Is The Live Action 'Ghost In The Shell' Any Good? Here's What Reviews Say
The big-budget adaptation of Mamoru Oshii's 1995 classic anime feature Ghost in the Shell has more riding on it for its director, Rupert Sanders (Snow White and The Huntsman), than its star, Scarlett Johansson. Since the announcement of Johansson's casting in the film, 2017's remake has weathered criticism for whitewashing. Have Sanders and company pulled off a thoughtful translation of the film, or is the live-action version just a shell?
The Set-Up Should Be Familiar To Any Cyberpunk Fan
Things start off somewhat promisingly when, in an opening that recalls the credit sequence of both the Oshii film and the HBO series Westworld — if you're looking for a smart contemporary take on the robot genre, look no further — we see a human brain transplanted into the state-of-the-art body of Major. A year later, she has become a ruthless fighting machine at the hands of the Section 9 security department and its stoical boss, Aramaki (Kitano, speaking in Japanese when he speaks at all).
She plunges into the action when an official of the private cybernetics firm which developed her body's technology is attacked in a rip-roaring assault: a great action sequence from director Rupert Sanders. But this attack is part of a deep conspiracy to control the intelligence network of the state itself, and the Major is to discover worrying things about her own former identity, which keeps coming back to her in glimpses or "glitches". She is haunted by the residual memory of her brain inside the armour: the ghost in the shell.
For The Most Part, The Setting Is Sensorially Stunning
To watch in 3D (and especially IMAX, if you can) is to be entirely immersed in an incredible alien landscape. So much so that the plot, such that it is, rattles like an annoying tour guide in the background when you're trying to enjoy the view.
Cinematographer Jess Hall and an army of cartwheeling VFX artists render this universe in the glossiest, glassiest strokes possible. Perhaps the only ones holding back are composers Clint Mansell and Lorne Balfe, whose stylish, techno-ominous score is mostly content to skulk in the background, only daring to reference Kenji Kawai's unshakeable theme for the 1995 film over the closing credits. It's perhaps the one area where this otherwise exhilarating reimagination could have dared to plunder its source a little more greedily.
[Variety]
It Borrows Liberally And 'Deals With' Fan Pushback
Here is the top-dollar adaptation of the Masamune Shirow manga serial and the resulting 1995 anime gem by Mamoru Oshii. It has been standardised and westernised with hardly any actual Japanese characters left in it, and effectively reimagined as a superhero origin myth, with tropes derived from the existing templates laid down by Metropolis, Robocop, Blade Runner and Total Recall.
"We cling to memories as if they define us, but they don't. What we do is what defines us." This line, from a script efficient enough to belie its multi-handed development, is repeated in the film as a guiding mantra for The Major, the hybrid human-android cyberterrorism fighter here incarnated as a suitably otherworldly Scarlett Johansson. But the line seems a wily nod on the writers' part to the fan pushback an American remake of the Japanese source material was inevitably going to receive when first announced, even before the controversy generated by Johansson's casting in a role perceived by many as Asian-specific.
[Variety]
Some Of The Performances Could've Used More Humanity
Johansson sets the level of engagement, playing the impervious shell rather better than the restless ghost. In 2013's unsettling "Under the Skin," the actress was directed into signaling a hybrid's dawning consciousness (and conscience); here, she's limited to looking puzzled while convoluted plot elements stream around her. The time Johansson logged among the Avengers means she could perform the role's ass-kicking aspects in her sleep — but in so many other scenes, she appears to be on autopilot.
Also, it's great to see veteran Japanese actor "Beat" Takeshi Kitano, who plays the head of Hanka with his usual no-nonsense gruffness, getting exposure to a non-art-house audience who may be unfamiliar with him.
Sanders' Adaptation Loses Some Of The Depth…
The original film managed to be both violent and philosophical, putting the viewer in an uneasy place and pushing us to ponder the future of humanity in an increasingly computerized world — a world that would have a huge influence on the Wachowskis' magnum opus, all the way down to the cable ports in the back of each character's head. Here we get a taste of that ambience, but it feels more like a backdrop than the crux of the story, which boils down to yet another good vs. evil scenario where no mystery is left unsolved and conflicts are tied up in an all-too Hollywood way.
It's pretty weird that a movie about a human/robot hybrid wouldn't seek to tackle issues regarding artificial intelligence, free will, and what makes a human human.
[Polygon]
…And The Action Is Less Than Top-Rate
The action is both plentiful and perfunctory, with Sanders staging most sequences as run-of-the-mill shootouts and slow-mo slugfests without much inventive or kinetic charge. There because you can't mount a film of this budget and genre without them, they fulfill screen-time and contractual obligations, but not much else.
[The Wrap]
Sanders is becoming increasingly adept at framing the kind of images any 14-year-old would deem cool (Scar-Jo in slo-mo, erupting through plate glass in latex!), which should ensure smooth progress in the modern movie business.
The action scenes aren't anything to write home about, utilizing as they do the "shoot mostly in medium and use lots of cuts" technique so standard to movies that don't want you to know you're watching a stunt double.
[Polygon]
TL;DR
Often visually stunning and with intriguing questions about where humanity ends and robotics begins at its heart, it nevertheless devolves into a generic action movie.
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