In near-future Hong Kong, where cyber-enhancement of the human body is all the rage, Major (Scarlett Johansson), who was the victim of a terrorist attack, has had her brain placed into an android body by a blatantly evil robotics company. Sheâs intended to be the first in a long line of weapons, but for now sheâs made a member of Section 9, a special police-type unit. An unknown hacker has begun killing the companyâs scientists and Major, Batou (Pilou Asbaek), Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano), and the rest of the crew are tasked with catching the criminal. But all is not what it seems (at least if you didnât realize the obviously evil company was evil) and Major begins to learn that her memories may be a fiction.
Ghost in the Shell (2017) is a remake of a Japanese anime, kinda. It in turn was inspired by a Japanese manga which has since been turned into an animated TV show (which was a procedural and my favorite of the lot) and several more films. Ghost in the Shell (1995) is a very peculiar anime, as action elements take a back seat to philosophical speculations on the nature of the mind, spirit, and body. And this is where my graduate work in philosophy kicks in to kill that older film for me as I cannot just “go with it.” Fans of the anime applaud the intelligent examination of important questions of identity. And me? You see, I studied identity in grad school and this isnât a graduate level examination of identity. It isnât an undergraduate level. It isnât a sober manâs level. This is what you get when you run into a business major who is failing Phil 101 at a party and heâs really high. After gazing at his hand a while, the unfocused, juvenile insights that he spouts about identityâalong with something about how the universe is in an atom and it is all so cosmicâthatâs Ghost in the Shell. It is mentally deficient. Anime fans were so desperate for something deep in the genre that they just gobbled it up without noticing the emperor was naked.
Now I also studied physics, but I am not troubled by Star Wars and its impossible space ships and weapons, because Star Wars never stops to ramble on about how gravity works and mess it up. But Ghost in the Shell â95 does. It is a treatise on the meaning of self, written by a drugged fool to impress ten-year-olds, and my god is it dull.
To say that this work was a challenge to translate into a big budget action film is an understatement. The navel gazing of the original wasnât going to workâthe number of anime geeks who buy into the freshmen, general studies âdepthâ of that work is not nearly large enough for a âtent poleâ filmâso that had to go. But the faked intelligence was simply replaced by clear stupidity. Now, instead of going on and on and on about the intricacies of the ghost and getting nowhere, people just blurt out, âI/you am/are a robotâ and âI/you am/are humanâ every few minutes. The film’s final monologue, given in voice-over, is so insipid I suggest ducking out early in order to miss it. Still, the brainlessness is an improvement as it wastes less time, but thereâs no getting around how empty it is. Films should show, not tell, and both of these like to talk but have nothing worth saying.
The filmmakers jettisoned the plot as well; the replacement is filled with good material. Well, Iâll switch that to âpotentiallyâ good material as the movie feels the need to pay its respects to the anime and so gets distracted from what should be the plot. That means it never has time to do what films do bestâget us emotionally involved. This was never going to be a clever film, but it could have been a moving one. But without the time to do that, the villain is too arch, the situations too simple, and the emotion lacking. Majorâs trip to an apartment connected to her past gave a taste of what the move should have been. If theyâd simple kept the theme of memoires instead of the whole âdo robots have soulsâ bit, and cut out 50% of the first half so they could get to the real point, this could have been great. Well, I suppose a lot of films could be great if they were utterly changed.
So this version makes many, many references to the original; it keeps quite a few characters (their names and appearances, though not personalities), and multiple scenes (given a new context). But the real connection is the style. It looks exactly like the animeâexcept in live action. Some have complained that it is a rip-off of Blade Runner, which is true, but not directly. The anime ripped-off Blade Runner, and this copies the anime. Whatever the route, it is a good looking film, with robo-geishas, giant holograms, and neon mixed with grunge. It may not be original, but itâs snazzy.
The action is better than average and the cinematography is pleasant (Iâm thrilled any time I find a modern big budget movie that uses color properly). Johansson is solid. After The Avengers, Under the Skin, and Lucy, she seems to be taking the acting path of Keanu Reeves in mastering kick-ass characters with something not right going on in their head. I wasnât bored when the camera stuck with her. The rest of the cast do their jobs, not standing out positively or negatively, except for the Peter Ferdinandoâs overwrought villain.
As for the often mentioned, white-wash casting of Johansson, it is far less troubling then in other recent productions like Gods of Egypt, Doctor Strange, The Great Wall, and Iron Fist, since it takes place in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic future, and is not in Japan. This isnât Tokyo though still Asian. Go south. It would have been nice for an Asian actress to get the part, but nicer for Iron Fist to be Tibetan.
Ghost in the Shell was never going to really work as long as they insisted on extensive connections to the previous incarnation. They dumped so much. They needed to dump more and make their own film. Instead its an ungainly shadow that never figures out if it is supposed to be dark or fun, emotional or intellectual (well, that one was doomed), direct or symbolic, or even if it was an action film or a drama. I can see so many marvelous films hidden within this one, but the one on display has no ghost.