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Ghost in the Shell Live Action - March 31, 2017


Mechinyun

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Unless something dramatic happens with home video sales, I think the idea of a sequel is doomed. There would have been some kind of talk about it post release if the studio was confident about the project.

Im still sticking with my opinion that this film deserves more positive attention than it got. And I also still feel it was far better than the majority of movies coming out and receiving sequel treatment.

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7 hours ago, Chet said:

So are there any "final" numbers for this film? Loss/break even?  I guess its too much to hope that they did well enough to justify a sequel.

According to http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ghostintheshell2017.htm

Worldwide gross: $166 million

They put the production budget at $110 million, but some firms estimate closer to $180 million. Plus the marketing (which never has numbers, but people usually guesstimate to be around the same as production), and this film either just barely broke even ($110m production, $50-60m marketing) or lost anywhere from $14-194 million ($180 production, $0-180 marketing).

There were news articles (such as this one: http://deadline.com/2017/04/ghost-in-the-shell-scarlett-johansson-box-office-flop-whitewash-1202061479/ ) saying that it was a $60 million flop.

5 hours ago, Big s said:

Im still sticking with my opinion that this film deserves more positive attention than it got. And I also still feel it was far better than the majority of movies coming out and receiving sequel treatment.

It's known that I didn't care for this film from the beginning, and while my feelings on it have mellowed now that it's come and gone, after watching the various anime incarnations and re-reading the manga, I keep asking myself, "Why couldn't they have just done this?" There were plenty of episodes in SAC that could have been translated to screen outright, the Tachikoma-centric ones especially. I've only gotten 3/7 through Arise and even though I have my issues with it, it still has more interesting characters and does a better job exploring a better backstory for the Major. That's not to say that these adaptations deserve to be held up on pedestals, but they're simply well-made and well-told, which is more than can be said of this movie.

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39 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

According to http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ghostintheshell2017.htm

Worldwide gross: $166 million

They put the production budget at $110 million, but some firms estimate closer to $180 million. Plus the marketing (which never has numbers, but people usually guesstimate to be around the same as production), and this film either just barely broke even ($110m production, $50-60m marketing) or lost anywhere from $14-194 million ($180 production, $0-180 marketing).

There were news articles (such as this one: http://deadline.com/2017/04/ghost-in-the-shell-scarlett-johansson-box-office-flop-whitewash-1202061479/ ) saying that it was a $60 million flop.

 

That's kind of a shame, really... I'd rather hoped that Ghost in the Shell would be the one to buck the trend of western live-action adaptations of anime being commercial disasters.

Shōnen titles like Dragonball Z and Mach GoGoGo don't really lend themselves well to that kind of adaptation, but I thought Ghost in the Shell was mature and sophisticated enough that the source material's fundamental quality would shine through mainstream Hollywood's explosion-induced clinical inability to comprehend subtlety and the inevitable questionable judgment that casting would show by prioritizing ability to fill out a latex catsuit above everything else.  More fool me, I guess, though what I gathered from the summaries of the box office take is that it actually did reasonably brisk business in Japan before falling flat in the West.

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I was surprised how little the movie did cater to the mainstream crowd - no big explosions, car chases, comical sidekicks (or Tachis), and the Major was not the tough-as-nails buttkicker that some people wanted her to be. Seeing it, I thought "this is a movie for the SF crowd". Well, in the end it wasn't edgy enough to cater to this crowd, too, and fell in the middle. I still think the visual world it created makes up for it's shortcomings.

Oh, and while we're at it:

 

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20 hours ago, Chet said:

So are there any "final" numbers for this film? Loss/break even?  I guess its too much to hope that they did well enough to justify a sequel.

 

Scarlett herself in a recent talk basically said the movie was a flop a few weeks ago. So even though it's still in theaters it's not making what they expected.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/jon-favreau-lion-king-fans-expectations-scarlett-johansson-ghost-shell-woes-tribeca-2017-9966

 

11 hours ago, kajnrig said:

According to http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ghostintheshell2017.htm

Worldwide gross: $166 million

They put the production budget at $110 million, but some firms estimate closer to $180 million. Plus the marketing (which never has numbers, but people usually guesstimate to be around the same as production), and this film either just barely broke even ($110m production, $50-60m marketing) or lost anywhere from $14-194 million ($180 production, $0-180 marketing).

There were news articles (such as this one: http://deadline.com/2017/04/ghost-in-the-shell-scarlett-johansson-box-office-flop-whitewash-1202061479/ ) saying that it was a $60 million flop.

 

It's not breaking even. Too many people wrongly assume box office total gross = what the production companies are getting without other costs. Which is wrong. This isn't pulling a profit. Even with DVD, Blu-ray, Cable, and other sales. It might not even make the projected $200 Million in theaters which would make it even more of a flop.

 

Additionally, this isn't like a Star Wars that pays for itself even before release with toy and merchandise deals / revenue. As far as I know there are only high end figures and statues coming out. Very little in the way of merchandise for this movie.

 

The only way this gets a sequel is if Hollywood says we really don't care about money.

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If anybody's theater is still showing this and want to watch it for free, let me know.  I still have a free movie ticket code from fandango that expires on 5/31 that I don't plan on using.

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The head sculpt looks decent but the fingerless gloves and assault rifle look strangely "glossy" to me. Did they look that way in the movie?

The again, its probably a prototype for show and tell, so they'll likely fix it up in the actual figure.

Edited by GU-11
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4 hours ago, hachi said:

I hate that jacket of hers. Anybody know what inspired them to make that? I would have settled for at least the red jacket from Arise even if I didn't like that series.

Coz probably that's what she wore on the movie?

You can get the Arise version figure and put the red jacket on ScarJo. ;)

 

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17 hours ago, no3Ljm said:

Coz probably that's what she wore on the movie?

You can get the Arise version figure and put the red jacket on ScarJo. ;)

 

Which movie? I really don't remember. If it looked good on the Major in the anime unfortunately didn't look good on ScarJo.

16 hours ago, electric indigo said:

The movie also had the red jacket in the Yakuza club scene.

I would have preferred if she wore it more (or some other stylish jacket) instead of that other jacket.

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  • 3 weeks later...

So the Major was in fact........

 

Spoiler

ASIAN? :p

Sorry I could not help myself after all the hoopla over Ms. Scarlett Johansson getting the role. :D

All in all it was an okay movie. :|

Edited by grss1982
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On 5/28/2017 at 0:54 AM, grss1982 said:

So the Major was in fact........

 

  Hide contents

ASIAN? :p

Sorry I could not help myself after all the hoopla over Ms. Scarlett Johansson getting the role. :D

All in all it was an okay movie. :|

Spoiler

Her brain came from a Japanese female, but her cyborg body did not emulate a female of Japanese ethnicity. 

Are we still doing spoilers on this thing?  Ok.

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Here is my take on this movie. And thankfully I didnt have to pay for this semi garbage.

 

Major just seemed awkward in this movie. Like boring awkward. Yeah I get it, in the OVA the major seemed emotionless but it comes across much better in anime format

The anime has sort of a transitionless moments where you have a break from the characters and action or story to encapsulate yourself in the surroundings or backgrounds of the world the characters live in .

The movie didnt have this. It missed the mark of what the philosophy in the anime was about Most of the movie was blah blah blah and blah blah blah oh look spider tank. It was a fancy bland and boring movie that left me wanting to go back and watch the anime

 

This movie was semi garbage.

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Blu-ray release on 7/25. Available in BD, 3D BD, DVD, 4K

http://thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents/053017-1400

Extras on the Blu-ray versions will include 3 featurettes (Hard-Wired Humanity: Making Ghost in the Shell, Section 9: Cyber Defenders, and Man & Machine: The Ghost Philosophy).

I can't wait to see how cringey those featurettes are. "Your body, your ***SHELL***, is synthetic. But your brain, your soul, your ***GHOST***, is human."

 

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On 5/28/2017 at 2:54 AM, grss1982 said:

So the Major was in fact........

 

  Hide contents

ASIAN? :p

Sorry I could not help myself after all the hoopla over Ms. Scarlett Johansson getting the role. :D

All in all it was an okay movie. :|

 

Yeah. It is obvious where Motoko is from to anyone who has watched all of the series. And they actually added that scene with another character because like that stupid people on the streets in Japan video, they thought that would make things better.

 

On 5/29/2017 at 2:43 PM, slaginpit said:

Here is my take on this movie. And thankfully I didnt have to pay for this semi garbage.

 

Major just seemed awkward in this movie. Like boring awkward. Yeah I get it, in the OVA the major seemed emotionless but it comes across much better in anime format

The anime has sort of a transitionless moments where you have a break from the characters and action or story to encapsulate yourself in the surroundings or backgrounds of the world the characters live in .

The movie didnt have this. It missed the mark of what the philosophy in the anime was about Most of the movie was blah blah blah and blah blah blah oh look spider tank. It was a fancy bland and boring movie that left me wanting to go back and watch the anime

 

This movie was semi garbage.

 

I saw it as well and didn't pay. And it's like those reviews I posted. A very flat movie. The sort of movie that shows it's made just for profits like I assumed in the beginning. And anything that you think is somewhat good in the movie is far better in the originals. I would review it but it's not worth my time.

 

And for the person that asked about box office totals, I think it's finished now as no updates for about a week. And if no one believed it was a flop before you can really see by the numbers now when you compare it to what they thought it would make from previous articles.

 

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=ghostintheshell2017.htm

Edited by JetJockey
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  • 1 month later...

Japanese audio doesn't help a bad movie. I'm just waiting on the new anime. There should be news soon and people can forget about this topic just like the movie.

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  • 3 weeks later...

So, just out of curiosity, is the live action movie similar enough in content and dialogue that you could recut the footage and build a full dub in both Japanese and English using audio clips of the original movies/series?

Not that I think it would be anywhere near worth the effort, and would probably be pushing the limits of polishing a turd as an analogy.  I just think it would be interesting to see if fans of the original material could make something worthwhile out of the footage.

Edited by Chronocidal
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7 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

So, just out of curiosity, is the live action movie similar enough in content and dialogue that you could recut the footage and build a full dub in both Japanese and English using audio clips of the original movies/series?

Not that I think it would be anywhere near worth the effort, and would probably be pushing the limits of polishing a turd as an analogy.  I just think it would be interesting to see if fans of the original material could make something worthwhile out of the footage.

I can't say it is. But I wouldn't waste time on it though. ^_^

Anyways, my wife kind of liked it when I watched it the second time with her. My only comment to her after watching it is that 'good thing you're not into the anime version'. :lol: 

The anime has more humor into it esp between Togusa and Batou. Togusa on this movie is such an a$$. And they're all serious the whole time. And how come Scarlett's walking pattern looks awkward. Androids doesn't walk like how she walks in the movie. However I do like all the bits that pays homage to what was done on the animes. ;)

 

 

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I did love the Honest Trailer summary about how ScarJo's previous roles all turned into a 20 trope pileup as the Major. :lol: Though I think that might be one of the weirdest bits.. just "Major", not "The Major"?  It sounds so awkward.

I did read an interesting point someone made about the changes to the plot though, and how the film kind of swapped out the questions about human identity for ones that are more about racial/cultural identity.  While I can understand why someone wanted to focus on a slightly more current philosophical debate, I also think focusing on that sort of subject didn't do the film any favors.  It went from being about high level existential philosophy to being more about current societal issues that were never the main focus of the original material.

Edited by Chronocidal
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