Well, I'm sold.

What the Japanese themselves are saying about the Scarlettgate:

http://kotaku.com/the-japanese-internet-reacts-to-scarlet-johansson-in-gh-1771544034

Not much, really.

Ghost in the Shell is a series with a funny thing for its protagonist. Every new interaction changes something about Motoko. The original manga had her being very feminine and sexy, bissexual and foul mouthed; the movie anime had her being very androginous, muscular, contemplative and not even being phisically unique; SAC had her a bit closer to the manga incarnation (though I find her uniform in this highly inapropriate, probably because I'm already old); Arise had her younger and shorter.

And now the fuss is all about her being western, when the series lore can easely fit her brain inside whatever body she wants.

Personally, I think Scarlett will do fine, particularly if they're going for a anime-movie like Motoko, in the sense of being more introspective and contemplative.

Though, I got to admit, Kusanagi's hair style doesn't fit her very well.

GitS is one of the few franchise where the anime is way better than the manga.

From the kotaku article posted above: “I can definitely say that the one thing they’re more true to than I thought they’d be is the hairstyle lol."

Different strokes for different folks. The Mamoru Oshii films are my least favorite iteration (although, I haven't seen Arise yet). They focused so heavily on the existential concept of the "man-machine interface". While that is definitely an aspect of GitS, there is much more to it than that. I also disliked the films for ignoring the majority of the franchise's characters...as well as turning the Fuchikoma into inanimate vehicles. I much prefer Stand Alone Complex followed closely by the original manga.

Honestly, my opinion is they should never have touched it and let it be an anime, but I guess that it is when money is to be made. I have no problem with her playing Kusanagi, there is even a resemblance, but I won't watch that movie anyway.

Shame that they just can't let something beautiful and good be and rather shit on it.

I quite enjoyed the original manga, the movie and SAC first season.

The manga was very fun, even though it lacked focus on a main plotline most of the time. The movie was good as well, I was impressed with how faithfull it was to the parts of the manga it adapted even though the tone is completely different. SAC was a great show, but it felt even more unfocused than the manga (despite having a better defined main plotline) and its final arc was a bit too confusing for my tastes.

All that said, I'm yet to read GitS 1.5 and 2 and yet to watch GitS2: Innocence, SAC 2nd GIG, SAC's movie and Arise; but I'll get there, eventually.

Sigh. I really wanted Ron Perlman as Batou.

From Wikipedia it looks like they're going to have The Laughing Man in there.
While the original movie was great, I (am probably one of the only people on Earth who) love GitS 2. It's a visual feast that holds up even now.

Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia is wrong. Per the official press release, Michael Pitt is listed as "Kuze" which is likely Hideo Kuze, the main adversary of GitS: SAC - 2nd GIG.

Mmneh. Lore sort of establishes that whatever the major looked like before she (or even if she always was a she, in spite of that she is convinced that was always the case - you could even interpret it as if the personality the major has is a construct created from, say, the female aspect of a different person altogether), she now prefers a custom-made shell deliberately made to look like a commonly distributed servant android, to not stand out too much. The one they use is of future Japanese origin, made for international distribution, hence the vaguely asian look with some softer angles.

Imo, the question should be why in the world would you want to make a movie out of this that isn't animated. It'd have to be either a movie that runs with some sort of setup like the Lawnmower Man, where cyberspace and the real world is always separated completely from the viewpoint of the audience. Or Dark City, maybe. That at some point what appears real is explained away as a ghost-hack or something. Or else you would have to put everything on greenscreen - and then you could just as well have animated the entire thing and been freer with the perspectives and the distortion between augmented and real reality. Instead of always fighting either lack of transitions in the limited spaces, or else the feeling that none of the actors really exist in the same universe as the rest of the film.

Just saying that a writer that was good enough to actually pull something like this off would have written their own story with new characters in a different setting altogether. Adventures of Kusanagi in the West - I'm sure it'll be a hit of some sort... but haven't we had enough of the tribute offshoots by now?

I mean, what's next? A Sandman feature film? :D Seriously, what a waste of time.

Huh, can't believe I didn't catch that. Serves me right for not reading it in closer detail. I personally blame the alcohol.

Se looks hot, as always!

On a related note, I realize now this is the kind of indiference people who hadn't read Hellblazer felt when Keanu Reaves was cast as "Constantine"... feels actually kind of nice! Ignorance really is a bliss, as the saying says!