GHOST IN THE SHELL
Habitual ass-kicker Scarlett Johansson heads up this controversial version of the anime classic.
released OUT NOW! 2017 | 12 | Blu-ray (3d, 4K, standard)/ dVd/download/ VOd Director rupert sanders Cast scarlett Johansson, Michael Wincott, Michael Carmen Pitt, Takeshi Kitano
Dear Paramount, repeat after us: Ghost In The Shell is not RoboCop with boobies; Ghost In The Shell is not RoboCop with boobies; Ghost… Too late. They’ve made RoboCop with boobies.
The 1995 anime was a film ahead of its time, an unsettling look at a near-future in which the boundaries between man and machine have blurred to the point where humans are forced to ask serious existential questions about mind and body. This new film, on the other hand, feels woefully behind the times. From its desperate-to-be-Blade Runner cityscapes to its big-business-isevil subplot and its “I can’t trust my memories” angst it feels like Now That’s What I Call ’80s Sci-Fi.
It largely ignores the one element of the anime that could have made this a relevant movie; that the villain is an AI who hacks the human mind. That’s still a scary concept. Instead we get overfamiliar tropes about a human consciousness being housed in an artificial body. If that weren’t RoboCop enough, robotics company Hanka is basically OmniCorp and the armoured Tachikoma take on the ED-209 role, leaving Scarlett Johansson’s Major as pretty much RoboCop. And wherever you stand on casting Scarlett Johansson as an originally Asian character, the cringey in-story justification surely can only be seen as fanning the flames of the controversy.
Major is a reluctant cyborg, made part of an anti-terrorist group called Section 9, which is at the centre of a political tug of war between EVIL CORP™ and the government. While Major’s going through existential angst, a new cyber-terrorist, Kuze, is on a killing spree, using an MO she’s uniquely qualified to counter.
Kuze is less a villain, more a clumsy catalyst for Major to achieve self-determination. His evil schemes run out of steam about halfway through the film and he instead takes on the mantle of “Byronic vampire” – think True Blood’s Eric with access ports.
Visually, the film feels hit and miss. There are some decent fight scenes and disturbing images. But the bizarre body mods are rarely more than wallpaper. Whatever you think of Snow White And The Huntsman, director Rupert Sanders at least gave it a unifying aesthetic. But with Ghost he creates a garish pick ’n’ mix that’s as ugly as often as it’s beautiful.
It’s not a total disaster. But if you want a RoboCop remake, the RocoCop remake was more fun.
Extras The DVD has two talking-heads-and-clips featurettes (21 minutes) covering Section 9 personnel and the body mod themes. The Blu-ray adds a Making Of. An HMV two-disc exclusive adds two more featurettes and a director interview. Dave Golder
There’s an appearance by a basset hound one of the recurring motifs of Ghost In The Shell anime director Mamoru Oshii.
The garish pick ’n’ mix is as ugly as it is beautiful