When Ghost in the Shell comes to the big screen, it won't be a direct adaptation of any of the manga, anime or film storylines fans have previously seen. Instead, it will draw inspiration from all of the existing source material to create what executive producer Michael Costigan calls "a portal into this universe."
"I feel like such a geek making this movie because we are really bringing it to life so faithfully," Costigan said during a visit to Ghost in the Shell's New Zealand set. "We were talking about the absolute genius of the anime and the manga. It was so ahead of its time so making [it] now we had to actually understand what it’s about, what it’s exploring and getting to make it in live action. We are bringing things we saw in the anime to the fore in live action so I’m very excited for the fans."
Scarlett Johansson plays the Major in Ghost in the Shell
To understand what Ghost in the Shell draws from, one first needs to understand the wealth of source material that came before. The franchise began with the 1989 launch of Masamune Shirow serialized manga series The Ghost in the Shell, which was set in the near future in a technologically-dependent world where Japan was a dominant global power and told the story of Major Motoko Kusanagi and the cyberterrorism organization, Public Security Section 9, that she worked for.
That spawned the 1995 Mamoru Oshii-directed film Ghost in the Shell, which took the manga's conflict with the Puppetmaster villain and spun it into an expanded exploration of the story's commentary on identity. The Ghost in the Shell story was later retold in the 2002 anime series Stand Alone Complex, which was separate from the manga and focused on Section 9's investigation of a hacker known as Laughing Man.
There have been multiple films and anime series since, including 2004's Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, 2004's Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG and 2013's Ghost in the Shell: Arise, all of which served as a complex backdrop to what director Rupert Sanders created in the upcoming film. While the primary conflict of Scarlett Johansson's Major might mirror what the character went through in the anime, most of the context for her Section 9 team was drawn from Stand Alone Complex, and Michael Pitt's villain Kuze is a character who appeared in S.A.C. 2nd GIG (though it does seem like his character will have notes of Puppetmaster and Laughing Man).
"Hopefully the film feels like the anime," said producer Avi Arad. "When we first started talking about getting rights for adapting it, the creators went out of their way to suggest that we don’t try to adapt one thing. When they were adapting it into Stand Alone Complex they chose and felt like they had to tell their own story with expectation that it felt like Ghost in the Shell. Our hope is that our process will get us there."
Citing more references like the geisha bot from Innocence and the garbageman thermoptic sequence from the first film, Arad said this take on the story is essentially all of what came before. Key moments like the interrogation scene and the shelling sequence all will make their way into the finished product.
The aesthetic look of the film will be drawn from the anime as well -- so much so that cinematographer Jess Hall pulled out 28 colors used in the Ghost in the Shell and Innocence films and used those for every lighting set up in the film, with the intent to make the color palettes feel the same as what came before. But the live action film is also intending to bring to life the more cerebral and philosophical conversations that made the movies and manga so resonant.
"Part of it is hopefully going to be dreamy, emotional or philosophical like the movies and the manga, but also a really fast western narrative spine to series one and two that we are borrowing," Arad said.
As many of the main characters in the film are cybernetically enhanced or full-on cyborgs, like Major, Ghost in the Shell will explore the themes of technology and the questions of how our reliance on technology affects our understanding of identity through its characters.
"We really see this world through the character. It’s a different kind of futurism, there is color in it. It’s not just another post-apocalyptic world that we’ve seen 300 times," said Costigan. "I think we were still afraid of technology and it’s a cultural moment that the film is about. Technology is here. Humanity is here. Rather than AI is our last great invention and it’s going to surpass us, this is basically legit what happens when they do bring them together as that’s the world we live in. It asks questions about whether we lose our humanity doing that, will it make us more human."
"The big thing we are doing here is that we’re not necessarily doing an origins backstory, but we are addressing [Major's] sense of self and resolving how she defines herself in terms of memories," noted Arad. "That’s one of the main thrusts in the story. Inspired by that episode of 'Affection' in 2nd GIG. It’s bits and pieces of those mixed together."
Though the Ghost in the Shell franchise is set in the fictional Japanese city of Niihama, the city is largely inspired by Hong Kong, with the slums being particularly evocative of Kowloon Walled City. The film is drawing similar inspiration, with exterior shots being films in Hong Kong as well as in New Zealand. The main shift in setting is that this take on the story is set in 2070, bumping up the near-future backdrop of the movie largely because the live-action movie is coming out 20 years after the original anime film.
When it came time to bring the technology of the world to life, the filmmakers similarly relied on creating props that were evocative of the anime while still feeling tactile within our world.
"What was interesting about Ghost in the Shell is that it was never really a predictive future. It was more about a future that was meant to provoke a feeling in the audience," said Arad. "That’s the same kind of philosophy in this movie. There are things here that are more tangible like the cables or the [lack of finger-splitting] hands. Even the cars. In every version of Ghost in the Shell you’d never see a flying car. Everything felt like it had a combustion engine. It was all about making it feel chunkier and more tangible aesthetic and a mix of an overly dense urban area. At the same time not suggesting it’s not better or worse which is also a big theme in Ghost in the Shell. It talks about what the changes are going to do to, but not necessarily judging."
Ghost in the Shell hits theaters on March 31, 2017.
Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire