Ghost
in the Shell is one of those properties that I always
respected more than I enjoyed. As much as I’ve tried to like its various
incarnations, something about it that I can’t explain just never really clicked
with me. That said, I totally understand why it’s so popular and how it became
such a foundational piece for anime, cyberpunk, and science fiction in general.
It’s for this reason that I have its poster as part of my background. It’s one
of those titles that’s not widely known outside of a few circles, but its
influence is wide and far-reaching. All you need to know is that without this, we
wouldn’t have The Matrix, AI: Artificial
Intelligence, Ex-Machina, or countless others. That said, this reboot has
had a lot going against it from the beginning. Sure, everyone knows about the sad
history of failed anime adaptations and the whole white washing issue, but the
real dilemma that Ghost in the Shell
faces is the same one that The Giver
and Ender’s Game faced: when an
influential title gets adapted so long after its initial release, how can it
look like anything but a pale imitation of its offspring?
Our story takes place in
the distant future where over the majority of humans have some form of
cybernetic enhancements and people can link their minds to the Internet,
blurring the line between man and machine. The Major (Scarlett Johansson) is an
orphaned refugee who was killed in a terrorist attack, but her brain was
rescued and placed in an entirely synthetic body, making her the first of her
kind. Now she lives as a living weapon for the anti-terrorist unit Section 9. After
an encounter with a cyber-terrorist (Michael Pitt) who’s been targeting
scientists that work for the mega-corporation that built her body, she starts
experiencing mental glitches and pieces of her memories, which have been wiped,
start coming back to her. Now she’s desperate to find the truth about her past,
and is uncertain who she can trust.
One common fear that
anime fans have about live-action adaptations of their favorite work is that
the filmmakers either don’t understand or care about the source material. (Look
no further than Dragonball Evolution
or The Last Airbender for proof of
that.) Thankfully that fear is avoided here. Not only are the production
designs and special effects absolutely stunning, but they have gone to great
lengths to faithfully recreate some of its most iconic scenes, including the
creation of the Major’s body, the robo-geishas, the invisible beatdown in the
waterway, the night swimming and the battle with the spider tank. While I have
gone on record that adaptations should be able to stand on their own merits, I
also acknowledge that comparisons are sometimes unavoidable, and even under my
scrupulous eyes it was able to clear all fronts in the visual department.
Same goes for the acting.
Despite all the anxieties surrounding the casting choice, Scarlett Johansson
does a pretty decent job as the Major, and considering the only real physical
criteria for playing this character is to be too hot to have been crafted by
nature and the ability to speak in a detached monotone, I don’t really blame
the higher-ups for picking her. Besides, this isn’t her first time doing this kind of thing. Although the marketing has been largely surrounding Johansson,
the rest of the cast pulls their weight as well. Pilou Asbaek in particular as Major’s
partner, Batou, was a much better casting choice that I thought he would be,
and he clearly put a lot into an accurate portrayal, even though the script
doesn’t give him a lot to do. The only person I have issue with is Takeshi Kitano.
I don’t have a problem with him in particular; Kitano is a great actor, he has
some real badass moments, and I get why he’s here since he’s one of Japan’s
most celebrated actors. The problem is that he speaks Japanese the entire time,
and he’s the only one doing it. There are entire conversations where he’s
speaking Japanese and everyone else is speaking English. It’s pretty obvious
that Kitano didn't want to speak English and there’s some in-universe excuse for
them not working around it, but it’s still really off-putting. I know for a fact that Scarlett has been to Japan, you’d think that she’d pick up some basic
Japanese.
What really doesn’t this
movie in, though, is the script. Some of the major philosophical themes of the
original movie was the relationship between the mind and the body, the ever-blurring
line between humanity and technology, and a lot of the cyber-philosophy that
was the foundation for the works of sci-fi writers like Isaac Asimov and
William Gibson. Where do we cross the line between man and machine? At what
point does the mind become a computer, and is there much of a difference when
an artificial intelligence becomes aware of its artificiality? The movie doesn’t
scrap these questions entirely, but it does forego them in favor of basically
rehashing The Bourne Identity. There
were some moments where it looks like it’s about to delve into the deeper
themes further, like this intimate scene where the Major is alone with a human
stranger and copes with her lack of sense of touch, or when she cuts herself
off from the noise of being plugged into numerous networks by submerging herself
in the city bay, but they always get dropped in favor of unraveling a mystery
that becomes more predictable and obvious as the plot moves on. I get that they’re
trying to establish their own identity while paying homage to the original, but
the way they go about it seems a bit ill-advised.
Speaking of which, it’s
time to address the big white elephant in the room. While I completely
understand where the ire for casting Scarlett Johansson in a role that could’ve
been a gift-wrapped opportunity to launch an Asian actress’s career, I have to
play devil’s advocate here. Even though the anime takes place in Japan, the
Major isn’t really person, she’s a robot. Her brain could’ve been planted into
an Asian body, a black body, a man, a woman, or anyone, and it wouldn’t have
much of an impact on the plot. Since there’s also the fact that Japanese
audiences, and even the creators of the original anime said her race was not a
big factor and had no problem with the casting choice, and the studio’s logic
of casting a well-established actress in order to get more attention from
mainstream audiences, this is one situation where I would let this kind of
decision slide. …Or at least that’s what I thought before the movie undercut
all that goodwill with one of the most tone-deaf, misguided plot twists
imaginable. I won’t go into detail because it’s a major spoiler (let’s just say
it’s the kind of thing that Get Out
was trying to warn us about), but it feels like a huge slap in the face to not
just everyone that was getting up in arms about it, but to everyone who was trying
to give it the benefit of a doubt. Strangely enough, there weren’t any Asians in the audience
when I saw this, but for those who did
see it, I can only imagine what was going through their minds.
Overall, Ghost in the Shell is so close to being
a good movie, and yet so far. For everything it gets right, it has to undermine
it by doing something terribly wrong. There are some things that make it worth
at least a rental. Like I said, the visuals are top tier, the writers at least
get the source material, and it doesn’t really start to trip over itself until
the end, but when the movie trips, it’s a full on faceplant. Proceed with
caution.
6/10
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