Live-action Ghost In The Shell film. GITS:Alive. Directed by Project 2501 and Joseph Kahn. Effects by BLRVFX. Producer: Adi Shankar.

Fan reactions ranged from dismay to outrage as news broke that Hollywood would adapt the 1995 cyberpunk anime classic Ghost in the Shell.

A natural next thought arose in this nascent age of crowdfunding and Internet-based collaboration:

What if we could take matters into our own hands and create something better than anything Hollywood would ever dare to produce?

Early discussions about the “GITS: Alive” idea often centered around the cost of producing a live-action Ghost in the Shell film. The film clearly requires a strong element of special-effects expertise, as seen in the anime’s approach to technology in the year 2029.

All dreams in cinematic form eventually awaken to the reality of one word: money.

The effort could be fully funded from the start. That would be the ideal scenario.

If not, there are other possibilities.

What if “GITS: Alive” begins life in the short-film format?

Here are a few options:

1. It could begin as pitches often do: with an idea, images and/or storyboards and a trailer. Shoot a dynamic and exciting few minutes’ worth to get fans and potential investors salivating to see the rest.

2. GITS:Alive could have the “best” scenes filmed and released first in order to woo and awe the viewer into wanting more. Release each subsequent scene as a mini-feature that builds momentum for the next. A faithful adaptation needn’t worry about “spoilers”, since the fans have seen the original anyway. The crucial attributes are craftsmanship, smart-yet-faithful adaptation of source material, and believably acted characterization.

Each mini-feature would be the promotional vehicle for the ones to come, with a focus on tight budgeting in order to reach the ultimate goal of funding a completed feature-length film. The sooner that objective is reached, the sooner the film’s remaining scenes can be shot, edited and compiled into a finished product. Most films are lensed out of order regardless, so this way of building scenes could work equally well.

Another way to film in the “mini-feature” style would be to construct each part as its own small “episode” with beginning, middle and end (“to be continued…”). For the final work, editing and any necessary “in-between” filming can smooth the contiguous narrative arcs to manifest a single cohesive storyline.

3. GITS:Alive could be condensed into a single short-film version. The already-written full-length script could be refined into a five, ten, or even fifteen-minute piece. It would hint at what could be possible with a proper budget and creative latitude required for a true telling of the GITS story. Once further funding is procured, the production commences with either a series of short films (see option 2 above), or full-on from start to finish using the feature-length script.

—

Here are a few early nominations for a potential group of independent creators in the visual/film worlds who could bring a Ghost in the Shell to life.

Visual Design/Interface Design: Project 2501

Why? See Project 2501.

Project 2501. Homage to Ghost in the Shell.

Co-Director: Ash Thorp

Why? Thorp is the visionary behind Project 2501. His aesthetic sensibility captures the tone, beauty and style of the anime with the auteur’s impeccable attention to detail. Given that Project 2501 was a global collaboration, Thorp has also shown leadership skills and the ability to complete a complex visual project.

Co-Director: Joseph Kahn

Why? See Power Rangers bootleg.

Kahn’s willingness to go as far as necessary down the R-Rated road is essential to a Ghost in the Shell film. If you’ve seen the anime, you know that the action is not the kind that can be toned down to the equivalent of PG-13. The Power Rangers Bootleg short film shows that a decent story needn’t sacrifice the necessary violence that was a masterfully conceived aspect of Ghost in the Shell.

Director of Photography/Technical Director: BLR VFX

Why? See Keloid.

Watch the film. Now remember Ghost in the Shell. The style and subject matter are so similar, they could almost take place in the same fictional universe.

Caveat: BLR VFX may no longer exist. It’s likely that the original BLR members have heard of GITS — and would want to join the team for a live-action film.

Producer: Adi Shankar.

Why? Mainly because of Shankar’s awesomely weird tendency to dress like Brandon Lee from the Crow — while offering a solid introduction into the world of indie film financing. Shankar also produced the Power Rangers bootleg.

—

Cast:

This is the next question.

A few names have already been mentioned.

More ideas coming soon.

I Can Feel It In My Ghost: Toward an independent live-action adaptation of seminal cyberpunk anime Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell:Alive. @Ashthorp's Project 2501 designs a sleek, hauntingly resonant feature-length homage to the 1995 cyberpunk classic.

— Alt_SciFi (@alt_scifi) February 8, 2015

How can this tweet become future-present reality? How can we make real a “sleek, hauntingly resonant feature-length homage” to genre-defining Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell?

Don’t Hold Your Breath… Waiting For Hollywood

First: don’t hold your breath waiting for Hollywood. From Dragonball to Akira, the major movie studios are experts in mangling manga and anime.

A petition exists with over 27,000 signatures, but that won’t get a better movie made.

Instead, one goal may be to involve members of the Asian film community who are experienced with American independent film. Examples: Russell Wong, Kelly Hu, Dustin Nguyen and even popular younger actors like Sung Kang. See the 2006 indie film “Undoing” to enjoy Wong, Hu and Kang working together, under the direction of Chris Chan Lee. Ever since his role coolly upstaging Johnny Depp as a heartthrob undercover detective on the show 21 Jumpstreet, Dustin Nguyen has also learned hard, valuable lessons in navigating the landscape as an Asian-American actor.

Perhaps we could even attain the blessings of luminaries in the Asian film and social activism communities such as George Takei, the original Sulu from Star Trek. Keep reading below in the “Questions” section for more directly from Mr. Takei himself.

Finding The Funds: Chinafication of Ghost in the Shell?

In a conversation about how to quickly get moving on this project, someone mentioned appeasing a Chinese sensibility in order to secure funds.

Ever since Iron Man 3 and the innumerable recent Transformers films, Hollywood has built trend of “Chinafying” summer blockbusters for the sake of following the money. The Chinafication of Hollywood is an unfortunate acquiescence, not to Chinese culture, but to the dominance of greed in light of the mainland government’s inexcusable human rights abuses against artist-activists such as Ai Wei Wei.

A fascinating point to note, however, is to see the city in which Ghost in the Shell was visually set. The “city of the future” that plays such an integral role in embodying the spirit of the film is no other than Hong Kong. Considering Hong Kong’s historical and current fight against mainland government control, this setting for GITS may be even more spot-on than a “pure” Japanese location. As China grows in economic power and global influence, much of Asia (perhaps even including Japan) has a stake in the outcome of Hong Kong’s struggle to maintain autonomy while situated in the jaws of the voracious red giant.

This live-action Hong Kong walkthrough reveals its eery shot-for-shot relationship with the landmarks, objects, locations, and visual sensibilities of Ghost in the Shell:

In a sense, Ghost in the Shell was not a stylistic blend of China and Japan. It was an ingenious combination of Hong Kong and Japan. As long as Hong Kong retains its cultural identity, it will never be absorbed into China. Likewise, if Ghost in the Shell is to retain its identity, it must similarly defy Hollywood’s destructive magnetism (although the stakes are not quite so high for a live-action anime… or are they?).

—

Questions and Thoughts

Q: “Motoko Kusanagi is a cyborg. She could take any form. She could be an old woman in a young mecha-body, or be played by a young woman inhabiting an aged cyborg. Why not make her a pretty young American like Ms. Johannsen?”

Why not, you ask? Because there are plenty of alternatives. It would be great to cast a GITS film with unexpected actors — after there exists at least one adaptation that’s faithful to the original.

Q: “But the characters in the anime look white to me. Why does it matter to cast Asian actors?”

Japanese actress Kikuchi Rinko.

For Hollywood to cast a white American woman when there is a multitude of capable Asian actors (American and otherwise) is yet another example of the pervasive phenomenon known as whitewashing in the U.S. film industry.

One major purpose of an independent Ghost in the Shell film is to enable Asian actors to play undeniably Asian roles. Although African-Americans have managed at least to play (largely stereotypical) roles involving black characters, Asian people are still largely ignored. One example, oddly enough, came from the Wachowski siblings’ Cloud Atlas, in which the city of Neo Seoul (South Korea) was populated almost entirely by everyone but Asian people. Worse, the non-Asians wore insultingly silly-looking prosthetics that gave the actors an appearance of being… non-Asian actors wearing insultingly silly-looking prosthetics.

It’s long past the moment for films to start casting real Asian people in Asian roles. If a film would go to the extent of making its characters look “sort of” Asian, they might as well use Asian actors — they’re not fooling anyone with Vaudevillian eye prosthetics and stilted “trying to be Asian-ish” performances, anyway.

Specifically for Ghost in Shell, the characters’ ethnicity matters because the story is Japanese, takes place in Japan (a fictional Hong Kong-like Japanese city), is designed within the context of Japanese culture and yes, the characters are Japanese people. The round-eyed anime style does nothing to change the fact that this is a modern Japanese story. A faithful live-action adaptation would be immersed in the cultural nuances that made the original film unique.

There’s already an American Ghost in the Shell. Its name is The Matrix, and it’s nothing like Ghost in the Shell.

The Wachowskis may have pitched the first Matrix film to producer Joel Silver as a “live-action Ghost in the Shell”:

Even though lead actor Keanu Reeves’ grandmother is Chinese Hawaiian, the film itself is American (some might even say, Chicagoan).

Enter Project 2501

At the same time, it’s a pleasure to note that the lead actor/model in Project 2501’s homage, Christine Adams, is in fact hapa — of both Japanese and American ancestry. Mixed-ethnicity actors are an indication of the future of our world.

More than the mythology of race (there is only one human race, and we all belong to it), culture does matter. A Japanese story cannot simply be re-scripted as an American one without becoming a different story. The universal themes will still be there; you don’t need to be Asian to appreciate the impact of Ghost in the Shell and enjoy the original anime. It might even be interesting to see a Japanese version of the Matrix. In any case, a live-action Ghost in the Shell would inevitably be a Japanese story first and foremost, as Japanese culture was the foundation for both the manga and the 1995 anime.

It is, of course, ironic that the closest we have (2015) to a live-action GITS is Project 2501, a global collaboration spearheaded by American visual designer Ash Thorp. This note would be incomplete without a quote from Kusanagi Motoko herself: “the Net is vast and infinite”. Such an Internet-connected, worldwide collab of gifted and dedicated artists may hold the key to unleashing the true spirit of Ghost in the Shell. And Ash Thorp has shown the vision, willingness and ability to lead that collaboration. Film is a different animal, but the ability to marshal a group of individually-minded creatives is a skill that not everyone can claim to possess.

Q: “Movies are all about the money. That’s why Hollywood chose Scarlett Johanssen. You can’t blame Hollywood for wanting to make a profit.”

I’ll invite George Takei to tackle this one.

[ Transcript ]

Q: “Japanese people wouldn’t want a live-action Ghost in the Shell. Look at the lack of action movies in Japanese cinema, for example.”

For counterexamples, see the manga-turned-film series Gantz and Gantz: Perfect Answer. These films not only showcase brilliant special effects, they are also identifiably Japanese through the actors’ choices in portraying their roles. Hollywood could not have done a better job unless they re-wrote the story to take place in the United States. If they were to do so (as Mr. Takei noted in the video above) they might as well make a completely different movie. The same is true of Ghost in the Shell.

If we want the world to see a faithful, high-quality live-action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell, there is no point in waiting for Hollywood. We’ll have to assemble a team of skilled professionals (I nominate Ash Thorp’s Project 2501 as the nucleus of that team), and create a production that is true to the vision of the original anime.

The passion is real. The vision exists. The anime is our blueprint. We even have a reference for the visual design of the film (see Project 2501). And the time is now.