Why am I not against the casting?
For one, the nature of the character Major Motoko Kusanagi is that she inhibits robotic bodies, the “Shell” in the title. Whatever her true physical flesh and blood body, it never appears in either the manga or the anime. The original anime ends with her robotic body destroyed and she inhabits the body of a child robot at the end. By the time Ghost in the Shell: Innocence (the animated sequel) rolled around, she IS a ghost in the machine, momentarily inhibiting another robotic body near the end of the movie before disappearing into the ‘net again.
Simply by going with that, and not knowing what the plan is where the live action movie is concerned, why can’t the ’shell’ look like Scarlett Johansson? Also, the setting of the original story is in a near future, so why can’t racial or ethnic diversity be accepted?
Oh, right, there was that Aloha debacle where Emma Stone’s character was supposed to be Chinese. That’s despite logical reasoning behind her character’s ethnicity (1/4 Chinese, 1/4 Hawaiian, 1/2 Scandinavian, giving her that blonde look) within the world of that movie. Heck, she could have been adopted into a Chinese family as a baby! It would have been entirely plausible.
Incidentally, no one seems to be making a fuss that they’ve cast Danish actor Pilou Asbæk as Batou. Or is that a little more acceptable because he’s less well-known? This isn’t quite like when several Chinese actresses were cast as the leads in Memoirs of a Geisha.
As for Ghost in The Shell as a property. Let’s say you grab a hundred people around the world of various ages and a mix of sexes. Present that property and it’s likely generous to say 20 out of that hundred would know that property. They may be interested in checking out a live action adaptation of that property. Using that same hundred and present them with a futuristic sci-fi action movie starring Scarlett Johansson, and it’s safe to estimate up to 80 people would be interested in checking it out. Naturally, the studio will go for the bigger returns, perhaps alienate that small percentage while taking some lumps of protest.
I’m not alone in this as there are others of the same opinion.
Latecomers
ADD: In some recent cases, Tilda Swinton got called out for playing “The Ancient One” in the upcoming Doctor Strange. In the comics, The Ancient One was a fairly ancient Asian looking person, so this has raised the ire of some people. However, somehow, the casting of Laurence Fishburne as Perry White in Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, along with Mehcad Brooks as James Olsen in the Supergirl TV series, both characters being white in the comics for over 50 years, gets praised for colourblind casting. On the other end of the spectrum (no pun intended), Zoe Saldana got slammed for taking on the role of Nina Simone because they needed to darken her skin for the role.
Some people took issue with the casting of coloured actress Noma Dumezweni as Hermione Granger in the stage production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. JK Rowling praised the casting by saying that she never once wrote that Hermoine had to be a white person. Often, it’s down to our personal sensibilities how we see these characters. As John Oliver put it, how is this still a thing?
Oh yeah, just “Forget it, Jake. It’s Hollywood.”
