A live-action adaptation of Mamoru Oshii’s celebrated anime Ghost in the Shell may finally be happening—mostly because now a big star is attached. Variety reports that after some deliberation, Scarlett Johansson has signed on to star in the movie. With such a big name attached, DreamWorks executives hope, getting greenlit should be a lot easier.
Of course, there is some question over the casting of a white actress for the title role of Motoko Kusanagi, a Japanese cyborg cyber-crime fighter chasing down a deadly hacker known as the Puppet Master in 2029.
The casting of a white actor as a non-white protagonist brings to mind when Keanu Reeves was considering the lead role in the live-action Akira movie (and the cast for Airbender, and the villain in Star Trek Into Darkness, and…), especially when the Ghost in the Shell producers could have nabbed a rising star like Pacific Rim’s Rinko Kikuchi. There are other casting options that would better match the plot, though in this case the Variety article and additional online commentary point out that the presence of a marquee actress was necessary to get the movie project noticed at all.
Kusanagi’s visual appearance, while iconically female, does change throughout the series, and her personality becomes more and more disassociated with her physical appearance, so we’ll have to wait and see what the filmmakers intend in regards to honoring the origins of the character. In the author’s notes to his original Ghost in the Shell manga, Masamune Shirow explains that “Major Kusanagi is deliberately designed to look like a mass-production model so she won’t be too conspicuous.” The screenplay could run with that idea and have Motoko’s cyborg model be white, making the argument that Scarlett Johansson’s form represents a commercially idealized woman. Spike Jonze’s Her already did that with Johansson’s voice by depicting her voice as the desire-fulfilling operating system Samantha.
In any case, since the movie has yet to be funded or approved by Dreamworks, this remains speculation. We’ll have to wait and see how it unfolds.
“The casting of a white actor as a non-white protagonist brings to mind when Keanu Reeves was considering the lead role in the live-action Akira movie”
…at least Keanu is part Asian.
Leaving this YouTube link here to preempt anyone attempting to claim that Motoko is drawn as a caucasian in the original anime. Because I have a set limit to how many times I can go down that rabbithole in any given 24 hour period without my brain melting.
What is the dividing line between a cultural or local country remake/version of a property and the concern here or in Akira?
I understand the concern with The Last Airbender, where the much of the target US audience would be familiar with the series. The others, I’m not sure I get.
@3: The problem isn’t about any individual work, but about the larger context. In theory, there’s nothing wrong with changing the ethnicity of characters in an individual work or reinterpreting it for a different country and culture. The problem is that industry-wide in America, there’s a pervasive tendency to exclude Asian-American actors from starring roles in feature films, and that goes beyond the merits of any individual film and becomes a systematic pattern of race-based employment discrimination, as well as perpetuating white privilege as a social construct.
If there weren’t such a larger pattern, I’d have no problem with the casting here; ethnicity aside, ScarJo is pretty much perfect for the role. But unfortunately, the pattern does exist. At the very least, I hope the film balances things out by casting Asian actors as at least some of the other leads.
Personally I hope that if this casting moves forward Scarlet Johansson will be playing only one of the Major’s bodies. Given the global focus of movie making and marketing these days it might be profitable to cast actresses who are draws in different global markets and have them all play the character at some point in the film. You can even rotate the Majors around on the poster to localize the advertising.
she’s a cyborg who at various times in the GitS body of work suggests that she’s chosen her body for entirely utilitarian reasons. she gives up her physical existance at the end of the movie, and one of the running themes is that you can’t believe/trust what’s on the outside. if there were ever a character whose appearance doesn’t matter, it’s that of the major.
I hope she dies her hair purple, as that’s the iconic thing about the Major for me (the red eyes too, but I understand that contact lenses are hard to work in).
The assumption seems to be that they’re going to adapt the original anime movie/manga storyline, but I’d actually rather that they use the Laughing Man story from Stand Alone: Complex, which was a littleless out there and, frankly, more fun (tachikomas!).
Is Ken Watanabe too young to be playing Aramaki, do you think? Unfortunately I think he’s too old for Togusa.
@1 DivaJedi,
Keanu is also part cardboard.
@7: The purple hair and red-brown eyes are specific to Stand Alone Complex. In the original movie, Motoko’s hair was black and her eyes blue. In the new Arise anime, her hair and eyes are blue. The manga was black and white, but the original volume’s cover gave her purple-blue hair.
Or it could be like recasting Clint Eastwood in the remake of Kurosawa’s Jojimbo. Or the casting of Brynner, McQueen, and Bronson in the remake of Seven Samurai.
A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven turned out OK.
As long as we get tachikomas, that’s the important thing.
I’ve got a feeling that the movie is going to suck
@12: I’ve got a feeling it’s not going to be made.
Hmmm….not sure how I feel about this. As much as I love Scarlett Jo, and love GitS, the choice of casting seems singularly….unimaginative. Scarlett has become one of the standard actresses for a sci fi movie, along with Angelina and Milla. Like the author and some other commenters, I’d rather see them go with some Asian actors and actresses.
I do still hope that a live version of GitS gets made, even if I’m not as excited about the prospect as I would have been 17-18 years ago when I first saw the original.
I think it was always a given, if Hollywood ever made a live-action GitS, it was never going to be set in Niihama, Japan. Some future version of New York or Los Angeles is much more likely. Knowing that, the use of non-asian actors is only to be expected.
My feelings about casting Johanson as the Major are based not on her ethnicity, but her lack of acting ability. Not sure who I would have chosen instead, just that if I was casting the movie I would not have even considered her.
@15: For what it’s worth, the first movie relocated the setting to Hong Kong.
And Johanssen can be very good when she has the right material, as she showed in The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
@11 Yes! The tachikomas must be in it. If it actually gets made, of course.
@2 Thank you for that link. I have to admit that I thought that anime characters frequently looked caucasian. I hate having been wrong, but at least now I know better.
I think that the casting of Ms. Johansson would be okay if they move the setting from Japan. It would be another in a long line of changes from source materials in the movie/TV biz. But since the setting seems so integral to the story (at least, in my mind), I wonder if they could do that and still have a good story.