4 ms·

Does ghost in the shell still hold up as a movie?

breckenedge 3y ago
I think it’s at least as good as Blade Runner. Definitely worth a watch.
izzydata 3y ago
That would depend on what you mean, but I'm pretty sure the answer is yes in any regard. From an artistic perspective it is still beautiful and might be even more beautiful than some modern more digital animated movies. From a science fiction perspective it is still as fictional as it was upon release. I don't believe we are any closer to cyber brains and thus not any closer to showing how ridiculous the interpretation in the movie would be to some real world equivalent.
- chasd00 3y ago
  I like the conversation the major has where she mentions if the augmented humans had to give back all their enhancements there wouldn’t be much left over. I know many people who take adderall and vyvanse as a performance enhancing drug without an rx. If they had to stop they wouldn’t be much of anything.
  - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
    I don't think it's comparable. Cybernetic parts replace biological parts wholesale. The Major is mostly cyborg. The only biological part left is parts of her brain and brain stem. Unless adderall and vyvanse has some unknown side effect that damages the brain, when you stop taking you just return to your baseline self.
    - telesilla 3y ago
      It's relevant. Drug abuse permanently affects the brain, rehabilitation never returns most to their previous baseline.
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      > when you stop taking you just return to your baseline self. Since I learned that you could use pick axes for digging I would give up digging holes using shovels way earlier than before I realized pick axes are a thing.
  - izzydata 3y ago
    That sounds much more like that recent Cyberpunk 2077 anime with the cyber-psychosis problem when using too many body enhancements.
mytailorisrich 3y ago
The 1995 'original' is very good. The atmosphere of some scenes with nothing but landscape views and music are really striking in a hypnotic way. The overall quality of the drawings is incredible and the storyline is both interesting and getting more relevant.
tessierashpool 3y ago
Ghost in the Shell is a franchise with many different movies, like Star Wars. the 95 movie is good but the 2002-2005 Stand Alone Complex TV series is much better. more exciting, more coherent, and closer to the original manga.
- andrei_says_ 3y ago
  Is that available for streaming in the US?
  - kayodelycaon 3y ago
    Amazon Prime Video has it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/0RQUV6NO3USQLW767X5M3ZJ6JO/ref=atv_dl_rdr?tag=justus1ktp-20 https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/0RQUV6NO3USQLW767X5M3...
  - nogridbag 3y ago
    It's free on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHil4Y4r3Wk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHil4Y4r3Wk
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - mayd 3y ago
      Not in my zone of the international DRM prison system.
- peoplefromibiza 3y ago
  AFAIK Sac is not a sequel nor a closer adaptation, but an alternative timeline. I grew up with the original movie that I watched at the cinema and never developed a strong attachment to Sac for that reason, it is good, but IMO it's not better than Oshii's version, on the contrary it lacks the poetics and the dreamlike aspects of the 1995 work. p.s. Oshii also directed "Urusei Yatsura Onrī Yū?" which is IMO the best Urusei Yatsura movie even though it doesn't closely follow the manga, exactly because of Oshii talent with the dreamy stuff.
anigbrowl 3y ago
You can find out in approximately 2 hours.
psyclobe 3y ago
Yeah but the dialog sure is a bit bookish and dry, talking a lot about weird theory.
- Der_Einzige 3y ago
  I mean it's cool and all that they throw Deleuze and Guattari references at you (especially in stand alone complex), but unfortunately we have wised up to how much that stuff was fashionable nonsense since then...
  - aspenmayer 3y ago
    I think the reason that it's so philosophical, and the reason that it mentions Deleuze and Guattari specifically, is due to their emphasis on "the virtual," and in the context of Ghost in the Shell, this "virtual" is explored conceptually, especially as it relates to systems of control, such as cybernetics. Edit: > Like Kant, Deleuze considers traditional notions of space and time as unifying forms imposed by the subject. He, therefore, concludes that pure difference is non-spatiotemporal; it is an idea, what Deleuze calls "the virtual". (The coinage refers to Proust's definition of what is constant in both the past and the present: "real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.") While Deleuze's virtual ideas superficially resemble Plato's forms and Kant's ideas of pure reason, they are not originals or models, nor do they transcend possible experience; instead they are the conditions of actual experience, the internal difference in itself. "The concept they [the conditions] form is identical to its object." A Deleuzean idea or concept of difference is therefore not a wraith-like abstraction of an experienced thing, it is a real system of differential relations that creates actual spaces, times, and sensations.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze > Cybernetics: a reactionary pseudoscience that appeared in the U.S.A. after World War II and also spread through other capitalist countries. Cybernetics clearly reflects one of the basic features of the bourgeois worldview—its inhumanity, striving to transform workers into an extension of the machine, into a tool of production, and an instrument of war. At the same time, for cybernetics an imperialistic utopia is characteristic—replacing living, thinking man, fighting for his interests, by a machine, both in industry and in war. The instigators of a new world war use cybernetics in their dirty, practical affairs.[1][2] [1] "Cybernetics" in the Short Philosophical Dictionary, 1954 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Unio...
ge96 3y ago
The artwork/old anime is unmatched imo compared to today's work (less detail).
chiph 3y ago
The 1995 is very good and I'll watch it again every few years. I walked out of the 2017 Scarlett Johansson remake. And a big reason I did so was that it lacked the atmosphere of the earlier film, what is known as Ma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_(negative_space) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_(negative_space)
ranger207 3y ago
Yes. Watch it with subtitles on and Japanese audio; the subtitle translation flows much better than the English voiceover dub IMO

I think it’s at least as good as Blade Runner. Definitely worth a watch.

That would depend on what you mean, but I'm pretty sure the answer is yes in any regard. From an artistic perspective it is still beautiful and might be even more beautiful than some modern more digital animated movies. From a science fiction perspective it is still as fictional as it was upon release. I don't believe we are any closer to cyber brains and thus not any closer to showing how ridiculous the interpretation in the movie would be to some real world equivalent.

chasd00 3y ago
I like the conversation the major has where she mentions if the augmented humans had to give back all their enhancements there wouldn’t be much left over. I know many people who take adderall and vyvanse as a performance enhancing drug without an rx. If they had to stop they wouldn’t be much of anything.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  I don't think it's comparable. Cybernetic parts replace biological parts wholesale. The Major is mostly cyborg. The only biological part left is parts of her brain and brain stem. Unless adderall and vyvanse has some unknown side effect that damages the brain, when you stop taking you just return to your baseline self.
  - telesilla 3y ago
    It's relevant. Drug abuse permanently affects the brain, rehabilitation never returns most to their previous baseline.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    > when you stop taking you just return to your baseline self. Since I learned that you could use pick axes for digging I would give up digging holes using shovels way earlier than before I realized pick axes are a thing.
- izzydata 3y ago
  That sounds much more like that recent Cyberpunk 2077 anime with the cyber-psychosis problem when using too many body enhancements.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

The 1995 'original' is very good. The atmosphere of some scenes with nothing but landscape views and music are really striking in a hypnotic way. The overall quality of the drawings is incredible and the storyline is both interesting and getting more relevant.

tessierashpool 3y ago

Ghost in the Shell is a franchise with many different movies, like Star Wars. the 95 movie is good but the 2002-2005 Stand Alone Complex TV series is much better. more exciting, more coherent, and closer to the original manga.

andrei_says_ 3y ago
Is that available for streaming in the US?
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  Amazon Prime Video has it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/0RQUV6NO3USQLW767X5M3ZJ6JO/ref=atv_dl_rdr?tag=justus1ktp-20 https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/0RQUV6NO3USQLW767X5M3...
- nogridbag 3y ago
  It's free on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHil4Y4r3Wk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHil4Y4r3Wk
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mayd 3y ago
    Not in my zone of the international DRM prison system.
peoplefromibiza 3y ago
AFAIK Sac is not a sequel nor a closer adaptation, but an alternative timeline. I grew up with the original movie that I watched at the cinema and never developed a strong attachment to Sac for that reason, it is good, but IMO it's not better than Oshii's version, on the contrary it lacks the poetics and the dreamlike aspects of the 1995 work. p.s. Oshii also directed "Urusei Yatsura Onrī Yū?" which is IMO the best Urusei Yatsura movie even though it doesn't closely follow the manga, exactly because of Oshii talent with the dreamy stuff.

anigbrowl 3y ago

You can find out in approximately 2 hours.

psyclobe 3y ago

Yeah but the dialog sure is a bit bookish and dry, talking a lot about weird theory.

Der_Einzige 3y ago
I mean it's cool and all that they throw Deleuze and Guattari references at you (especially in stand alone complex), but unfortunately we have wised up to how much that stuff was fashionable nonsense since then...
- aspenmayer 3y ago
  I think the reason that it's so philosophical, and the reason that it mentions Deleuze and Guattari specifically, is due to their emphasis on "the virtual," and in the context of Ghost in the Shell, this "virtual" is explored conceptually, especially as it relates to systems of control, such as cybernetics. Edit: > Like Kant, Deleuze considers traditional notions of space and time as unifying forms imposed by the subject. He, therefore, concludes that pure difference is non-spatiotemporal; it is an idea, what Deleuze calls "the virtual". (The coinage refers to Proust's definition of what is constant in both the past and the present: "real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.") While Deleuze's virtual ideas superficially resemble Plato's forms and Kant's ideas of pure reason, they are not originals or models, nor do they transcend possible experience; instead they are the conditions of actual experience, the internal difference in itself. "The concept they [the conditions] form is identical to its object." A Deleuzean idea or concept of difference is therefore not a wraith-like abstraction of an experienced thing, it is a real system of differential relations that creates actual spaces, times, and sensations.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze > Cybernetics: a reactionary pseudoscience that appeared in the U.S.A. after World War II and also spread through other capitalist countries. Cybernetics clearly reflects one of the basic features of the bourgeois worldview—its inhumanity, striving to transform workers into an extension of the machine, into a tool of production, and an instrument of war. At the same time, for cybernetics an imperialistic utopia is characteristic—replacing living, thinking man, fighting for his interests, by a machine, both in industry and in war. The instigators of a new world war use cybernetics in their dirty, practical affairs.[1][2] [1] "Cybernetics" in the Short Philosophical Dictionary, 1954 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Unio...

ge96 3y ago

The artwork/old anime is unmatched imo compared to today's work (less detail).

chiph 3y ago

The 1995 is very good and I'll watch it again every few years. I walked out of the 2017 Scarlett Johansson remake. And a big reason I did so was that it lacked the atmosphere of the earlier film, what is known as Ma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_(negative_space) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_(negative_space)

ranger207 3y ago

Yes. Watch it with subtitles on and Japanese audio; the subtitle translation flows much better than the English voiceover dub IMO