Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Directed by Rupert Sanders
In the near future, Major is the first of her kind: a human saved from a terrible crash, then cyber-enhanced to be a perfect soldier devoted to stopping the world's most dangerous criminals.
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39 films that influenced Ghost in the Shell
What critics say influenced Ghost in the Shell
It all feels too familiar by a half, from a premise which reminds at key junctures of Alex Proyas' superior 2004 thriller " I, Robot ," to a tone that recalls Steven Spielberg's 2002 pic " Minority Report ," to set design and art direction clearly inspired by?but far less vivid than?"Blade Runner."
The setting appears to be another neo-Tokyo, recalling that other anime classic “Akira” (1988), with almost everything about the visuals lifted from Ridley Scott’s 1982 landmark “Blade Runner,” including giant animated advertisements on the sides of high-rises.
Once again, echoes of other comparable fare — Blade Runner , which pre-dates the manga; The Matrix , which is widely regarded to have taken inspiration from it — remain evident, without overshadowing the end product thanks to the imagery’s all-round dazzling display.
But Masamune borrowed a lot from Blade Runner, and that movie seems to be the primary visual inspiration for this adaptation.
The film slavishly revisits not only the original inspiration but such other sci-fi landmarks as Blade Runner and Metropolis, creating an unsettling feeling not unlike the “uncanny valley” effect more common to photorealistic animation.
The movie never commits to itself, one way or the other, so it mostly just sits there, reminding you that you probably should have just watched Minority Report again, or just the original Ghost in the Shell.
Once again, echoes of other comparable fare — Blade Runner , which pre-dates the manga; The Matrix , which is widely regarded to have taken inspiration from it — remain evident, without overshadowing the end product thanks to the imagery’s all-round dazzling display.
There’s homage to the original anime, Christopher Nolan’s “Inception”, and of course there are inescapable comparisons to the canonical films of the cyber-punk genre such as “The Matrix” and “Blade Runner.”
The 1995 anime made an indelible mark on Hollywood cinema, most notably inspiring the Wachowkis’ The Matrix trilogy and the futurism of Minority Report.
The setting appears to be another neo-Tokyo, recalling that other anime classic “Akira” (1988), with almost everything about the visuals lifted from Ridley Scott’s 1982 landmark “Blade Runner,” including giant animated advertisements on the sides of high-rises.
It was the Akira of the paranoid ‘90s – and perfectly timed for the advent of the connected world that was emerging around it.
Warner Bros. has been trying to make Akira for a few years now; this week’s announcement that the studio is courting Jordan Peele for the director’s chair seems to indicate that these films and shows are ripe for the plucking in Hollywood.
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This week’s repackaged old idea is a live-action version of the classic Japanese comic book Ghost in the Shell , which itself inspired the 1995 anime film with the same name.
It isn’t a remake of Mamoru Oshii’s sci-fi animated feature , which is a classic of the genre, but a very studious homage; the plot is original (provided one has never played a video game influenced by Ghost In The Shell), though it draws ideas from later animated adaptations of Masamune Shirow’s manga series.
"Ghost in the Shell": From the potential blockbuster vein comes this Scarlett Johansson starrer, based on Mamoru Oshii's 1995 animated take on the same story and, apparently, some other quite nifty Japanese stuff that fans of this punky genre readily acknowledge and take very seriously.
In Ghost in the Shell, based on a Japanese manga comic of the early 1990s (which inspired a fascinating 1995 animated film), Johansson plays, inevitably, a full-on robot named Major.
If the "ghost" of anime classic Ghost in the Shell refers to the soul looming inside of its killer female cyborg, then this live-action reboot from director Rupert Sanders really only leaves us the shell: a heavily computer-generated enterprise with more body than brains, more visuals than ideas, as if the original movie’s hard drive had been wiped clean of all that was dark, poetic and mystifying.
While the film brings the futuristic city found within the anime and manga to life with intricate detail involving skyscraper-sized holograms, harsh fluorescent lighting, and tall buildings crammed so close together that the entire city feels crammed, you can’t help but be reminded of films like Blade Runner and The Fifth Element .
There are nods to “The Matrix,” HBO’s “Westworld,” “Enter the Void,” Björk album covers, “The Fifth Element,” “Lost in Translation,” you name it.
Anyone who has seen Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” or that film’s innumerable 2.0 follow-ups (“Strange Days,” “The Fifth Element”) will recognize this “Ghost” cityscape, with its jumbled forms, neo-noir shadows, patina of art-directed decay and its conspicuous Asian-Hollywood fusion touches.
I think I could hang in Blade Runner or The Fifth Element, but this is like Minority Report to an exponential degree.
The film's spiritual analogue for me is Tim Burton's Batman Returns, the one that gets described by nerds as a terrible Batman movie.
“Avatar,” “A.I.,” “Ex Machina” — all owe it a fancy dinner.
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One gets some comfort in seeing that the way you turn a European actor Japanese is exactly the way it was done 50 years ago in You Only Live Twice, when Sean Connery was brilliantly disguised as an Asian to outwit SPECTRE.
Despite impressive visuals and ScarJo pulling off a robotic performance to beat Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man, Ghost in the Shell avoids plumbing the moral depths and complexities as far as you might expect.