After the online petitions, the countless think pieces and Twitter tirades, Hollywood¡¯s ¡°Ghost in the Shell¡± was never going to have an easy passage. Rupert Sanders¡¯ film ¡ª a $110 million live-action movie based on a beloved manga and anime property ¡ª was ill-fated from the start, tarnished by the controversy surrounding the decision to cast a white actor, Scarlett Johansson, in a role that was originally Japanese.
When Paramount Pictures released a photo last April of Johansson as cyborg ass-kicker Major Motoko Kusanagi, now simply known as The Major, it prompted a social media uproar that never abated. An online petition to instead cast an Asian actress drew more than 100,000 signatures. Each new trailer or marketing push for the film attracted a fresh load of invective from critics, many of them Asian-American, who accused it of ¡°whitewashing¡± its Japanese source material.
By the time ¡°Ghost in the Shell¡± opened internationally at the end of last month, it seemed that the damage had been done. The movie drew mostly mediocre reviews and struggled to pull in $19 million during its opening weekend in the U.S. (¡°Beauty and the Beast,¡± by way of comparison, made $170 million.) Though it has performed better in other countries, the film is now predicted to lose its studio $60 million.
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