Ghost in the shell.　

"You and I are like looking at things through a mirror, and what we see is nothing but illusory" — —Mamoru Oshii quoted ghost in the shell in 1995 from Schopenhauer.

Please allow Xiao Dianjun to set an example before talking about this movie to pay tribute to the classics.

As a recognized "masterpiece", ghost in the shell, a series of works of the same name adapted from Masamune Shirow cartoons directed by Mamoru Oshii, has carried too much admiration and praise since it came out. However, the live-action version of the work of the same name that has just been released in China can be said to be aloof because it stands on the shoulders of giants for secondary creation: from film preparation, shooting to publicity, there has been a trend of mixed opinions and polarization.

Xiao Dianjun also went to watch this new work early. However, after watching the movie, there were some surprises and many disappointments.

The background and characters of the film still follow the classic settings of the 95th edition of Attack on the Shell. Although compared with the original version, Bart’s hairstyle is a little explosive, the wild-rolled colonel has some facial paralysis, and the "widowed sister" version of Shaozuo is not as slender and slender as the original version. But unless you are a fanatical classic, these details are not fatal to Xiao Dianjun.

After all, many clips in the film almost completely restore the classic version of the plot, which we will mention later.

To say that the most embarrassing thing about this adaptation is that the producers and screenwriters level forcibly lowered the connotation of the new version of the story, and the story is anticlimactic, with a huge opening momentum but a chicken soup ending. After watching the movie, you will find it hard to imagine that it was adapted from a film called "masterpiece".

Xiao Dianjun doesn’t want to be too mean to this work. Objectively speaking, the live-action version of Attack on the Shell is not a bad film, but it’s a pity that Mamoru Oshii’s version of Zhuyu is in the front, and it will only hurt if it is compared.

Mamoru Oshii’s ghost in the shell.

To talk about the gap between the live-action version and the original version, we must first talk about how "god" the original version is.

Cyberpunk: A Science Fiction City with Multi-cultural Integration

For this masterpiece, the first evaluation given by Xiao Dianjun is: ahead of time.

It is widely regarded as one of Cyberpunk’s classic works. At that time, the release of this film also caused a worldwide wave of Cyberpunk.

Man-machine information transmission of Cyberpunk wind in movies

The word Cyberpunk may be a little strange to many people, so far it has no strict definition. Enthusiasts who usually like this cultural genre are determined by the characteristics summarized from the previous works of this type: Cyberpunk’s works usually set the story in the future with highly developed information technology, and the advanced scientific and technological development and the contradiction between people and society are the classic themes of this type.

Blade runner is regarded as a typical work of Cyberpunk.

In visual style, Cyberpunk in Xiao Dianjun’s eyes is blending. The disorderly cultural mixture makes the old and new cultures appear in the future high-tech city.

The slums hidden behind the high-tech cities in ghost in the shell

From this perspective, ghost in the shell in 1995 is undoubtedly ahead of the times. Mamoru Oshii and screenwriter Itou Kazunori have exerted extraordinary imagination in their works. At that time, even the internet was not popular, and the fantasy scene of the future world was shown to countless audiences. Today’s scientific and technological development also proves that this prophetic work is extremely forward-looking.

Mechanical agent connected to network

Compared with Masamune Shirow’s painting style with outstanding sense of science and technology, Mamoru Oshii has added more Japanese retro cultural symbols on the basis of cyber, which is more prominent in Attack on the Shell 2: Innocence.

Sacrificial wind makes people fall into dreamland.

In the live-action movie just released, the production team tried their best to restore the Mamoru Oshii version of the future city, but the diversified cultural symbols were weak. Moreover, due to the change of the plot, the common pessimism in Cyberpunk is also greatly reduced in the new work.

Next page:The tribute stalk in the kernel and real-life version of Attack on the Shell

China Daily Global Online News: In recent years, the rapid economic development of China and India has attracted worldwide attention. In fact, apart from cultural, historical and political differences, the development of China and India has many parallel characteristics, especially institutional social inequality. Recently, two news stories that happened almost simultaneously in the two countries once again showed this parallel phenomenon.

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, March 29: "The Ministry of Public Security of China held a national conference on public security management on the 29th, and one of the topics of the conference was to discuss the establishment of a unified household registration system in urban and rural areas, which means that the issue of canceling the dual household registration system in agriculture and non-agriculture that has been widely concerned in recent years is expected to be solved."

On the same day, The New York Times reported from New Delhi that an important affirmative action bill aimed at increasing and guaranteeing the quota of lower castes in Indian universities was shelved by the Supreme Court of India. This can be said to be a major setback for successive governments since India’s independence to eliminate the caste system, a social inequality.

The caste system represents the basic teachings of Hinduism, which was originally the need for Aryans to maintain their dominant position after conquering the South Asian subcontinent. However, after thousands of years, it has become a deep-rooted social bad habit. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, there are two systems that cause hereditary inequality, but they are "new things", "political caste" divided according to family background, and China’s unprecedented "economic caste" represented by urban and rural hukou.

These two modern caste systems first hit the most creative strata in China society: urban intellectuals and the rural proletariat. The former victim was exposed through "anti-Rightism" and "Cultural Revolution", but the latter has so far lacked the attention of scholars. One of Deng Xiaoping’s great historical achievements is to completely get rid of the "political caste" based on family composition, and the resulting liberation of talents has become an important reason for China’s economic take-off. However, the "economic caste" represented by urban and rural hukou has been postponed to this day, which not only continues to hinder the creation of a "harmonious society" and economic development, but also leads to the absurd social inequality of "the same life but different prices".

As Singaporean Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew pointed out in an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel in the summer of 2005, China, instead of Japan or other Asian countries, would have become the top power in Asia long ago if it had not taken the detour of the "Cultural Revolution", instead of causing international shock due to the "rise of China" today. This is really the golden advice of a generation of politicians.

If you don’t give advice in the past, you can catch up with others. For India and China, it is not only a necessary prerequisite to create a harmonious society, but also a key factor to decide who will win the development competition in the end. Especially in China, where the per capita natural resources are low, the difference between urban and rural hukou is a huge obstacle to the extensive development of human resources. It is expected that the recent national conference on public security management in Beijing will accelerate the early demise of the modern caste system in China. (Excerpted from Lianhe Zaobao, this newspaper has abridged)

(Source: Southern Newspaper Group Author: Yu Shiyu)