'Ghost In The Shell' Movie Cast Photos Leak, New Silly Complaints Discovered

Most of the primary cast members from the live-action Ghost in the Shell movie appear in new leaked photos.

Cast photos include “Beat” Takeshi Kitano as Chief of the police organization Public Security Section 9, Daisuke Aramaki. He’s one of the few non-cyborg humans in Ghost in the Shell and the gruff police chief who pushes Batou (Pilou Asbæk) and Major Motoko Kusanagi (Scarlett Johansson) in their hunt for the mysterious hacker known as the “Puppet Master.” The photo spread includes other officers in Section 9, including Chin Han as Togusa, Lasarus Ratuere as Ishikawa, Boma (Tawando Manyimo) and Saito (Yutaka Izumihara).

Overall the new Ghost in the Shell cast photos reveal a very different take on the material. Many of the characters have abandoned their besuited and future-slick looks from the original movie and TV series (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) for something a little more grungy. It’s definitely still very cyberpunk, but of a different sort.

After some controversy over the casting of Scarlett Johansson to play an originally Asian character, you might have been tempted to believe that the cast complaints were largely past us. Oh no. You will never escape. In the Kotaku comments, where the photos were first published on an English-language site, people are inventing all sorts of new ways to be upset.

The most prominent complaint — that the goal of casting is to emulate the original Ghost in the Shell look as closely as possible — seems to miss the point of the concept of adaptation entirely. What could it possibly matter to the final quality of the movie that Han’s Togusa looks older than his cartoon equivalent?

There are also some horrible twists on the typical racial complaints. For example, one commenter is upset the cast doesn’t do more whitewashing. Gross, guys.

But we’ve come to expect this variety of interminable nitpicking. And debating the merits of various racial recastings has become a despicable but expected part of fandom’s reaction to nearly everything.

What really prompted me to write about the comment reactions is this fresh slice of upsetting:

““major” wearing a bra and one can see the straps… Majors artificial body does not need a bra! I mean this in a technical way an not as an excuse for more sexualized content.” [sic]

After some mild pushback from other commenters, this strange buttbag doubled down:

“ScarJo is a mother, i thing i love and respekt. However she should depict a timeless young person in a overly perfect body. Major knows her looks and has no problems to show it in nice dresses. The stuff ScarJo wears looks sloppy at the best.” [sic]

Yes, this is just one voice howling into the digital wastelands we’ve built for ourselves. Don’t read the comments. Don’t read the comments. Don’t read the comments. It’s a lesson I never learn. Still, some festering scabs are impossible to leave unpicked.