"Ghost in the Shell 2017" Review
Based off of the influential manga by Masamune Shirow, "Ghost in the Shell" stars Scarlett Johansson as a ghost... in a shell... who has a weird robot walk for some reason (it really doesn't make sense when you really think about it). If you don't know what a ghost or a shell is, don't worry, this movie will stop at nothing to remind you what that is. Let's get this out of the way, the controversial casting is the least of this movie's problems. Johansson is more than capable of portraying The Major. It really isn't a big deal... until it becomes a big deal later on... That's all I'll say.
This movie is highly derivative of Mamoru Oshii's 1995 film adaptation (considered one of the most influential anime films outside of "Akira" and still holds up today) but this remake completely misses the mark on almost everything except for its cinematographer.
Cinematographer Jess Hall did a lot of research on how to achieve the look of Oshii's 1995 film. It's too bad he wasn't put to good use. Almost every shot in this movie felt like a waste of so much money. It looks really expensive yet it looks so... bland. The CG work was also a bit of a let down.
The script is an amalgamation of a bunch of stuff from the IP and has been dumbed down for contemporary audiences, lacking all of the nuances that made the first Ghost in the Shell so interesting. It asks a lot of questions about memory and human consciousness but at no point did it really take its time to explore the concepts that felt so necessary to the ghost of the source material. The screenplay was written partly by Ehren Kruger (of Transformers, Scream and The Ring franchises) and while the movie never feels as silly as a Michael Bay Transformers movie, it sure feels just as dumb. The antagonist is also the most generic and two-dimensional thing I've ever had the pleasure of forgetting and fails to fill the shoes of its superior predecessors in characters like The Puppet Master.
As mentioned already, Johansson has the credentials to play The Major (Under the Skin, Avengers, Her) but was a Major let down (puns always intended) perhaps she wasn't directed well or perhaps they simply cut together the first takes of all her performances. Somehow, a complex character played by a talented actor resulted in one of the stiffest portrayals since Jennifer Lawrence in X-Men Apocalypse or Jennifer Lawrence in the first Hunger Games. It's not all bad though, Pilou Asbæk is a distinct and good choice for Batou, and Juliette Binoche, for what she has to work with, brings a certain class to the ensemble.
This has been said in every other review, this movie is just a shell of its source material. It has some great stories and characters to pull from and it manages to emulate shot-for-shot the main sequences in the 1995 original but the context of these scenes have unfortunately been lost. If you want a movie that really explores AI, try Ex Machina or Ghost in the Shell 1995. If you want a fix for your cyberpunk fetishes, try The Matrix (which was inspired by Ghost in the Shell), or Blade Runner, or, again, Ghost in the Shell 1995. I can't emphasize enough how pointless this remake is when we already have something as great as the original to begin with. Watch anything but this version. The silver lining at the end of the day is hearing Kenji Kawai's chant during the credits and having it easily eclipse Clint Mansell's and Lorne Balfe's hollow score, even with the weird techno remix.