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Ghost in the Shell 2.0


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Hmm, those screen shots are somewhat disappointing. They look pretty, but they don't feel right. I think it's the overexposed light bloom in the city scape scene. It looks like GITS 2: Innocence not the first GITS. It doesn't match the rest of the film, unless they redid the entire film in those colors. Is there any YouTube clips of this "enhanced" version yet?

Well, as long as the original remains available on all the future formats, I'll be happy.

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Is there any YouTube clips of this "enhanced" version yet?

I'm in the process of uploading a HD clip from the blu-ray release of the film. No subtitles though, and file size is a whopping 519MB. Click on the high resolution tab to see it in HD. I'll post the link as soon as I can.

Edit: Taking more time than I thought. I may have to upload a smaller file.

Edited by Noriko Takaya
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GiTs as a film series is something that I've always found overrated.

The second film, Innocence, is particularly bad and one of the worst animated films I've ever had to sit through. 2 hours of talking heads and a screenwriter trying to impress the audience with his knowledge of comparative philosophy and religion does not make a good film-going experience! Thank goodness I saw it in a theater before the DVD release! It was the most overhyped piece of @#$#@! the year it was released.

I have mixed feelings about the first GiTs film, but put a gun to my head and that's the one I'd recommend.

As a general rule, I really don't think most films benefit from a director's cut, let alone CG-enhanced special editions, and would prefer the original versions be released on home video instead of being force-fed the DE/SE versions and being told by production companies to take it. Just not very good PR, IMHO. That's where a lot of animosity for George Lucas originates from -- his unwillingness to listen to people that aren't yes-men or have been fans for years that know about filmmaking and story. The unwillingness to release the original versions of the SW OT was a breaking point for many, many film fans...

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The main problem of Ghost in the Shell, the Oshii's movies I mean, is IMO that it's far too much different than the original work of Shirow: in a interview given in the french edition of Dominion he said that he intended to make of his GitS manga some sort of action-police story set in a near future and in the style of the old TV series from the 60s and the 70s (or something like that, you get the point...), he actually never intended to make any sort of 'deep' work with sh!tload of sense value – or no sense value depending on your point of view... – but Oshii put his own vision onto it and now a lot of people thinks that GitS is a vastly profound piece of work or, worse, the quintessence of cyberpunk (which it is not, at least when you have read a bunch of books on the subject: let's say that this gender and this work share some similarities, like it's the case with Blade Runner or the Matrix, at least to some extent...); on the other hand, the TV series are far much more faithfull to the original manga and it's the one I'd recommend to the early fans

So, yes, GitS tends to be greatly overrated like a lot of animes and manga around, Evangelion being the most overrated of all but we always have a bunch of threads on this one so there's no need to get another one. But, like Eva, I think GitS is an interesting movie, it's just that it's complex surface tends to obscure a work of not as much value and depth than some (too much?) people think, to paraphrase a famous cinema critic about the David Lynch movies (which also deserve this judgement while I'm at it). It's actually worse with GitS 2: Innocence but at least this one is damn pretty although it's a double-sided sword because when the audience has a strong emotional relationship with a work (and the goal of art is to induce emotions into the spectator), people tend to see into this work things which are not there, or at least not as much as they would want them to be; again, we can find the same problem with Eva: people simply need to give value to things they like, and remove value to things they don't like, whatever signification they give to this verb. Anyway, this notion of 'sense' or 'depth' just depends on your level of general culture in the end

As for this 'new version' of the first GitS movie, a torrent is available and I began to watch it the day before yesterday but I couldn't finish it: it indeed looks far better but unfortunately just in the reanimated scenes; it results some sort of messy, unbalanced thing which tends to ruin all the efforts. Too bad: they should have reanimated it entirely instead of here and there

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Well, I was excited to see it, but now that I have I'm left quite underwhelmed by the result.

The constant switching from 3D character animation to 2D character animation is not working for me. I keep getting pulled out of the moment. Also, some of the scenes are suffering from CG "miniature syndrome", where all the objects feel like watching toy models.

Also, the color palette of the film is thrown off with all the golds and light blooms. I'm not sure what the point of all that is.

Where they did score points with the new CG work is all in the little embellishments; 3D fish tanks in the background, light sources and flares, volumetric shading on things like clips and firearms. That all looked awesome.

But overall, gotta say I'm disappointed by this. I'm not feeling it :(

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After watching a good portion of it, the new CG isn't all that bad, but it does seem like a pointless change. The original was fine to begin with. Sure the opening is now far starker (and darker overall), and it looks better than the trailer suggests, but there's little reason outside of showing off the control CGI gives. So the CGI isn't bad, but it's not really a great improvement. It's just different. The changed choppers make less sense.

To be honest, it's the orange tinting that sticks out more. I understand the whole modernize thing (though honestly, how is an orange display more 21st century than a green one? I've never seen one personally), and it's okay for the displays. What stinks is the retinted footage outside that and the orange look of the new CGI scenes. Particularly when some of the old green seeps through, making it obvious. The Making of Cyborg sequence sticks out like a sore thumb. Worse is the shot of the city before it goes back to Batou running to Motoko at the end. A blue scene cut into by an orange one cutting back to a blue one. It's really jarring design wise.

I'm not too familiar with this film in Japanese (saw it dubbed early in my fandom), So i can't say much there. I am a fan of Sakakibara, so I don't mind her as the puppet master.

All in all, it's not horrible, but it does seem like a waste of effort. Very much like the Star Wars SEs, though without the really dumb changes. It looks fine for the most part, and I even liked the CGI Motoko in the opening scene mostly. As long as it stays an alternative version, I see no problem with it.

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The color shift didn't bother me at all - can understand Oshii wanting to reclaim his 'cyber turf' and all that. But... I really disliked the use of CGI human models right from the get-go. Motoko's movement lacked fluidity... and it had nothing to do with 'emulating a limited-joint love doll' as in Innocence. The 3D animators should've gotten some tips from Pixar... the diving sequence which was so ethereal in the original now looks slap dash. Wasted effort... maybe Oshii will lucas it some more and produce a ver. 2.5. :-P

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The color shift didn't bother me at all - can understand Oshii wanting to reclaim his 'cyber turf' and all that. But... I really disliked the use of CGI human models right from the get-go. Motoko's movement lacked fluidity... and it had nothing to do with 'emulating a limited-joint love doll' as in Innocence. The 3D animators should've gotten some tips from Pixar... the diving sequence which was so ethereal in the original now looks slap dash. Wasted effort... maybe Oshii will lucas it some more and produce a ver. 2.5. :-P

And in ten years time, we'll have ver.3 just like Street Fighter. :lol:

Silly jokes aside, I believe [QTS] just released a h264 1080p version. No subs or dubs though. Google it as I cannot remember the site offhand.

p.s. If it's not legal to mention BT stuff on Macrossworld, pm me and I'll refrain from doing so. Thanks.

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I think 2.0 did benefit from re-recording all the Japanese VAs (they did, right?). To my ears, Batou and Motoko sounded much more natural in their dialogue... probably because the actors weren't overawed by the techno-existentialist babble anymore. I especially liked Batou's natural frustrated response to Aramaki's "What's wrong with her (Motoko)" after they discussed diving into the runaway Puppet Master.

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