The Major was always a neutral confident perspective navigating the world of GitS, and she was never, ever unsure about her place in it (until the Puppeteer shook things up.) That was part of what made her so appealing - a competent, intelligent female character instead of yet another damsel-in-distress, or god forbid…

And I would say your assessment of the movie is lacking. The Puppetmaster story arc in the manga was a very short bit, and was expanded greatly in the movie by adding bits and pieces from a bunch of other manga storylines. The philosophical bits are mostly out of Oshii’s head, not Shirow’s.

Shirow was an adviser during the planning stages, and approved the character designs. How is that not active involvement? No, he wasn’t a part of the writing of the overall TV story, but he wasn’t involved with the movie at all.

You’re not going to get the movie the first time you see it. That’s why movies have a tendency to spell things out.

I could let the casting go, even if the Major name trips me up a little, the rest of it looked good right up until she’s the first of her kind and she’s trying to remember who she is only to be told her old life was taken from her. Sigh.

This movie is being made by Hollywood production companies. The issue is one of how Asian characters are cast by Hollywood filmmakers — actors of Asian origin lose opportunities that ought to be tailor-made for them, all because of Hollywood inertia, leading to reduced representation for Asian people in the media.…

Huh, I didn’t get from the trailer that she was the sole full prosthetic cyborg in the setting, just that she was the first.

I’m one of those that actually had no problem with Johansson as the major (her prosthetic body never struck me as particularly Japanese/Asian, unlike, say, Aramaki), and thought appearance-wise she made for a decent mix of the SAC and Arise versions, but after watching this trailer, I really have to say she just…

Still bullshit argument, movies launch stars all the time: Marvel, DC, hunger games, divergent.

Marvel cast unknows Chris hermsworth as Thor and it made money. Chris evans was never a big name and make money and captain america is a thing now. The protagonist of Pacific Rim could very well fill this role, there isn’t any justificative to justify 100%

If the movie success hangs on the actors and not the characters and story, that’s not a good thing.

Completely agree.

Now, if we can stop complaining about complaining about whitewashing (seriously, the whitewashing supporter complainers were a million times more prevalent and obnoxious than the anti-whitewashing people), we can probably finally focus on the quality of the product, itself.

I’m more upset with how she *sounds* out of place. Her voice is too... ‘weak’, I guess is the word I’d use. The major’s always had the rocksolid voice of a badass in the various adaptions. Emotional content was always subtly hinted at; but here her voice is so laced with it that it feels really out of place for me.

Hollywood, if you want to go whitewash with your movie, don’t call it with the same title.