Screen Junkies’ latest installment in the Honest Trailers series is the Hollywood remake of the popular and iconic anime Ghost in the Shell, and it does not hold anything back. From references to Scarlett Johansson’s previous roles, to Hollywood science fiction’s constant allusions to the anime, to the sparse dialogue of side characters, this honest trailer is out for blood.
While Hollywood anime adaptation don’t usually land, Ghost in the Shell was scrutinized especially for its casting decision. While that no doubt played a big role in it’s disappointing box office, it also just wasn’t that amazing of a film. The honest trailer touches on this and the ways film executives are much more comfortable blaming reviews than their own choices, leading to the industry learning almost nothing from their mistakes.
“Hollywood is running out of stuff from the 80s and 90s to remake, now they’re remaking a film they’ve already been ripping off for decades,” the narration says, “but with controversial casting, a dumbed-down plot, just enough recreated scenes from the anime to put in the trailers, and a complete lack of understanding about what made the franchise popular to begin with.”
The trailer also points to one of the bigger challenges of adapting a something as pioneering as Ghost in the Shell for the current time, which is “the source material was so influential that now it feels like it’s copying the films it inspired.”
The best moment though? Their absolutely vicious takedown of the whitewashing controversy and the way the plot handled the character’s ghost vs shell storyline:
“Watch as the studio avoids a white washing controversy by showing off how multi-cultural their version of Hong Kong is, and explain that Major’s body is only a shell for someone else’s brain—which, alright I’ll bite.
Then cringe in disbelief as the studio manages to ruin their own solution by revealing that, yep, she was full blown Japanese all along. Way to double down gang. You just tried to put out a dumpster fire with a much larger, easily-avoidable dumpster fire.”
(via The Playlist, image: screencap)
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