Sun: Which brings us to Ghost in the Shell and that first-look image of Scarlett Johansson this week. Ghost in the Shell (at least all previous iterations of it) also is set in Asia, albeit a very different one from that of Doctor Strange. There is no indication that the name of Johansson's protagonist has changed from the source material — IMDb still lists the character as "Kusanagi," although the press copy released alongside Thursday's image refers to her simply by her police rank, "the Major." That photo continues to send an ambiguous message — Johansson appears in a short black bob and darkened eyebrows, hewing closely to how Kusanagi is depicted in the comics.
Traditionally, this is a fan's greatest hope — an adaptation as faithful to the source material as possible. But in this case, Paramount/DreamWorks seem to have retained all the markers of Kusanagi's Japanese identity — her name, her basic physical appearance — except for the actual ethnicity of her portrayer. Perhaps the whitewashing controversy wouldn't have gone quite as viral had the producers cleanly erased all traces of the material's origins, as Edge of Tomorrow did in adapting the Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill and anglicizing protagonist Keiji Kiriya into William Cage, played by Tom Cruise.
McMillan: The comparison to the (lack of) outrage met with Edge of Tomorrow is an interesting one, but perhaps a more appropriate one is the response to the multiple attempts to make a live-action Akira with non-Asian actors — which is to say, any of the numerous American attempts to make a live-action Akira. Both Akira and Ghost in the Shell are better-known properties than All You Need Is Kill — which started life as a prose novel, which arguably also allowed for more visual/racial deviation as a result — and so any attempt to move away from the (to fans) iconic elements of the original are likely to be met with, at the very best, apathy or dismay. Add in the implied racism of casting only Caucasian actors, and you have something that seems utterly guaranteed to upset almost everyone.
By far the strongest response I've seen to the Ghost in the Shell casting comes from indie comic writer Jon Tsuei on Twitter, where he argued that the story is "inherently a Japanese story, not a universal one" because of the context in which it was created, specifically the cultural relationship the country had with technology, and how that feeds into the characters' relationships with tech in the story.
I'm not entirely sold on that line of thinking, I admit — in part because I think that the relationship with technology has become a universal thing in the decades since the original manga was published 27 years ago — but it touches on the degree to which the story is interconnected with the culture in which it first appeared. Watching filmmakers misunderstand that to such a degree as they appear to have in casting alone doesn't really offer much hope that they'll manage to handle the themes of the story with any greater sensitivity.
Sun: The reaction to Johansson's Ghost in the Shell look reminds me of the backlash when the Nina Simone biopic starring Zoe Saldana was released last month. In both cases, the filmmakers went to some lengths to alter the appearance of their leading ladies, rather than cast actresses who more naturally matched the subjects. What makes these two examples different from the countless instances of actors transforming themselves for a role — Steve Carell in Foxcatcher, Nicole Kidman in The Hours — is that Asian women and dark-skinned black women rarely get to be the leads in Hollywood movies. So whitewashing any Asian character is unfortunate, but keeping the character Asian-ish (but not actually Asian) is salt on the wound.
Many online commenters have trumpeted Oscar nominee Rinko Kikuchi as the ideal live-action Kusanagi — no one has come closer than her to doing it already, as robot pilot Mako Mori in Pacific Rim. Many other actresses of Asian descent have been mentioned as well, but the harsh truth is that their combined star wattage doesn't even come close to touching Johansson's.
And therein lies the problem: A Kikuchi (who is four years older than Johansson) — or a similar Asian-American actress — couldn't have debuted as the daughter of John Ritter and Sean Connery, as Johansson did in her early films. She likely wouldn't have gotten her big break as an equestrian-loving teen in Montana opposite Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer. (She might have made a good Rebecca in Ghost World.) She couldn't have effectively played an outsider in Tokyo in Lost in Transition, which catapulted her to stardom, or a Dutch painter's muse in Girl With a Pearl Earring, or Woody Allen's muse in Match Point, Scoop or Vicky Cristina Barcelona. She couldn't have played a London magician's assistant in The Prestige or Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl. And most of all, she never, ever would have been cast as the Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
So how does an Asian actor become famous enough to play an Asian character? Judging by Speed Racer (starring Emile Hirsch), Dragonball Evolution (starring Shameless' Justin Chatwin), Ghost in the Shell and the upcoming Death Note (starring Nat Wolff), Hollywood has yet to answer the question.
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