Dolls, dogs and gods ...
... Or random thoughts on Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Just saw this yesterday (May 15th). I watched the original for the first time last week. In this, I am fortunate because I don't have the bias of having had my young mind beaten into shape by the first one - and I had all the philosophical insights fresh in my mind.
Mamoru Oshii suffers from an extreme version of the Kojima curse - he is compelled to pummell you repeatedly with his influences - The Bible, Descartes, Milton, quote after quote after quote after quote, to the point of irrelevance. Half the conversations are back and forth quotefests. Of course, one can argue that since the characters have cybernetically enhanced brains, that translates to massive amounts of mnemonic storage and maybe even conversational expert systems. Still ...
Wow.
Visually, nothing you've ever seen comes close; be it live-action, be it videogame cutscene, I don't care; GITS2: Innocence looks a thousand times better. My god, the "aemaeth" VR-mindjob scene ... you know what? Just go and watch it. No writer could do it justice ...
The music. Ah yes, lovely. They brought back the guy that did the "Making of a Cyborg" track from the first one and, near as I can tell, had him do a sequel to his own song. Haunting ...
On the actual theme of Innocence in the movie, the first and most obvious sign is that there are no full-on titty shots (worthy of note since we are dealing with a gynoid apocalypse here) anywhere in the movie, unlike the first one where every second scene had a topless Motoko.
Then there's the repeated appearance of dogs; self-explanatory, I trust.
But of course, the real innocents are the killer dolls ...
Crab Claw fight scene - I never knew Batou was so nimble, always saw him as more of a tank, Zangief as opposed to Ryu, y'know?
Biomimetics: Why does a helicopter/VTOL need wings? That actually flap? Hmm *rubs chin* that leads me to an entirely different post ...
Why is the Yakuza bloodbath scene labeled "Togusa's Office" on the DVD? The whole thing was Batou's idea ...
Final thought: the first one was about cresting the man-machine merge, Innocence is about coming out the other side and finding your back to humanity (what's so nifty about humanity anyway?)
Mamoru Oshii suffers from an extreme version of the Kojima curse - he is compelled to pummell you repeatedly with his influences - The Bible, Descartes, Milton, quote after quote after quote after quote, to the point of irrelevance. Half the conversations are back and forth quotefests. Of course, one can argue that since the characters have cybernetically enhanced brains, that translates to massive amounts of mnemonic storage and maybe even conversational expert systems. Still ...
Wow.
Visually, nothing you've ever seen comes close; be it live-action, be it videogame cutscene, I don't care; GITS2: Innocence looks a thousand times better. My god, the "aemaeth" VR-mindjob scene ... you know what? Just go and watch it. No writer could do it justice ...
The music. Ah yes, lovely. They brought back the guy that did the "Making of a Cyborg" track from the first one and, near as I can tell, had him do a sequel to his own song. Haunting ...
On the actual theme of Innocence in the movie, the first and most obvious sign is that there are no full-on titty shots (worthy of note since we are dealing with a gynoid apocalypse here) anywhere in the movie, unlike the first one where every second scene had a topless Motoko.
Then there's the repeated appearance of dogs; self-explanatory, I trust.
But of course, the real innocents are the killer dolls ...
Crab Claw fight scene - I never knew Batou was so nimble, always saw him as more of a tank, Zangief as opposed to Ryu, y'know?
Biomimetics: Why does a helicopter/VTOL need wings? That actually flap? Hmm *rubs chin* that leads me to an entirely different post ...
Why is the Yakuza bloodbath scene labeled "Togusa's Office" on the DVD? The whole thing was Batou's idea ...
Final thought: the first one was about cresting the man-machine merge, Innocence is about coming out the other side and finding your back to humanity (what's so nifty about humanity anyway?)
posted by razorsmile at 5/18/2005 09:31:00 AM
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