Ghost in the Shell (2017)

Ghost in the Shell (2017)

 3/10

Starring

Scarlett Johansson

Michael Pitt

Pilou Asbæk

Chin Han

Juliette Binoche

 

Directed by Rupert Sanders

 

If you have seen the Ghost in the Shell (1995) anime movie or the Stand Alone Complex (S.A.C), you get the simple idea that there are so many ways they could have spun this. The whole Ghost in the Shell story is very complex, easy to follow and the certain gaps makes it fun, mysterious and just captivating.

The movie starts differently to the anime movie, S.A.C series or manga. In this film, there is a very little introduction to Major’s (Scarlett Johansson) life before joining section 9. Then we get to see some other intro to some of the characters, all of this is unneeded, but guess they wanted to give the movie a little depth.

The underlying plot is similar between the anime, film and manga. It is about the person called the puppeteer. The whole movie is set in the future where a huge majority of humans has had some cybernetic upgrade done and they are all like connected to the internet by default. Some have had changes to their limbs, others organs and some are more robotic than human with few organs left. The Major is one of those who only have her brain left in her cybernetic body. In this movie she is like the first to actually have this done. The difference here in comparison to the anime and manga is that the Major is setup as an experiment which was commissioned by Section 9 to an adult female. While in the original plot, Major has had the whole prosthetics done to her person since she was 6-years-old.

In section 9 they are dealing with a case, which has a hacker tagged the puppeteer who is hacking into humans and using them to commit murders It was noticed that those murders are not random and the people being killed are actually members of a unit which commissioned and worked on a certain project.

The Major is someway connected and the hacker wants her to know and meet with her.

The movie has a pacing problem which is intensified with its sudden need to add some self-reflection traits of Major’s personality something not present in the anime. I guess the movie dedicating itself to giving us backstory to Major’s body and to Batao’s eyes was to me a bore an unneeded presence which further add to the boring state of this movie.

Concerning the supposed whitewashing of the movie’s characters, I do not object to any movie getting a remake and getting Americanized along the way just as long as the movie is done well.

Many other people objected greatly to the whitewashing of this movie (they have their strong points), but I felt the whitewashing was the least of this movies problem. The major challenge of this movie is that it is very boring.

There is no need to see this film, the anime Ghost in the Shell (1995) or the Stand Alone Complex (S.A.C) series do better justice.