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Ghost in the Shell bombs at the box office
- Thread starter Korey
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You think anyone knows this? Gits is niche as hell.
Can people not remember all the way back to a few years ago with the success of Edge of Tomorrow? Which, even though it had Cruise, was a critically well-received and well liked movie based off a manga.
So yes, a whitewashed movie based on a manga/anime can be successful if it's any goddamn good.
So yes, a whitewashed movie based on a manga/anime can be successful if it's any goddamn good.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
You might as well say books and comics aren't worth adapting either. If the story is interesting and you get a studio and people with confidents you can adapt anything.
More_Badass
Member
How is that white-washing? The show was called Marco Polo, and followed Marco Polo
Poor GRIMES
Banned
It's not the only reason why it bombed. I think it was certainly a factor though. Right when the casting was announced the whitewashing claims went viral, much like Gods of Egypt's accusations did.
lol, only 40k away from grossing less than the 9 year-old Speed Racer.
I'm gonna have to retract my previous statement, seems the online whitewashing controversy actually affected this movie's box office. However, there is something to be said about the fact that this movie and the other whitewashed pics mentioned in the OP were all critically panned.
Diprosalic
Banned
There's a zillion movies with white washing that were big successes.
We shouldn't pin the fact that white washing is bad on box office intakes.
cartographer
Member
Just let them move goal posts in peace.
It's not a stretch. American's don't care about anime anymore. That fad mostly died in the early 00's.
It was also a supporting role in a film that had other non-white actors with similar screen time (and Mordo was race-swapped in favour of getting yet another Academy Award nominated actor on that film). No one cared about the same sort of thing in The Martian either.
It's progress that audiences are now starting to reject things like Gods of Egypt. White actors playing Biblical figures used to be Hollywood bread and butter.
SuperStiltzkin
Member
It didn't bomb because of anime either.
A good anime adaptation can work. A good videogame adaptation can work. People just need to not make shit films.
TDLink
Member
I doubt it. If they have a wrong takeaway it will be more to stay away from the cyberpunk genre rather than any adaptations of anime/manga.
Great Wall: Budget $150m, box office $331m, it did okay.
Monster trucks is up there, though ($65m on a $125m budget), and I'd forgotten all about Live by Night. Ouch.
It's impossible to quantify, as experts have noted. But it probably did have some effect. Or maybe controversy itself turned people off of watching it.
But whitewashing was the biggest story that plagued this movie, so the idea is that studios are paying attention and at the very least will try to avoid similar controversy in the future.
therealist
Member
It didn't bomb because of whitewashing, if anything, it would have bombed harder if it was a cast of asians.
William Gibson would like to have a word with you...
It doesn't matter if people know this or not, it's fact. The Matrix steals wholesale several elements from GitS. A case could be made that this is also didn't help GitS's chances.
Just like how John Carter bombed after Avatar had "borrowed" a lot of shit from its souce material, A Princess of Mars. Too little too late for some of these flicks.
Funny enough i went through a huge anime phase rougly 13-14 years ago in college. I pretty much watched everything worth a damn under the sun during that time. While i heard the names Akira and Gits, nothing about it interested me.
I ifnally watched it a couple of months ago, and yep, there was a reason i didnt watch it a decade ago.
Why are people acting like this somehow matters? More successful adaptations have happened with wildly less influential source material.
Because everyone that went to go see that first Iron Man movie absolutely loves comics. I mean wow, you couldn't imagine a more popular pop-culture icon in the mid-2000's than Iron Man! The movie was only the next obvious step to meet that frothing demand! And Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark?! Box-office legend, RDJ?! Holy shit, after Weird Science, he is just an automatic draw!
And don't even get me started on Thor!
Haha no.
It's more ubiquitous than ever, however the love of the classic stuff is gone, it seems.
Aces&Eights
Member
So, white washed movie with white actress who was originally Asian with horrible twist explaining why bombed and their hopes are pinned on it doing well in China????
Ummm...
Ummm...
... Monster Trucks made 65 million?? How?
Didn't the studio basically just say 'well, this movie was a bust' before it was even released? Did they promote that shitstain at all?
StarCreator
Member
A film that was so successful it was renamed for the home video market because no one knew what the heck it was?
Razgriz-Specter
Member
Marco Polo got a dumb push to make him have a purpose but it had a point to it.
Marco was supposed to be more of a Western everyman's entry into this awe-inspiring world and even sold the Kahn as this larger than life dude.
Problem came from multiple women being into him and suddenly he becomes a strategist when he had no purpose.
Its also inspired by "historical" stories so that was nothing like this.
Choppasmith
Member
Sadly i think someone spoiled the twist here in that Rachael Dozeal thread the other day
I still want to see it for the visuals and the action looked like decent fun.
I like how you just shit out an opinion that's objectively wrong, fail to defend it, double down, and then just post something random like no one will notice.
She was secretly Asian all along or something? Her brain was just in a Caucasian body?
I still want to see it for the visuals and the action looked like decent fun.
I like how you just shit out an opinion that's objectively wrong, fail to defend it, double down, and then just post something random like no one will notice.
Thats not my point though. My point is it is not popular liek the poster i quoted. He said its near naruto, bleach, etc levels. Not even close.
More_Badass
Member
Pretty much. A video game or anime adaptation doesnt fail because of video games or anime. It fails when said movie is shit/bad/poorly made. Just like the good 20-30 years of comic book movies/adaptations until Superman came out
Angelus Errare
Banned
Edge of Tomorrow is based on an even more obscure manga that even less people in America knew or gave a shit about. GiTS bombed because they couldn't decide if they wanted to be faithful to the anime/manga or Americanize it. Instead they said fuck it and went halfsies doing neither justice and insulting everyone in the process.
cartographer
Member
That Monster Trucks number will never cease to be amazing. That movie deserves a book written about its conception and production. The little details here and there are amazing.
Reptars Revenge
Member
Yeah that movie. It did really well at the box office. I don't get your point.
Stairouais
Member
Aw yiss, because everybody want to hear a dubstep version of New York rush.
Live by Night is definitely leading the bomb of the year race if we are comparing budgets to WW gross. $65M budget. $22M worldwide gross.
Monster trucks was $125M budget vs a $65M gross.
Ghost in the Shell won't even rank by the end of the year. It's basically just another Assassins Creed.
Monster trucks was $125M budget vs a $65M gross.
Ghost in the Shell won't even rank by the end of the year. It's basically just another Assassins Creed.
More_Badass
Member
That worked because it did the Marvel thing. Strip away everything but the basic concept and story and then make its own thing. I'd barely call it an adaptation though.
Noisepurge
Member
Hollywood execs will just take "huh, guess scifi movies don't sell anymore" from this
Live by night was literally one of the worst movies I have ever seen and I do not have upscale taste at all 😂
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Asian actors need to be given the luxury.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=allyouneediskill.htm
Next time, do a 10 second search before posting. The movie, despite the fact that there was almost *no* marketing, made a lot of money. Last I heard there was a sequel in the works.
Who knew that a good movie could succeed?
NipplesAndToes23
Member
I'm not sure what to say.
The Elite
BOSS
A lot of people in the OT seem to like it. I still need to check it out myself. I honestly think the best GitS is Stand Alone Complex. Start their if you like anime. The 95 animated film is a mixed bag IMO.
People are rejecting historical/biblical epics. They aren't rejecting whitewashing.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
It'd be okay if Hollywood didn't adapt supehero comics ever again. Nothing in superhero comics is worth adapting if Watchmen is the best effort they can summon.
Anime is just animation. Animation isn't a genre. It's a medium. Anime encompasses just as many genres as animation does, which encompasses just as many genres as film does, which encompasses just as many genres as publishing.
Ghost in the Shell is sci-fi. Sci-fi specifically inspired in some part by Blade Runner.
There are various narratives people can use this failure as fuel for. The "don't bother with Anime anymore" narrative is probably the least useful.
GuitarAtomik
Member
It would help if their adaptations were a little more timely. Death Note is the most timely one I can think of. Even Dragonball Evolution didn't come out until DBZ was kind of out of it's initial US prime. We'll probably get Attack on Titan and Naruto adaptations 10 years from now.
Hari Seldon
Member
The show should have been called Kublai Khan. The entire idea that they were making a high budget show about fascinating Asian history, hired some great Asian actors, but they needed a white lead to sell it on Netflix. So they ruined the entire show by trying to hamfist some random White Dude into the story about Emperors and Princesses. I'm sure they didn't intend for it to be this way, but if you took out Marco Polo from Marco Polo the show would be 1000% better.
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