Ghost in the Shell
       
Director: Rupert Sanders
Year: 2017
Rating: 6.0
Overload. Overload. Sensory overload. System is going down. This adaptation of the famous anime piles on the CGI to the point where my brain stopped working. Stopped processing the incoming images. At one point, I began to wonder whether Scarlett Johansson was actually in the film or if she was just computer generated.  Either way she got shit for it because the character in the anime is Japanese and Scarlett is many things but being Japanese is not one of them. Most of the shit of course came from the West. Japanese were like what is the big deal. It is a Hollywood film – of course they are going to have a big Hollywood star in the role. Considering that her character is completely manufactured with only the brain being human, can one really blame the creator for having her look like Scarlett Johansson. If I ever get a robot someday, that might be my choice. That wasn’t my issue with this film - it just feels like this should have been so much better. There are some fine individual scenes but when nothing feels real, it is hard to feel invested in the characters or the story.  It feels in many ways more influenced by Blade Runner than by the anime this film is based on. In particular its display of a city drenched in neon and giant digital advertisements everywhere.

 

Hardly anyone is pure human anymore, but to various degrees depending on how many technical enhancements have been made to their body. All sorts of enhancements are possible. Make you stronger, see better, communicate with your thoughts. All neatly packaged. The best sci-fi is that which can come true and I have little doubt that some of these things will be common someday. Already there are implants which allow people to unlock their doors like a key card. Musk would like to take this further. Major (Johansson) has been taken to the final stage. A completely enhanced physical structure with a human brain implanted in it. She is the first and Hanka Robotics thinks of her as the ultimate weapon. She works for a government agency run by Aramaki (Takashi Kitano) who has a fatherly relationship with her.  She is part of a group of humans with enhancements who are under Aramaki to stop crimes.

 

Right now someone is hacking into scientists - cerebral hacking - and killing them after downloading the information in their brain. The spidery robotic geishas are the coolest thing ever. I want one. There is a lot of imaginative imagery in the film – all computer generated. One of the best scenes in the film is when Major’s memories start to come back and she looks for her mother. The mother lives in a small cramped apartment that is human, that is real as is the mother’s love for her daughter. Even if that daughter is now residing in Major’s brain. Major’s investigation takes her into Yakuza clubs and traps -and she finds out more than Hanka wants her to.  Juliette Binoche is the scientist who created Major. If you are going to adapt a sci-fi anime into film, it is pretty hard to avoid CGI excess admittedly - but it was too much for me.