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Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - The Laughing Man


Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex/The Laughing Man (Dub) Status: COMPLETE
Movie


Ghost in the Shell bores me. As much as I can appreciate the original movie, hate the sequel, the TV series that kicked it into full gear, Stand Alone Complex, just bored the crap out of me. It was interesting insofar as it was something that seemed cool and completely unusual at the time it was airing on late night television, but despite a couple memorable setpiece moments from the series and could never get over the DULL. BORING. LIFELESS. CORPORATE. EXPOSITION.

After watching the first two movies recently I noticed something though: They made a Stand Alone Complex compilation movie.

Well how about that? I think I want to see more of these because I feel quite a few anime series suffer by trying to be a series in the first place. They suffer from the format and their good moments are stretched painfully thin across a lot of screentime. Attack on Titan seemed better for it, although I'm sure most people don't know that show also got an obscure compilation adaption, so let's check out what is likely an equally obscure compilation adaption.

~ SPOILER WARNING ~




"The Laughing Man" which it's subsubtitled is the entire 26 episode series crushed down into 2 hours and 40 minutes. And after watching it I still think it was too long.

Actually, more accurately, it's not that the movie is too long, it just barely manages to contain all of the most important plot beats, developments, and setpieces that occur in the series, but the movie seems to prove that even you drop approximately 20 episodes worth of filler content, Ghost in the Shell can still be PAINFULLY boring.

I am so glad I didn't punish myself with rewatching the whole series because this movie was more than enough.

We get all of the most memorable scenes in the series wrapped up in here: basically any scene involving guns, camo, mechs, or The Laughing Man which easily comprises about half of the movie (if I'm being generous). The other half is dominated by EXPOSITION, and **** ME if it doesn't go overboard.



One scene in particular just killed me where we abruptly cut to Motoko's loft where she has a BRUTAL NEAR 5 MINUTES OF EXPOSITIONAL INNER MONOLOGUING.

All she says is who The Laughing Man is in reporter speak, like if someone decided to give you the newspaper article version of the Hindenburg Disaster AND THEY DON'T EVEN MAKE IT INTERESTING! Motoko's got no personality, all she does is pace around the room, and the only action on screen is the stupid videos she's flipping between! It's instantly noticeable and it just drove me up the ****ing wall!

And even after the scene ends it just cuts to more characters STILL JUST TALKING!


"DEAR GOD, WHY WON'T THEY JUST END THE SCENE!?"

That's easily the worst of it though, if by "worst" you're also giving practically undeserved credit to scenes in which DIFFERENT characters are talking exposition at each other.

I simply cannot fathom anyone who can watch this and find it interesting, let alone engaging.

Watching Togusa walk into a anti-corporate legal office and pretend to be someone he's not in order to get the guy he's talking to to reveal that he's in possession of stolen secret documents just before the bad guys bust in to shoot up the place to keep him quiet and destroy evidence that can be used against IS INTERESTING, but we have to have MORE OF THAT and LESS OF THIS:


"But Chief, that organization the audience doesn't know is working with this other organization they kinda know, but their motivations are more in league with this one politician they can't remember."

You know it's actually somewhat challenging just to find boring static images of the scenes where it's just the characters talking? THAT'S BECAUSE THEY'RE BORING! AND APPARENTLY THEY MAKE UP 20 EPISODES OF THIS 26 EPISODE SERIES!

You wanna know how you make exposition not only tolerable to watch, but INTERESTING? More scenes like this:



When The Laughing Man makes his first "appearance", he hacks into a man giving a formal announcement to the press and speaks through him to air his grievances to the man sitting opposite him. All it REALLY is one guy talking to another guy again, but the audience reaction, Section 9's reaction, the other guy's reaction, the fact that The Laughing Man is gradually hacking into all nearby video equipment to obscure his face meanwhile giving a PASSIONATE SPEECH ABOUT EVERYTHING THE OTHER GUY HAS DONE makes this scene WAY BETTER than literally any other scene in the movie where one person is simply talking.


"You'll notice that despite my blank expression, I'm actually acting emotional, getting across a relevant point, and also intercutting with some action to keep your attention while the plot moves along."

Enough about exposition though, I'm sick of it. Point made.

Another issue I take with the movie is really a issue that can't have been avoided without undoing what was already done and animating new scenes to bridges the gaps. I'm talking about the cutting.

Numerous scenes throughout the movie seem terribly connected. True enough, nearly every scene included here is in some way directly tied to the main plot, but because these scenes were dragged out to such insane degrees in the anime, the crucial bits and the immediately surrounding dialog are all that remain. They could have either opted to re-record new dialog to shorten these scenes or cut into the conversations themselves to keep to the point, but instead they preserve entire conversations that just largely meander around the main points before settling on something and then violently jumping into an entirely different location with the exact same characters discussing something unrelated.

One example is when Batou visits the Tachikomas and asks one to help him out in the firing range immediately before a scene in which Batou's NOT at the firing range, but has instead been asked by Motoko offscreen to visit and speak with her while a probably unrelated Tachikoma eavesdrops.

These kinds of harsh breaks between scenes can happen sometimes at 3 in a row and they're very jarring.


Exposition and rough editing are big complaints from me, but they're pretty much my only complaints if I'm being honest. The full Ghost in the Shell series would bore me to death, but still as drawn out as it is here, I much prefer this movie incarnation. All of the scenes and setpieces I fondly remember from the show are still here and a much more focused approach to the story actually makes the main story and themes of Stand Alone Complex significantly easier to follow, even if I was still completely lost in exposition dialog multiple times throughout the movie and the ending was fairly anti-climactic.

The idea of the Stand Alone Complex is still very interesting, and perplexingly even more relevant today than when it first aired with regards to it's relation to the concepts of individuality, memes, and social constructs borne through the catalyst of high-traffic public networks which are things that were still very young in the early 2000s.

The animation is really very good and I was pleased that Stand Alone Complex's opening song, Inner Universe, played at the end unremixed, which is a fate I sadly cannot say for Attack on Titan's Crimson Bow & Arrow which got an underwhelming spin to it's soundtrack with it's own compilation movie.

All told, as much as I gripe, I mostly enjoyed what I watched. Definitely not as good as the original Ghost in the Shell movie, but well above my expectations (which considering Innocence, were pretty ****ing low).


Final Verdict:
[Friggen' Awesome][Pretty Good][Meh...][Just... Bad][Irredeemably Awful]