Ghost in the Shell is about seeing CGI’ed naked Scarlett Johansson, which is great. It is also about someone who doesn’t feel quite right in their body, which is apt. Ghost in the Shell has all the pieces of a sci-fi blockbuster, but never quite gels together into something special, and is just serviceable fare that befits a March release.
The ghost in question is Major (Johansson), an elite crime fighting robot with a human soul put in place by Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche). She and her partner Batou (Pilou Asbaek) police Tokyo with lethal efficiency, keeping people from being hacked by the deadly Kuze (Michael Pitt). However, Major’s investigation of Kuze leads her to question the actions of Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano) and Cutter (Peter Ferdinando) of the Hanka corporation who created her.
Visuals and action in Ghost in the Shell are pretty great. The futuristic Tokyo looks amazing, with magical colors and computer images trying to sell you things. Great effort went into designing the costumes, language and locations to make it feel like a world that turned people into computers (for example, cosmetic surgeries are called upgrades). The sets range from trippy and awe inspiring to really creepy and something out of an Eli Roth horror movie. The action sequences are varied enough to keep them interesting; she uses invisibility for stealth on occasion, or she will occasionally jump in the air and fire machine guns at a giant spider tank. The use of mirrors, glitches, and reflections give a blurred reality to the story and quickly establish Major might have some unreliability in her narration. The pieces are all there to make Ghost in the Shell be something truly magnificent and carry real weight.
However, the movie suffers from Ender’s Game and John Carter syndrome. Like those two films (John Carter inspired Star Wars, Ender’s Game inspired Halo and game based learning), Ghost in the Shell, the Japanese manga, can draw royalties from The Matrix, Inception, and Dark City for all the themes the stories present. However, those movies came out first, thus diminishing the impact of things like hacking people, dreams, or soul transfer that Ghost in the Shell the movie presents. In general, Ghost in the Shell is a potpourri of great concepts explored in science fiction, but the themes are given no additional thought and contribute nothing to the sci-fi world. It’s as if the writer was like, OK, here’s what we need: shadow government, creepy robots and robot tinkering, confused but noble central character, because all great sci-fi movies have those. But none of the 3 credited screenplay writers though to say, now how do they link together? Concepts without proper execution lead to scenes that should inspire emotional impact but leave the viewer like the robots in this movie, lifeless. Even ScarJo cannot add much emotional heft, cause the story strips her of any charisma.
Who is Ghost in the Shell for? It appears people who want an intro to science fiction. As an avid sci-fi movie viewer, I was left cold. The biggest disappointment will be for Ghost in the Shell fans; I encountered MANY pissed off readers of the manga that HATED the story because it messes with the mythology in bland ways. Also, if you set a movie in Japan, just have everyone speak Japanese instead of just the Japanese characters: that’s just insulting.