both filthy and very futuristic at the same time. People have robot parts added to them and blah blah blah. ScarJo is a “young woman” in the body of a robot after an accident that killed her parents. Even though I am not a huge fan of this series or anything what I do know is that the main character looks like she is 15, maybe 16 years old. As much as I love ScarJo she does not look like a teenager. The rest of the movie is shooting, punching, and robot shit. Its really not that interesting.


Before I saw this I had heard people getting mad and calling this movie “white washed.” I laughed, of course. Why? Because we're all meat bags with different shapes, sounds, and colors. Just a bunch of stupid ass humans racing towards a future run by robots. But minorities get pissed when a White person plays one of their characters. People tend to shut up when its the other way around. No one batted an eye when a Korean dude played Maverick in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Or when Michael Clarke Duncan played Kingpin in Daredevil. Halle Berry is half-White and played Storm who is pure African. Look at the entire cast of the Preacher series! If you get mad get mad about all of it.


The director of the original movies, Mamoru Oshii said in an interview “The Major (ScarJo) 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 is no basis for saying that an Asian actress must portray her. Even if her original body were a Japanese one, that would still apply. I can only sense a political motive from the people opposing it, and I believe artistic expression must be free from politics.” The guy that has the rights to this series, Sam Yoshiba, said “Looking at her career so far, I think Scarlett Johansson is well cast. She has the cyberpunk feel. And we never imagined it would be a Japanese actress in the first place. This is a chance for a Japanese property to be seen around the world.”


They not mad. Why you mad? People did this same thing about Doctor Strange as well as that Iron Fist show. People wanted him to be Asian. Why? He's White. He's always been White. They got mad he had the nerve, the nerve, to try and explain Asian shit to an Asian woman. Hey! He just spent 15 years living in a magical goddamn kingdom and fought a motherfucking dragon! Maybe he knows a thing or two she don't. Anyway, get more upset about how lame this movie was than the fact that a hot ass grown White woman played a young girl created in Japan. People are acting like this character was their friend growing up or some shit. How far does this go? Is it okay for other races to voice a race that is not their own in cartoons and video games? How about “Black” movies like Hidden Figures where no one can tell you who directed it? Is it okay if you don't know or do we continue to play this game of Who Gets To Be The Victim This Week?! for a while longer? Either way. Bad movie. Don't waste your time.

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