Spoiler: SO here's Scarlett Johansson as Motoko Kusanagi (protagonist of "Ghost in the Shell") Source
the race thing doesnt bother me what bothers me is that she seems horribly miscast "we need an actress who can pull off badass action star, who we got?" "well scarlet johansson is in those marvel movies and that one lucy flop. people love her" "great, call her up" i promise you thats how it happened not that it matters. anime to live action is always terrible anyway
Yeah, that very much is the reason why they casted her. Johanson is a name people recognize. And Ghost in the Shell, no matter how critically acclaimed it is, is still a risk for them to adapt; especially with the project being on hold for so long. They want to guarantee butts in the seat. Her name guarantees ticket sales. Of course, this doesn't always work. Edge of Tomorrow, with several big names, and loosely based of a Japanese property, bombed at the box office. But it's not because it was of the casting, it was because of the marketing.
To be fair, most anime characters don't even really look Asian in the first place. The only anime character I've seen that looks even remotely Asian is Haribara from Soredomo, and even she is a bit of a caricature.
The issues there include the fact that we're going to be looking at Scarlett Johansson, as she's getting called "Motoko Kusanagi", in a Japanese setting, surrounded by Japanese characters, a majority of which are actually played by Asian actors who if they aren't actually Japanese can pass off as Japanese. And that we have quite a few good Asian actresses for the role available. My personal choice being Rinko Kikuchi: she already looked quite a bit like Kusanagi in Pacific Rim. Spoiler I'm not against changing races of characters in every situation, but this just speaks to me that they don't want to put faith in the actual film and would rather have a big name actress be the main focus when she just does not fit into the context and there are better actresses who could use the exposure that Scarlett just does not need anymore. Also THEY ACTUALLY TRIED MAKING WHITE ACTORS ASIAN THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
Frankly I was more puzzled when I saw Juliette Binoche in the cast. Not because she' s white too, but because she' s female too. If memory serves the only female role in the original movie was the lead, and I can' t imagine Juliette was hired as an extra. So I guess they' re changing more than skin color on this one.
Yeah, on second thought I realized the puppet master was fairly androgynous. Can' t help thinking of it as a he. Not just because of the voice though, because of the ending as well.
You make a good point, but I don't think it's them thinking "WHITE IS RIGHT, MAKE EVERYTHING WHITE" so much as it's them thinking "If we're gonna put a lot of money into this, we need to make the maximum amount of money back, let's use a recognizable actress that will bring in that revenue," and SJ was the answer. Hollywood is getting less and less risky these days anyway. Do you know of any other Asian actresses that's on the same level of fame as SJ? Lucy Liu maybe? I'm genuinely not sure, I don't watch a lot of movies.
And I brought that up by saying they're putting faith not in the actual source material and the film itself but rather in Scarlett Johansson. Thing is, like I also said, there are already Asian actresses they could use who have some starpower and would fit the role 100X better than Scarlett would. There aren't any Asian actresses as famous as Scarlett, not anymore (Lucy isn't that popular these days), and we're not going to get any if we keep giving roles to Scarlett and other non-Asian actresses when there's no good reason not to. This film would be the prime time to NOT cast anyone but an Asian actress in the main role, but we got this situation instead.
