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Dreamworks Acquires Rights for Ghost in the Shell
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Apr 16, 2008 09:01 AM
from the who-thinks-they'll-wreck-it dept.
from the who-thinks-they'll-wreck-it dept.
Anonymous GiTS fan noted a Variety story informing us that DreamWorks has acquired the rights to Ghost in the Shell and has plans to produce a "3D Live Action" version of the popular anime. This happened apparently because Spielberg is a fan. He says "'Ghost in the Shell' is one of my favorite stories ... It's a genre that has arrived, and we enthusiastically welcome it to DreamWorks." I hope they add a talking donkey.
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Submission: Dreamworks aquires rights for Ghost in the Shell by Anonymous Coward
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Plot Feel (Score:3, Insightful)
Then again, when watch Cowboy Bebop I feel like it's modern day Clint Eastwood western with the shiny veneer of space. And I just read The Watchmen for the first time last week and it felt more like a philosophical analysis of power than a simple graphic novel.
Despite what many times goes wrong with movie adaptations, I welcome this as it will expose the Ghost in the Shell themes to younger people without the insane licensing fees I've come across when trying to acquire this anime.
Re:Plot Feel (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Plot Feel (Score:4, Insightful)
Its a matter of opinion, but I like the SAC series better than the movies mostly because its more down to earth or in a sense it strives to deal with modern issues in a new context of a society on the verge of dealing with a technological singularity.
That and it often follows into more detail about the lives secondary characters like Batou and Togusa.
The movies are of course better visually and theatric wise, but the SAC series is one of the better Anime series out there to date.
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Re:Plot Feel (Score:4, Insightful)
Or better, find a copy of the manga and read that. It's so much better that there's no effective basis for comparison.
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Graphic Novel (Score:5, Informative)
They are all good, but then again I am avid fan of Motoko. If you get the chance then I highly recommend getting the graphic novels, since not only is the artwork amazing, the stories are good and seeing all the little comments Masamune Shirow puts in really helps understand some stuff.
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Re:Plot Feel (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the original movie really was not like Shirow's style at all - the manga does not have that surreal "Twilight Zone" feel in the slightest. It's very dense and packed with info and it's one of those graphic novels where you've got to sort of immerse yourself in this world that he's created and consider all the problems we're going to come up against in the future and that's what makes it interesting.
Oshii's film is interesting in a totally different way, in that it's less about the world itself and more about this larger question of what life actually is. The world is only really featured as much as it needs to be to support that question and present arguments. That question was there in the manga too, but it was just one of many issues the manga raised. Oshii boiled down the manga to what he thought was the central question, and he stripped everything out that he thought got in the way of that. And that's what left him room to sort of explore the inner workings of the characters a little bit more and create that surrealness, which of course only served to support the theme too.
The second movie, though, was terrible. That was more like masturbation on Oshii's part. I don't think I've ever seen a sci-fi film that's more slowly paced... and that includes 2001: a Space Odyssey (which Oshii clearly uses for inspiration).
Whenever somebody talks about doing a new adaptation of GitS, the question is always whether they'll adapt the manga or the original film. I personally think the manga is basically unfilmable (as a standalone feature film) and whatever film is made then has to basically do what Oshii did and take one element out and focus on that. Maybe there's a different element that can be pulled out than the original film did, but I don't think Shirow's manga can ever really be boiled down to a 2 hour movie. It's probably a mistake to try, and luckily Oshii saw that and made something original and unique on its own. Hopefully Spielberg is that smart.
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Re:Plot Feel (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But to answer your question, I see it as a police/geopolitical thr
Re:Plot Feel (Score:5, Informative)
The movies are
Ghost in the shell
GiTS2 Innocence
GiTS Solid State Society
The TV shows are GITS SAC 1 and 2 respectively, and at least as good as the first movie when taken as a complete set.
Parent
Ambivelant about this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It will suck (Score:4, Insightful)
They simply couldn't have run out of ideas.
I am pretty bummed about this.
Then there's the problem of concepts that were once innovative being absorbed into the mainstream of pop culture: If your stories stay the same, you become a has-been. If you change them to suit the audience you're a sellout. Or you can develop something different entirely. If he develops his work further I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to work on Appleseed again.
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Re:Good idea? Spielberg??? (Score:5, Funny)
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Dumbed down for North America? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dumbed down for North America? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Dumbed down for North America? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Dumbed down for North America? (Score:5, Funny)
That's a rhetorical question, right?
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sigh... (Score:5, Interesting)
(and yes, i am talking about the beautiful nude scenes with the stealth suits breaking off. it was beautifully done.)
please, be faithful to the original.
Re:sigh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well established precedent?
Seriously, until recently any treatment of a comic-book or video game inspired subject was done completely badly by Hollywood. X-Men and some of the better ones seem to have done a good job by being true to the material. But, you still get some pretty badly done adaptations as the one studio decides that since another studio did well with a good comic adaptation, they should be able to get away with one too.
The problem is, sometimes the people adapting the material don't understand it, don't respect it, and don't know what to do with it. The result is something that the core fans don't like, that the people who have never heard of it can't figure out, and generally turns out to be a crappy movie.
I have no confidence whatsoever that Dreamworks can capture the feel and mood of Ghost in the Shell. I think you'll end up with some POS film adaptation which will be overly clunky and gimmicky, and it won't be able to tell a story. Some things are best left in anime since you have so much more freedom with the medium.
This all comes down to who does it -- get Bryan Singer or someone who has been able to deal with some of the Marvel stuff well, and you have a chance. Get Uwe Boll, and we're all screwed.
Cheers
Parent
Re:sigh... (Score:4, Informative)
Those are the ones which seem to have actually been able to understand the material and do it well.
There could actually be some hope for this if they get a production team who is capable of being true to the material and writing a good story.
Cheers
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Dub GiTS2: Innocence (Score:3, Interesting)
How about releasing a version of GiTS2: Innocence that's dubbed into English first for those of us who want to be able to look at the art and not have to read all the subtitles?
Re:Dub GiTS2: Innocence (Score:5, Insightful)
Voice acting for big releases in Japan pays well and is a huge business - think of the star quality you get in a Disney movie.
Dubs of anime films are usually done by studios specializing in bringing as many anime films over as possible as cheap as possible, and use voice acting roughly on par with cheap children's programs.
It's like watching Star Wars with Sir Alec Guinness's award winning voice replaced by some guy just out of community college theatre, who is also doing the voice of Leia using a bad falsetto.
Combine that with the consistent problem of bad obnoxious translations ("Believe it!") and the core, unavoidable issue that different languages have entirely different pacings to them (ie, trying to fit the whole english translation of a sentence into the same amount of time as the japanese sounds ridiculously forced and unnatural) and you can see why quite a few people would really prefer subtitles. With a little practice you can read it fast enough to go watch the screen at the same time. I've noticed it's only people who have only watched one or two subbed movies in their life who seem to have problems keeping up with it -- but most of them pick it up fairly well by the end of a series.
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Re:Dub GiTS2: Innocence (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, I realize that you're probably just trolling at this point, but what the hell.
Well, there's a lot one can say here, but it's important to remember that movies are (gasp) entertainment.
So basically what you're saying is that reading isn't entertainment?
I'm afraid the enlightened cosmopolitan movie watcher thing is rather laughable at times. It's a disease most prevalent in community college students and high school kids trying to shore up their self-esteem. The fact that a Blockbuster employee would stand behind a desk in one of those polyester polo shirts and be appalled at the plebeian tastes of patrons also hurts my head..or my funny bone, not sure which.
I don't really know where to start. First of all, believe it or not, yes there are people who actually care about the quality of the movies they're watching, and who are open to watching more than the latest gorefest. Secondly, as for you remark about my job at Blockbuster, it was just that, a job. Nothing about it defined me, just as nothing about my current job (as a software engineer) defines me. The fact that you decided to make it a point in your post says more about you than it does about me (especially so considering that you decided to post anonymously).
As someone who is genuinely multilingual and a trained linguist, I must also point out that for many of the world's languages, no, you wouldn't catch any significant nuances by hearing the original and reading the subtitles. European languages are easy; do you really think you'd be able to pick up subtle nuances in Turkish or Farsi that a good voice actor couldn't reproduce with proper direction. Are you even aware of how few universals there are with respect to suprasegmental features?
You're multilingual, good for you. I still call BS however. I speak/read/write Spanish and Japanese (though admittedly not fluently in either one), and I can say from personal experience that there is definitely a loss of nuance when dubbing is used. You're either very new to picking up languages, or you aren't nearly as good at them as you obviously think you are.
As for effectively reproducing these nuanced with properly directed voice actors, I agree that it's certainly possible, but it's also extremely rare. More often the studio is only interested in getting the filmed dubbed and out the door because foreign markets are typically after sales and the owners don't want to spend money on voice acting.
I can't help but think that the very act of watching foreign films demonstrates some openness to other cultures already. You think those vulgar masses fail to appreciate that a film is foreign because it's dubbed?
Sorry, but I disagree again. You wouldn't believe the number of people who pick up any random movie that has a cover that caught their eye only to find out after the fact that it was a foreign film. I'm not saying that this covers every case, but it still happens and probably more often than you think it does.
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What Is Left To Cover? (Score:3, Insightful)
I predict some cyber-gang up to cyber-shenanigans vs Public Security Section 9 with a ethical/philosophical twist. It can work but they better not slack on the quality or they'll risk alienating the mainstream and the hard core fan base.
Spielberg, eh? (Score:4, Funny)
Donkey? (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, but I believe Hillary will be on the campaign trail for at least a little while longer.
Audience like me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Audience like me (Score:5, Informative)
Just an FYI for future reference, the manga was released between 1989-1991, and the trade made it's appearence in English in 1995. The first movie (which covers a small part of the storyline in the Manga, and is VERY different in both tone and style) came out in 1995.
The Matrix, if I'm not mistaken, came out in 1999.
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Re:Audience like me (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.mig81.com/matrixgits/ [mig81.com]
EXCELLENT comparison of The Matrix and the first Ghost in the Shell movie.
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Just what we need (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't expect this to be a good thing in anyway. A great example would be what hollywood did to the aeon flux comic book / cartoon.
please clarify.. (Score:3, Funny)
A 3D vision movie you watch through red-green glasses?
A 3D first person shooter?
All of the that? None of that?
Finally, a definitive answer to the question (Score:5, Funny)
"Is there anything Hollywood won't shit on?"
So, let's see: Tom Cruise can play Batou. I know Batou is suppoed to be a big dude, and Tom Cruise is 4' 10", but I'm sure Cruise's face can easily be CGI'd onto a big, special effects body. Maybe they can also CGI in some acting ability. Jessica Simpson can play the Major. I know she's not Japanese--hell, she's a blonde--but what does that matter? We can wrap her in some tight, revealing costumes and no one will notice her from the neck up! She's made for the part! And instead of Japan, it can take place in L.A. And instead of hunting criminal, they'll hunt terrorists. Or maybe people who are mean to puppies. Or they guy who yesterday put whole milk instead of skim into Spielberg's latte.
Now, please excuse me while I got stick forks in my eyes.
A talking Donkey (Score:3, Funny)
Slightly O/T, but this brings up an interesting question: can't anybody in the world use Jar-Jar Binks without legally infringing on Lucas' copyright, since Binks is a pre-packaged parody of himself? (The same would apply to the donkey in Shrek, though perhaps more so since he's just Eddie Murphy and is the same character in so many things it would be hard to argue a new copyright existed just because he was a talking ass.)
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IANAL. This post is a joke. If you use it as legal advice, you probably deserve to get sued.
hollywood manga? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well bang goes the Japanese then (Score:3, Insightful)
Holllywood idea shortage (Score:4, Informative)
The idea shortage in Hollywood continues. As Harper's pointed out, more than half of the top-grossing movies of 2007 were sequels where N > 2.
Cartoon (not comic) to live action translation hasn't been that great. "Boris and Natasha: The Movie" (1992) was something of a flop, as was "Dudly Do-Right" (1999). A third try, "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" (2000) was a dud, too, although it was at least funny. "Underdog" (2007) is the most recent dud.
"The Flintstones" (1994) was one of the few successes. "Casper" (1995) was a success, mainly because CG animation had become good enough to be used convincingly with live actors. Those had the novelty of a cartoon as live action. But that's been done now, and the novelty has worn off.
Comic books have been a more fruitful source of material, enough so that Marvel now has its own movie studio.
Top 10 improvements to Ghost in the Shell (Score:4, Funny)
10. Cute kid to follow everyone around and ask a lot of questions
9. Helpless female with nasal voice that screams a lot and has to be rescued over and over
8. Less edgy animation so that American audience doesn't find it quite so jarring
7. Speaking of jarring, do you think we could borrow Jar-jar from Lucas?
6. Deep philosophical conundrums replaced with pop psychology and Jedi aphorisms.
5. More clothing to avoid the R rating
4. More senseless violence to fill in the parts we had to take out.
3. A properly evil villain so people know who to hate.
2. Good old-fashioned technobabble.
1. A talking Donkey (Nice call, Rob!)
Re:Not Spielburg (Score:5, Funny)
You might think it odd that he would have his own non-union counterpart working at his company Dreamworks, but actually that's a typo in the summary. The actual company that bought the rights is Dreamworks' non-union equivalent, Dreemwerx.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
3D Dead Action
3D Live Comedy
1D Live Drama
4D Dead Romance
Re:Anime.. A genre whose time has *come*?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Make up your mind: it's either good, bad or just another medium out there, no more prone (nor less) to being misused than any other comic (or any kind of art, actually). For some definition of misused, that is.
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Re:Anime.. A genre whose time has *come*?? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Anime.. A genre whose time has *come*?? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no genre called "japanese animation", anymore than there is a genre called "Hollywood movies" or "silent films". These are not genres.
A genre describes a work's "aboutness". It's a broad category that describes a set of themes. "Japanese animation" does not do that, and hence it is not a genre. All you know if somebody tells you a work is Japanese animation is that it was produced in Japan and if there is spoken dialogue, it's probably in Japanese. You know nothing of what the themes or aesthetics might be.
The Simpsons is animated in Korea. Does that makes the series' genre "Korean Animation"?
This is film theory 101. (Literally. That's the class I learned it in, 15 years ago.)
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Re:they better do naruto next (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:they better do naruto next (Score:5, Informative)
A Dragon Ball movie is already on the works, set to be released in 2009.
IMDB Page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1098327/ [imdb.com]
Leaked photos: http://themovingpicture.net/new-dragonball-set-photos [themovingpicture.net]
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Re:they better do naruto next (Score:5, Funny)
A Dragon Ball movie is already on the works, set to be released in 2009.
IMDB Page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1098327/ [imdb.com]
Leaked photos: http://themovingpicture.net/new-dragonball-set-photos [themovingpicture.net]
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Re:they better do naruto next (Score:5, Funny)
Dragon Ball The Movie. Where they cram a 10 min ass whooping into 2 hours. Rather than the usual 2 months. Yeah, I think I can hang with that.
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Re:they better do naruto next (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:they better do naruto next (Score:4, Funny)
It should actually be the same four or five movies, badly edited together, and then poorly redubbed to cover up the plot holes. Hey, it worked with Shogun Assassin...
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Of course we will have stylized 3D (Score:4, Insightful)
And yeah, we are certainly going to have a form of stylized 3D. The scifi-subset of anime sounds like a very obvious candidate for pioneering work in the field.
Hand-drawing every single frame of a movie just doesn't make sense these days. Computers can draw much better for the same price, and a director can do things like change his mind about a scene and redraw it. Humans are slightly less happy to see their hard labor being scrapped. And the particle effects and physics are plain evil difficult to draw. That's a bunch of reasons off the top of my head.
Yes, I know there is a lot more to anime than "stylized 2D". But with computers doing the 3D drudge work the designers can focus on getting all the storyline, atmosphere and artistic details just right.
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buuuuuuullllllshit. (Score:5, Funny)
Which is good. With Bay we would have gotten decent pacing, top-knotch effects, good cinematography, massive continuity errors and zero rewatchability.
With Cameron, we'll get great pacing, excellent visual effects, killer cinematography.... and Celine Dion.
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