Ghost in the Shell 2 (HOLY MACKEREL!!!)
 

This movie knocked my socks off!

I did do a search and found an anticipatory thread. I hope it’s alright to start one for the reaction to the flick.

The opening (or “hook”) had my jaw slack and my heart pumping by the time Kawai’s music hit for the credits.

I’ve still got a tingling scalp when I think about certain scenes. You definitely get more out of it if you grokked the first one. I read reviews on the transpo' home and they panned the **** out of it. Thing was: I could tell that they’d never read the comic and they had watched the dubbed version.
The critic in particular (San Francisco Bay Area Guardian) cited The Matrix as a seminal cyber-punk movie. Huh?
Also, this guy basically stated that we were overrun with a glut of “machine is to human as human is to machine?” movies as a criticism, citing I Robot of all things.
There are a glut of all sorts of movies (revenge, romance found despite…(whatever), war, etc.) and that doesn’t mean that the subject matter being often used cancels out great structure and incredible art.

That rant out of the way: There was one part (I ain’t spoiling it) where there’s a one to two second realization gap from having seen what you’ve just seen that resonated deep in my head. It’s near the end and it will really only appeal to fans of the first movie, but I forgot where I was and shouted “Awesome!!!” when my mind coalesced what was happening. This was in a tiny theater that was filled with very courteous people. I became highly selfconscious.

The animation (while not seamless between cel and CGI) was spot on! The story will appeal to anyone who really got off on Gibson or Sterling (or Masamune Shirow: They use a subplot from the 1st comic) as the villainous method (plus instigation of plot).

Plus: Best animated dog …EVER! You can tell how much Oshii loves them. I started loving them! What a team of artists!

A googol stars. Highly recommended.

And, yeah. I’m no corporate schill. Some of you will recognize me. So this is actually my review and it is for real.

I seen the trailer tonight on Spike TV,Looks fantastic and cant wait for this to come out,the original is one of my favorite anime's.

I fully agree. Fuck the critics and their mental checklists of what an animated feature is 'supposed' to be. If this movie made them feel stupid or emotionally/philosophically challenged, GOOD! If they were bored, they probably weren't interested in what the film has to say in the first place, or were just expecting more action.

I can't wait for the DVD to experience the multitude of layers and information in the movie and experience new insights. Oshii is a master animator!

If you have the patience of a Saint, check out Oshii’s live action stuff.
IMHO …It rocks!

Talking Head was a little too autobiographical and the pace was…well, you decide.

Red Spectacles is good when you’re in the mood for discord. It's actually sweet.

But I HATED Avalon Kudama. And it was actually that film that made me worry about GITS2 because he seemed like his philosophy was going off the deep end. But I think the balance in GITS2 between action and ideas was very right.

So how about this review?

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0437/hoberman2.php

Mind you, this is J. Hoberman, uber-snob critic (and one of the best). And he said, "You can call me fanboy, but this is the best anime I've ever seen."

Dude, it was amazing. I need to go see this again tonight.

I was in the other camp on Avalon (maybe I like the deep end, hail Eris and all that) so I had no real worries. I went in thinking "this will rock." and came out thinking ".....!!!!!!!!". (I really feel like spoilers on this one shouldn't even tempt people to look, but there's so many cool things to talk about.)

For every Hoberman you will find one like this:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/moviesto...eviews/2799318

"Portentous and pretentious, Shell 2 crawls along like a machine on low batteries."

So that's why we have opinions. But like I said, this is not the kind of film everyone can love--it's just disappointing to see so many who don't get it at all.

I think the trailer looks great. School, however, is really keeping me busy---and I haven't even seen the original. I know some people hate this question, but is it necessary to see the first before the sequel?

I thought the first one was mediocre. Is this one better or worse? Is it a true sequel?

I don't hate that question.

I highly recommend seeing the original first. This one is another expansion of a story arc from the initial manga series. This arc was a lot less significant in the comic but what they added to it was incredible. Not to mention that it illustrated what a great seed of an idea the little segment in the comic was.

I’ve been steeping in the first one since they first let it play in state side theaters, so the effect on me of having seen the first one was probably more intense (because I’ve seen it about 50 times, in every altered and unaltered state of mind I’ve had since then) than it would be if you weren’t a raving lunatic of a fan in the first place.

But! Hellboy impressed a lot of my friends who had never even heard about it. This is probably the same situation. I still recommend renting the first one ASAP, because this is going to have a short theatrical run based on critics that are basically jocks with dictionaries.

I’ll be seeing Sky Captain once next week after work, but I will see this again at least four more times in the theater. (I might even tempt fate and risk getting a bad seat by hitting a weekend show.)

So yeah. Watch the first one first. :up:

I'll be seeing this in the next week or so. Thanks for the read.

I've got a lot of students who are going to go see it this weekend. It'll be interesting to get their reaction come Monday.

I don’t think this will necessarily be a spoiler:

I spent 4 formative years in 4 square Christianity. I know about the Mayan Fifth Sun and the connotations. I have serious issues with mortality. These comics and movies do not mirror my concerns about religion, but they do on a selfish scale. I’m afraid to be checked out. Not because of the pain or the threat of our buddy Lu, but because I don’t want to miss out on the future. I want to keep seeing, hearing, doing ,tasting. Etc….

The loss of it scares me. I’m addicted to being.

This movie didn’t focus in on the loss of life, but it did in a way. If you lose your identity, “you” are dead. I was moved to buzzing tears. I want to be me forever.

Sorry Buddha. :p

Pretentious²

excellent visuals, very dialogue heavy (some may be bored), i wasn't blown away by it but it was pretty good

Much grass, Kudama. I'll try to rent the original this weekend or sometime during the week. After that, I figure I have a week or two left to get to the theater.

Yeah, very dialogue heavy, I agree. I had a hard time keeping up and I watch subtitled anime/movies all the time. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was feeling dizzy before I went in and am still feeling dizzy now, but who knows. I'd like to see it again when it comes out on DVD, though. I was just confused by a lot of it this time...

I have to say, I for one any not a huge fan of the current trend of mixing CG with hand-drawn elements… it just doesn’t look right a lot of the time.

^^^ I am with you on that. HOWEVER, it works very, very well thematically with what Oshii's film is dealing with. The whole binary investigation of man/machine carries on to 2d/3d animation and other extrapolations.

Look at Masamune Shirow's artwork in Intron Depot one, two and three.
The disparate CGI fits like a glove when it comes to this guy's stuff.

I dunno. CGI can be very beautiful, but I'd take seeing an elaborate hand-drawn image over a computer generated one any day. There's just something awe-inspiring about hand-drawn that I think is lost with CGI.

Re: Ghost in the Shell 2 (HOLY MACKEREL!!!)
 

I was only kina thinking about seeing it before but now, I'm there!!!! :D
Thanks for the review!!

now I wasn't all that into the first movie, and my hopes that this sequel would be better, well,... not really. I'd have to agree with Pixyjunket statement that I felt this movie was pretentious. Add tedious and just plain baffling. This movie definately falls under visually stunning but ultimately lacking. If the scrpit was as detailed and coherent as the visuals it would have been a definate improvemet.

The best moment in the film for me wasn't even a scene that progressesd the story: the parade sequence. The seemless integration of CGI and 2D animation was truly stunning. In that single scene the animator's created depth, dimension and excitement that the rest of the film simply couldn't achieve.

I loved that part.

All right. These might be spoilers, but not the worst ones in the world:


I’m not out to insist that this is the coolest for everybody else because I liked it so much, but it’s nice to hear an opposing opinion that’s thought out. I’m not dissin’ anyone here, but I appreciate when people disagree with a fanatic intelligently. (I know I’m a fanatic :o )

The Red Spectacles is an amazing blend of Jean-Luc Godard and Seijun Suzuki.

Avalon was incredibly disappointing.

Where can I see this?

Interesting opinion--I just read the opposite, that TRS was crap and Avalon was great. I definitely disagree with that assessment about Avalon, so maybe I would agree with you about TRS...is there somewhere it's available as Region 0?

TRS is available as a R1 disc, I know that. I don't know about R0. The Red Spectacles had me transfixed the whole time it was on. Avalon started off well and went nowhere fast. A couple of interesting motifs, but not enough to make it worthwhile.

Just one very simple question: Was it better than the first?

In case my question is too vague, I'll elaborate. I love the comic book but thought the first film, though pretty to look at, was a weak adaptation of the comic book. No, I wasn't expecting a literal translation but I just felt the first movie was all eye candy (as delicious as it was) and little substance. Is this film just a bigger version of the first in terms of visuals or will it actually appeal to me with a deep (or at the very least, well thought out and expertly delivered) story?

I've only seen the first Ghost in the Shell once, and that was when it first came out on video. So my memory and impressions of that are hazy at best.

And I've kind of realized what I liked about the sequel. First, the visuals and the music account for much of my appreciation. But what made the film even better was the heavy philosophical content. And the fact that the action scenes are delicately inserted so as not to detract from the philosophizing earned much respect. When the film does resolve the conflict begun in the opening scene, I was less concerned with what actually happened than how it related to the film-world and its characters. What could have been played off as a grand and grotesque ending is diminished and treated as the natural progression, the blurring between machine and man that the film is constantly exploring.

And it doesn't end with an answer. It ends with what I thought was a wonderful and coyly played stinger.

Thanks, sundog. What you described in the sequel is what I felt was missing in the first so I'll definitely have to check it out then.

If that's what you like, I'd suggest rewatching the the first one. I would describe it in the same way. I didn't like it the first time I saw it either... Of course, the first time I saw Ghost in the Shell, it was dubbed, and it was my first time seeing it (obviously.) Now, after a few rewatches I could talk for hours about its subtext and character processes. If you compair it to the manga, then you'll be disapointed... the manga is a different animal, aside from the characters (who mostly all behave very differently anyways...) and some themes, it's not at all a like. It takes one theme, and expands on it. Innocence does the same thing too actually.

I also thought Avalon was disapointing at first, then on a second viewing, I totally fell for it. Weird how that is.

Innocence is excellent too, I thought. Though I still will need some time to wrap my head totally around it :)

Still need to see this.

I loved the first one. Is this better or worse?

I've seen it once. It's really hard to make such a judgement based on one viewing, if you see these movies in the same way I do.

Of course, some people just like Ghost in the Shell because "OMG!!! NAKED ANIME BABE SHOOITNG STUFF OMG!!! SHE BLEW Up His heADD!!!!"

I mean, RocShemp felt the first movie had no substance in it, whereas I felt it has tons.

So if you tell me what you liked about the first movie, maybe I can help you... otherwise, I can't :)

Ended up seeing it... thought it was really good.

I understand what you're saying, BizRodian, but "OMG!!! NAKED ANIME BABE SHOOITNG STUFF OMG!!! SHE BLEW Up His heADD!!!!" is not the reason I watched the first. I heard it was deep and philosophical but found what philosophy was there was rather shallow. And I watched it quite a few times hoping I missed something but all I got was visual spectacle and little more. Never felt like watching it again.

But, based on what sundog and others have had to say about the sequel, I'm really looking foward to giving it a shot.

is it necessary to see part one first?

GITS2 is sometimes called a disorienting film even by those who have seen the first one, so I would tend to say 'it would help.' :)

Just saw this tonight. Absolutely amazing film. It's pretty damn deep/dense, but not so much that I couldn't enjoy it on a first viewing. And now I know it'll only get better with repeat viewings. Can't wait for the DVD! :)