Ghost in the Shell 2017: Lean & Mean Edition

To be clear I have not yet delved into the gits franchise or watched the original live action film. In fact, I have only seen the animated film that started it all. I liked the themes of the animated film, and it's imagination for what it saw in our potential future.

When it comes to live adaptations, I am not one of those that likes them only and only if they are extremely resembling their original materials. I am more than happy if they are crisp, and have interesting things to say. Another thing I dislike is when they are westernized, especially if being adapted from eastern media. A good example of this is the death note adaptation in 2018. In westernizing media, it is made generic, and in my opinion loses what makes it unique.

Now that that is out of the way, when I saw the beginning of this film with the intro and all, I was like "Holy shit!!!" I found myself enjoying the themes portrayed, and the questions posed by the movie. I also, loved how to the point and concise your edit was. It was streamlined. There were some cuts that were noticeable, but they didn't break my flow of the film to a halt. I really do believe that based on the noticeable cuts, you were able to strengthen the narrative focus of this movie. And props to you for that.

I can't even wrap my head around how this film was made. It is so packed with visual activity. I had dismissed it originally because of the reviews, but this edit made me interested in checking it out. Thank you so much for your time and effort into making this. I loved this movie/edit. There are very few fan edits on here that capture that perfect narrative flow, and in my opinion those are the best ones. I don't know about everyone else, but yours is one of them in my books.

This is great! I actually liked the original movie a bit, so it's nice to have a cut down version minus the junk. There were a couple of places I thought could be smoothed out, but I really enjoyed everything.

It needs subtitles, and I'm hoping I can edit the original SRT to match this without too much hassle. If so this will become my go-to version to watch. Good job, FairFriend! Thank you for your hard work!

It's been a long time since I've seen the theatrical cut. I was not a fan at all, but with some time now passed, I was curious how this edit might come across since the aims seem to fit with what I'd want out of the film.

Quality is good. I saw mention of compression artefacts in dark areas. The overall edit seemed a bit dark to me, but maybe that's the look of the film. I didn't see any actual blockiness on my end, personally, even though it can look a bit soft at times.

I'm sure there were many cuts throughout and the edit largely flies by with transitions unnoticed. I did pick up on a handful of moments though, some worse than others:

- 12:16 - sounds like a subtle dip in audio from crossfade
- 13:44 - audio and visual cut is rushed
- 16:58 - music suddenly fades in and the dialogue is out of sync with the major's lips
- 39:25 - this transition doesn't work at all IMO. It's very odd to have the audio fade out and have dialoguee start part-way through an action sequence
- 1:21:08 - rushed audio fade
- end credit music is a lot louder than the rest of the film mix

The only narrative issue I picked up on is at 1:09:30 - Batou is about to be attacked, but when we cut back he's suddenly driving. Feels like an odd jump. Otherwise, pacing feels fine and I did not miss any cut subplots.

I would say I actually enjoyed the film less this time around. I'm sure this has little to do with the edit, because I know that some of what bothered me before has been removed. I think it's just certain aspects hammering home for me on a rewatch. The edit itself is largely well put together and I would say it is a definite improvement over the original - there are things I remember annoying me before which are mercifully absent - but for me, it only turns a bad film into a mediocre one. The goals were to bring this more in line with the spirit of the 1995 anime but I think more could have been done to achieve this. The opening was a good choice and numerous changes to dialogue have been made to help, but there still remain a lot of forced moments. Equally, by its nature, the narrative of the theatrical cut is watered down and derivative, and I'm not sure that's something that can be fixed. The "it's what you do that defines you" is also such a trite and Hollywood theme that is hardly needed, let alone to be repeated explicitly more than once in the film (which is kept in this edit). It's kind of astounding how so much can be removed in this version and yet the film still comes across as over-explained and simplistic, especially compared with the more philosophical and meditative nature of the original.

The theatrical cut feels like such an odd product to me, deriving its visuals and story from different anime incarnations of GITS (and Innocence) as well as Blade Runner (most likely inspiration for the original GITS as well). There are a handful of aesthetically pleasing moments, but everything has the clumsy feel of a youtube fan film with a decent budget. The way people walk, the way people talk, the way the action is executed. It just falls very flat. I do think there is more room for improvement in "lean and mean" - more dialogue that can be removed, and further tweaks to how some of the action is edited, but at the end of the day, I don't think the original film can be "fixed". Or at least, you can't change its essential nature. It feigns substance, drawing from other more significant films but watering down their themes, and bringing nothing new to the table.

Do I recommend this? If you liked the original in spite of some flaws, yes, I absolutely do. You will likely find this an improvement (and clearly a lot of people have enjoyed it a lot more than me). If, like me, you were sorely unimpressed by the theatrical cut, I would guess this edit won't change your mind too sharply.