Ghost in the Shell (2017)

Ghost in the Shell (2017)

Dir. Rupert Sanders

If I was in a charitable mood I'd maybe feel a little sorry for Hollywood. Why? Because it had been ripping-off Mamoru Oshii's anime adaptation of the original Ghost in the Shell manga for about two decades by the time their version of the story came out.

As a result, instead of looking original and excitingly new to modern film audiences, it looked simply like it was ripping-off all the movies that had ripped-off Oshii's film.

Some days you just can't win. Not that I'm suggesting it in any way deserves to win, it really is a bad film, for many, many reasons, but it's fair to say that it was kind of boned before it even began. And then the terrible casting nailed the heavy coffin lid even tighter.

But I'm going to back up a little. As stated, I'm not feeling charitable, but I am feeling fair. With that in mind, I'll wholeheartedly try to judge it on its own merits, touching a little on how successfully it adapts ideas from its source text.

Unfortunately, those merits begin and end with the depiction of the city in which the action takes place. It's beautiful and believable; corporate advertising probably will evolve into the giant, inescapable neon hell that tethers itself to the buildings and pollutes views of the night sky.

Everything else, however, is either awful or bordering on the same. Rupert Sanders, the director of this version of GitS, may have had the passion, but he didn't translate it into a well-rounded or cohesive experience onscreen. Although, the script has numerous problems, the casting is appalling, and the editing is a joke, so it would be wrong to lay the blame on any one person. How a movie is assembled in the editing room plays a significant role in how it flows and how it affects a viewer. A director who doesn't have final cut deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Of those three crucial aspects, script, casting, and editing, I'll comment on the first two:

From a basic starting point, its biggest influence is the aforementioned Oshii movie. Both adaptations draw from just a small part of the original Masamune Shirow source text. The live action version also draws heavily from the Stand Alone Complex TV Series. It takes a character from the latter and attempts to make them relevant to the story of the former... kind of. The result is a story that's mostly surface, dumbed-down and left wanting at every turn. Any deeper concerns that could've added weight to the crappy performances were either excised from the final shooting script or not even considered. What it boils down to is the story of a cyborg and some stolen memories - it's basically a B-Movie plot with a Hollywood budget.

Please don't misunderstand, I'm not dissing B-Movies, I love a lot of what B-Movies have to offer, but in the script department some of them are little more than a single idea stretched to 90 minutes. Often, it's what they do with characters and feelings that make them more than the sum of their parts. Those concerns, too, are something that live action GitS fails to get right.

The casting was controversial for various reasons. Personally, I feel that Scarlett Johansson was the wrong choice for Kusanagi not because she isn't Asian but because she doesn't have the nuance an actor needs to wordlessly communicate the contemplative inner-feelings that outwardly define the Kusanagi character; unless, of course, this version of the character was supposed to be an emotionless, blank, robotic nothing, in which case she fuggin nailed it.

Kusanagi's relationship with her teammates is another tool in the arsenal of characterisation, but the remaining Section 9 members are even more vapid than the Major. They play a minor role, at best; there when a task needs doing and then gone - trained chimps could probably do their jobs just as well. There's no feeling that the people onscreen are acting as a team. If the intent was to show that Kusanagi was unable to fit in, it could've been implemented better. So too could the motivations of both protagonists and antagonist(s). There was no emotional drive whatsoever.

- Mattresses for cyborgs are kinda weird -

The recreation of some notable scenes from the anime may well have been a simple case of fan-service, but that's okay. The problem is that including them in the film effectively encourages fans to make direct comparisons, which doesn't help the final product at all because the live action recreations are often clunky and badly timed. I applaud the sentiment, but serving as the crutch that they are perhaps did as much harm as good. Nope, some days you just can't win.

I like to end lengthy posts on a positive note, but in this instance it'll seem like damning with false praise: if the film manages to be a gateway for people previously unfamiliar with GitS to discover the joys of the wider franchise, then it'll be a success, of sorts. In addition, its failure to ignite the box office is maybe a good thing, too. It may stall (or even kill off) the planned live action Akira adaptation, because in all likelihood Hollywood will cock it up just as bad.

TLDR: Ghost in the Shite.