Ghost in the Shell VS. Innocence

Discussions about the first film (Ghost in the Shell) and the second (Innocence)

Moderator: sonic

Which do you prefer?

Ghost in the Shell
19
58%
Ghost in the Shell: Innocence
14
42%
 
Total votes: 33

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Lightice
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Post by Lightice »

While I find the animation of Innocence greatly superior to the original in beauty, it's story and philosophy can't compete with the Ghost in the Shell. The only really noticeable high point in the philosophical background of Innocence was Kim's monologue. Still, when I want just to watch some amazing views, I watch it, rather than the original.
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davidtobin100
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Post by davidtobin100 »

Charachter is what drives a movie in my opinion. Between the start of the first movie and the end of Innocence Batou has made huge leaps as a charachter, much more than the Major whose physicality rather than personality has moved on. That's why Innocence will get my vote - I truly believe it is one of those rare moments where a sequel has surpassed the original.
Míxtil
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Post by Míxtil »

Jeni Nielsen wrote:I like the themes of the second movie better. I'm also a Batou fangirl, so that's another reason I like Innocence better. Also, and this is my opinion, I thought that at a lot of points the original was very ugly. Motoko is not a pretty character. I thought that Innocence, in terms of pure visual style, was a lot better than the original Ghost in the Shell. Again this is just my opinion.
Yeah, the first film was just ugly in some places.
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Spica
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Post by Spica »

Assertions mean nothing without examples. What parts of the original movie were "ugly."

Also, I thought that the CG in Innocence stood out like a sore thumb at some points. An example would be the angel sculpture in the entry way of the hacker's home.
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swdarin
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Post by swdarin »

I want a both option.
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Jeni Nielsen
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Post by Jeni Nielsen »

Spica wrote:Assertions mean nothing without examples. What parts of the original movie were "ugly."

Also, I thought that the CG in Innocence stood out like a sore thumb at some points. An example would be the angel sculpture in the entry way of the hacker's home.
Spica it's my opinion. If you want I can go nab you some screenshots, but I still feel I'm allowed to say what I think.

One scene I thought was particularly ugly to me was when she's sitting on the boat with Batou. Granted I can't really back that up since it's still my opinion, but hey you asked.
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Black Mamba
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Post by Black Mamba »

What was "ugly" about that scene? The tantilizing dialog, the captivating visuals? Something can be old and still be beautiful.

I know you are entitled to your opinion but, like you encourage others to do here at the forums, you should give reasons at why you think so.
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shadowferret
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Post by shadowferret »

I sort of liked Innocence better. The visuals, and the fact that you could actually see every single movement, like, the muscles and little details, amazed me. The story, since Batou is much more emotional than Motoko, also helped to make it better. And, the original was kind of too fast for me.

Although, since I AM a Togusa fan, I have to say his increased role also did it for me.
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Jeni Nielsen
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Post by Jeni Nielsen »

Black Mamba wrote:What was "ugly" about that scene? The tantilizing dialog, the captivating visuals? Something can be old and still be beautiful.

I know you are entitled to your opinion but, like you encourage others to do here at the forums, you should give reasons at why you think so.
Ever heard the expression that one man's junk is another man's treasure? To me it's the same with aesthetics. You may think what I think is ugly is really beautiful.
I think we'd end up agreeing to disagree if this conversation went on.

And this isn't me being defensive either. I could describe in detail what I think doesn't look pretty about the scene, but that would involve me going into a description of my own personal aesthetics and wouldn't really serve any point since you could still disagree with me.

edit to also be honest I don't own a copy of the movie so it would be hard to go point by point through what I like and don't like.

I don't think that Ghost in the Shell is a bad movie, but I don't think it's pretty. And I find the visuals in Innocence to be more pleasing to me. I think the colors and the way Motoko is drawn in the first movie are not visually pleasing to me. But that said, I don't think the movie had to be pretty to get its point across.
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Black Mamba
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Post by Black Mamba »

I understand Jeni, overall I also beilve Innocence is more beautiful and eye pleasing than the first movie. However I wouldn't say that its ugly IMO.
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Spica
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Post by Spica »

One thing that bugs me about innocnece is that it looks to much like Blood: The Last Vampire. With the exception of the parade scene (the only part of the movie that I found particularly visually pleasing), I though the colors were too washed out. I also hated how the gynoids looked. I thought they were hideous. Is it just me or were the robots in the original movie more advanced.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
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Míxtil
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Post by Míxtil »

I liked the way it was all watercolours.
AlphonseVanWorden
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Post by AlphonseVanWorden »

I also hated how the gynoids looked. I thought they were hideous. Is it just me or were the robots in the original movie more advanced.
For what it's worth, the gynoids were supposed to look odd. The design was inspired by the photography of German-born Surrealist Hans Bellmer.

Given that Haraway describes the Hadaly-model gynoids as "pets" and "sexaroids," I think the consumer base would be agalmatophiliacs with a pronounced robot fixation or fetish... The customers would hardly be normal in their tastes. They'd be searching for something that resembled a human being and had "organs unnecessary in service robots" but still looked mechanical. ("Nothing to brag about to your neighbors, but hardly illegal.")

In an interview with The Village Voice's J. Hoberman, Oshii mentioned the following:
Translator: Mr. Oshii and his crew visited toy factories in Germany and Italy to look at the dark side of doll manufacturing. And they went to New York for the Hans Bellmer show [at the International Center for Photography]. The very first scene [where the gynoid self-destructs] is based on New York's Chinatown.
http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0422,h ... 41,20.html

In a Sci Fi Wire article, Oshii puts this more directly:
"I was convinced about the outcome of this film when I visited a museum in New York, the International Center of Photography," Oshii said in an interview. "They exhibit the dolls made by Hans Bellmer, and those are the dolls depicted in the movie. Those dolls were made by [Bellmer] about 50 years ago, and [they] are famous for the balls they have for [arm and leg] joints. I based the idea of the gynoids [pleasure robots] on them."
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-film ... 12.00.film

I think the look of the gynoids relates directly to the "imprinting" done by Locus Solus. In fact, Batou finds the holographic image of the little girl in a copy of Hans Bellmer's book La Poupée/ Die Puppe, The Doll...and children can be said to be "inside" the gynoids.

Regarding Bellmer, art historian Sue Taylor notes:
The Surrealist fascination with automata, especially the uncanny dread produced by their dubious animate/inanimate status, prepared the way for the enthusiastic reception in France of Bellmer's doll. His stated preoccupation with little girls as subjects for his art, moreover, coincided with the Surrealist idealization of the femme-enfant, a muse whose association with dual realms of alterity, femininity and childhood, inspired male artists in their self-styled revolt against the forces of the rational... Bellmer's doll, the first sculptural construction of an erstwhile graphic designer, developed out of a series of three now legendary events in his personal life: the reappearance in his family of a beautiful teenage cousin, Ursula Naguschewski, who moved to Berlin from Kassel in 1932; his attendance at a performance of Jacques Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, in which the protagonist falls tragically in love with the lifelike automaton Olympia; and a shipment from his mother of a box of old toys which had belonged to him as a boy. Overwhelmed with nostalgia and impossible longing, Bellmer acquired from these incidents a need, in his words, "to construct an artificial girl with anatomical possibilities...capable of re-creating the heights of passion even to inventing new desires."
Therese Lichtenstein, Guest Curator for the International Center of Photography's Hans Bellmer exhibit, states:
Although Bellmer is generally classified as a Surrealist, he actually initiated his doll project with a specific political purpose: to oppose the fascism of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party in Germany in the 1930s. After the rise to power of the Nazi Party in 1933, Bellmer, an established painter and graphic designer, declared that he would make no work that would support the German state. The unconventional or "degenerate" poses of his dolls were directed specifically at the cult of the perfect body then prominent in Germany...Bellmer's work was also an attempt to destabilize representations of gender being widely circulated in contemporary mass culture.
I think that the gynoids' inhuman appearance is part of the appeal for Locus Solus customers.

[EDIT: In the film, the gynoids remind us of Bellmer's dolls, of Olympia in Hoffmann's "The Sandman" and in Offenbach's opera, of Hadaly in Villiers' L'Eve Future, and of Asimov's robots. They also suggest the philosophical problems raised by Descartes and La Mettrie and embodied in "moving dolls" such as the 18th Century creations of Swiss watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz. (L'Eve Future was, in part, Villiers' belated response to/satire upon La Mettrie's materialism; the 1886 Symbolist novel specifically addresses 19th Century materialist attitudes foreshadowed by the 18th Century philosopher's works. Bellmer's art- and Surrealism in general- can be seen as a similarly motivated reaction to a mechanized world; several literary critics and art historians have commented upon resemblances between French Symbolism and the Surrealist movement in style, attitude, and subject matter.)]

(WARNING: The following link leads to an Art Institute of Chicago essay on the works of Hans Bellmer. It includes images from Bellmer's La Poupée, the cover of which is shown in the film. I offer the link simply to provide interested readers with an academic resource on, and examples of, this well-known Surrealist's work, and to demonstrate that the gynoids' look in Innocence implies the sort of perversions to which Locus Solus, with its Bellmer-like sex dolls and its child-victims, panders. The article and accompanying Bellmer artwork may offend some folks. [If you find Dali's weirder pieces offensive, you'll want to steer clear of Bellmer.] The pictures are not pornographic, but they are upsetting. Bellmer's work is some creepy stuff. Just remember, these are dolls... made to resemble humans, but they're not quite human-looking. And when thinking of Bellmer's art in relation to the film, remember that "la poupée" means both "the doll" and "the puppet"...)

http://www.artic.edu/reynolds/essays/taylor.php

Some images from the International Center of Photography's Bellmer exhibit- the exhibit visited by Oshii and the Production IG staff- can be sampled at the Center's website:

http://museum.icp.org/museum/exhibition ... ntro1.html
Last edited by AlphonseVanWorden on Thu Mar 23, 2006 12:46 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o'er our heads, like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison. - Bosola, in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi
Míxtil
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Post by Míxtil »

Wow, i'd never know anbout that influence.

No wonder they are so scary. I scared my engish class today by showing them the opening of innocence.
AlphonseVanWorden
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Post by AlphonseVanWorden »

Míxtil wrote:Wow, i'd never know anbout that influence.

No wonder they are so scary. I scared my engish class today by showing them the opening of innocence.
Those dolls are scary, aren't they? But sad, too.

Even before Innocence, I sometimes imagined Bellmer's dolls- or something inside of them- saying, "Help me. Help me."

The funny (or frightening?) thing is, I'd been discussing Bellmer with someone dear to me a few days prior to my seeing Innocence. (We'd been talking about creepy-looking dolls, and I'd said, "You should check out some of Hans Bellmer's work. His stuff will give you nightmares.")

Then I watched the movie, and I read the quotation from L'Eve Future and saw the gynoid and thought, "Oh, no. This can't be pleasant." :shock:

When the film was over, I called the person with whom I'd had that conversation: "You really have to see this movie..."

W/r/t the poll, I voted for Innocence. I've loved the GitS franchise for a long time- I bought the first film when it came out on videotape, and I still have that old VHS copy, as well as the DVD- but Innocence struck several of my nerves at once, and yanked them, and the sensation lingered.

I still love the first film, though.
Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o'er our heads, like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison. - Bosola, in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi
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