Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence

An uncouth virus has been rampaging through the family. The weekend was a lost cause for me. I haven't been able to write (or blog), and have generally spent my time hacking up globs of vile substances that would give a HazMat team the willies. The girls are faring no better, although we seem to be coming out the other side of it now. Thank goodness.

So last night, when everyone else turned in early, I had a chance to finally watch Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. I wanted to see it in the theatres last fall, but never managed to work it into my schedule. It is, without a doubt, one of the most stunningly beautiful works of animation I've ever seem. The producers blew a ton on money on their computer-generated showpieces, and it shows in the lavish colors and lush, complex visuals. It's simply a joy to watch. Unfortunately, they went overboard, and a tremendous amount of background and incidental animation done as CGI simply doesn't interact well with the characters in the film, who are done in a traditional hand-drawn style. The integration between traditional and CGI in the original film was handled much better. It also would've helped if they'd spent as much effort on the plot. What we have now is a 30-minute story padded out to almost two hours. I found myself nodding off halfway through the movie despite the pretty pictures on the screen. I mean, really, there are 10 minute blocks at a time where literally nothing happens. Even so, the movie is an impressive accomplishment.

What's unforgiveable is the piss-poor package Dreamworks has put together for this DVD release. First, there is no English dub. Granted, the dub of the original movie wasn't great, but it got the job done. With the fantastic dubs Disney has been producing for the Studio Ghibli releases, you'd think Dreamworks would want to one-up the House of Mouse. No dice. To make matters worse, the subtitles have got to be the worst I've ever seen from a major studio. Yeah, the Cowboy BeBop subtitles are riddled with typos and plain old mistakes, but at least they're subtitles. Dreamworks apparently doesn't know the difference between subtitles and closed captioning for the hearing impared. Why else would they feel the need to subtitle [BACKGROUND NOISE] or [BREAKS SQUEALING]. The worst of it comes when an English-language song is playing on the radio, and the subtitles translate the English lyrics into English! Seriously, folks, this one is a disaster from start to finish.

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