Fantasy User Interfaces, for those that don't want to follow the link and search the page.

And I thought it's "Floating User Interface" :)

I always thought it was "Fake User Interface."

Yes, I always heard "FUI/Fake User Interface" used to describe those deceptive pop-up advertisements meant to look like a Windows system window (usually with some nonsense warning like "Your computer is broadcasting an IP address!").

I simply stopped reading presuming it meant Futuristic User Interface.

Subscribed to that so fast.

While it copped a lot of flack, visuals wise there was pretty much nothing wrong with GitS.

I disagree, although they created a beautiful vision of the future it just doesn't resonate with what GITS is to me.

The world of GITS never felt like a neon billboard strewn "Neo Tokyo", felt like it has always had a wider visual language than just that one note. Feels like the city is trying to demand presence as an entity in the remake while in the originals the city was mostly just an anonymous sea of sky scrapers that was then experience though more intimate close moments.

I realise Ash is a huge fan of Akira and I can't help but think how Neo-Tokyo plays almost as a larger than life character in that film has influenced his work in this.

Compare this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB-ik-Bpl0c to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixAHUWgBKsw&t=0m35s

You might be interested in "Ghost In The Shell: Identity in Space" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTnl1FVFBw

That video is very insightful and resonates with what I love about Mamoru Oshii's movie. The city is definitely a protagonist in that classic movie as well, but it's not garish like in the new movie.

Started out that comment with the intention of linking that, excellent watch.

> Compare this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB-ik-Bpl0c to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixAHUWgBKsw&t=0m35s

Both of those clips also show how important background music can be in reception of the scene.

Yeah, it was an extraordinarily pretty film, although I think they really dragged out the whole "HEY LOOK HOLGRAPHIC BILLBOARDS" thing, I lost count of how many sweeping shots of buildings and their attached holograms I saw...

I may be remembering it incorrectly but I think that was a pretty common motif in the source material.

Google-image Ghost in the Shell cityscape: there is not a single ad hologram in the original (do correct me if I'm wrong though). The holograms shown are not as futuristic, they are green luminescent and pixelated, such as in the helicopter tactical view and the making of cyborg opening scene.

There are more in Innocence, especially during the parade scene, but even then the city itself is much more raw, like SAC and esp. SAC2G nails it. There's way too much of a Blade Runner feel in the live action movie.

In the artbook they mention how they wanted to emphasize how pervasive augmented reality had become in their world.

I guess giving the solograms - what they call them - a lot of airtime is one way to do that if you don’t want to explain why they’re there in the actual story.

Unfortunately to both myself (intimately familiar with the source material) and my father (zero knowledge at all), the shots increasingly came off as "look at all this work we put in to these, please appreciate them... please?" as the movie progressed.

Not that I'd mark it down for it at all, there's no shame in wanting to show off your work (especially when it's that good looking), and they never dragged on too long, they were just... oddly more frequent than expected.