Review: Ghost in the Shell
Based on the famous japanese franchise consisting of mangas, tv-shows and movies, Rupert Sanders newest movie "Ghost in the Shell" hit the cinemas.
“In 2029, the cyborg Major(Scarlett Johansson) hunts the most dangerous criminals as part of the ministry of defense force team Section 9, run by chief Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano). Due to an accident only her brain survived and was embedded in a new artificial body, which gives her superhuman abilities. When the hacker Kuze (Michael Pitt) seems to be killing people working for the company that build her, Major begins to question what she knows about her accident and her past.”
The movie looks amazing. The creators managed to capture the world of Ghost in the Shell with the cyberpunk mix of Scifi and archaic Japan. Of course it reminds you of Blade Runner but the japanese theme is still distinct enough to set it apart. The citizens are a multi-cultural mix but the japanese roots are always visible.
And the sound, oh man the sound and music is really great. They too manage to mix sci fi with japanese folk music and create a really unique auditory experience.
Together they create a cyberpunk world we haven't seen since Blade Runner. This is truly a movie you want to see on the big screen.
The action is great, the fighting feels visceral, while still pg-13, and only once or twice you can actually tell when an actor/actress is animated in a fight scene. I also really liked the acting overall. The interactions between the characters a fun and although there are several times when you can tell, that there is a lot more backstory to be found in the source material, I never felt the characters were to flat or 1-dimensional. Especially the conversation between Major and her colleague Batou (Pilou Asbæk), while I never felt they are cut short, you just know this is only a small part of the conversation the are having in the anime.
The most interesting part of the movie however is when the movie explores philosophical topics. Major, being almost completely artificial, questions her humanity. Is a brain enough to still be called a human, when all else is a maschine? Over the course of the movie she begins to question if her scarce memories of her past are even real, since the engineers who build her, can see and potentially manipulate her brain and memories. These themes about the line between human and robot, live itself and what it means to be a human are what made Ghost in the Shell such a success and so beloved by the fans when the anime came out first and has inspired many other authors, books, tv-shows and movies since then.
But this is also the big problem of this movie. The anime came out in 1995 and many other movies took inspiration from it. So now, when Ghost in the came out, it had the great opportunity to innovate on those ideas and bring in new ones and explore new angles. Sadly the movie does neither and sticks very(too) closely to the source. This leads to the situation where, no matter how interesting and well done those ideas are realised, we have seens them all countless times in the past 20 years. And so the movie feels like a rehash of old ideas of other movies, when in fact those movies often had their ideas from Ghost in the Shell in the first place.
So overall I still like the movie and recommend you watch it. It's an enjoyable time with great style, great visuals and audio, and a fantastic cyberpunk world. I had a great time and think its a fun theatre experience, but it is not the revelation that you might have hoped for.
My rating: 7,5/10
