[rating=4.00]
For a movie about soul and identity, Ghost in the Shell is certainly lacking in both.
“Comparatively lifeless” feels like an odd criticism to levy at a live action adaptation of an animated movie, and yet there’s little other way to describe it. It’s been 22 years since Mamoru Oshii undertook the daunting task of adapting Masamune Shirow’s groundbreaking manga into a groundbreaking anime feature, and it’s impressive how little the years have affected either of the previous iterations of Ghost in the Shell. The test of time has been stood, and both Oshii and Shirow’s visions surge with effortless vivacity, each with a unique personality and feeling all its own.
Today’s Ghost in the Shell is little but a dull, lifeless automaton. Though at times, yes, it’s a visually stunning work, even that effect is lessened due to the fact that its most beautiful moments are recreations of Oshii’s work. In effect, then, what we’ve got is a copy of a copy (and we all know how well that tends to work).
Remakes are tricky, and the best tend to strip the original down to its core in order to re-envision the story to tell it in a new way. Shirow certainly gave us a lot to work with in his manga series, which was distilled beautifully by Oshii in his anime. This film’s problem stems from its reverence to the adaptation rather than its source. No matter how hard it tries, it can never distinguish itself from what it attempts to emulate, rendering the entire ordeal rather pointless.
Like the anime and manga that preceded it, Ghost in the Shell follows a Japanese cybernetic investigator (Scarlett Johansson) who’s on the hunt for a mysterious hacker who can gain access to any cyber enhanced person or thing which, in this case, is just about everything. Her search for this puppet master leads her down a journey of self-discovery that has her questioning what and who she actually is.
Director Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) brings precious little to the table with this outing, save for proving himself capable of constructing technically beautiful scenes. That tends to happen though when you’re copying something beautiful, however, and though at times it’s impressive it never manages to feel anything except familiar. This results in a film that too often feels stilted and constrained.
Worse still is the script. Jamie Moss (Street Kings) and William Wheeler (Queen of Katwe) have stripped Ghost in the Shell of all its nuance and ambiguity. Both the original manga and the anime beg for repeat visitations, not just to get a firm grasp on what’s going on but to gain a deeper appreciation for the philosophical questions being asked by the narrative. Neither previous work is interested in holding your hand through the finer points, but this one grabs you by the elbow and pulls you along.
Nearly every line spoken in Ghost in the Shell is little more than exposition, leading viewers down a thoughtless path that winds its way to nothingness. We’re told immediately that she’s a brain in a manufactured body. In fact, one of the first lines outright states that her “ghost” has been given a new “shell,” a point which is hammered home no fewer than three times throughout the film. Gone are the subtle musings about the nature of self. They’ve been replaced by a series of verbal mallets, designed for the purpose of beating you over the head with its theme.
The most distinguishing characteristic of Ghost in the Shell is the whitewashing controversy surrounding Johansson’s casting as the Major. The in-universe explanation for this is that as a cyborg she can look like whomever—it’s certainly not out of character for an ethically compromised multinational corporation to assume whiteness when building its robots—but it does feel, at best, like a missed opportunity. Certainly, there are Japanese and Japanese-American actresses who could have done as well as Johansson, or at the very least the script could have used this as a way to further mine the themes of self and identity. In fact, for a minute or two, it almost seems as though they’re going to use this as a way to explore the concept of memory on culture and belonging, but, instead, they handwave it all away by having the Major choose to define herself, “not by [her] memory, but by what [she] does.”
Ghost in the Shell is a top to bottom misfire that’s good for little except reminding you how good the anime and manga were. It’s too dumbed to meet even the lowest of standards and completely lacking in both fun and depth. The film strips away all that was great about what it’s trying to emulate and becomes little more than an exercise in pointlessness. No, there’s no ghost to be found here; this is little but a lifeless shell.
Ghost in the Shell is now playing in theaters everywhere.
