Johansson’s ‘Ghost in the Shell’ a shadow of its origins
Despite the beautiful eyepopping world it creates, the sci-fi film Ghost in the Shell is a defective mess with lifeless characters, missed chances for thematic exploration and a minefield of political incorrectness.
Directed by Rupert Sanders ( Snow White and the Huntsman),
this Ghost ( out of four; rated ★★✰✰ PG-13; in theaters Friday) is a shell of its groundbreaking source material — the 1989 Japanese manga as well as the 1995 animated cult hit — that casts Scarlett Johansson as its primary cyborg warrior and counterterrorism expert, The Major.
She’s one of the primary weapons for Section 9, a government task force created to protect a neo-noir metropolis from cybercriminals. This futuristic society is filled with people who’ve had cybernetic enhancements from Hanka Robotics: Some for reasons as critical as fixing injured eyes or as foolish as increasing alcohol tolerance. Major’s latest mission with Batou (Pilou Asbaek) and their crew is to stop the mysterious hooded Kuze (Michael Pitt) from taking out and hacking the souped-up brains of scientists connected to a secret Hanka project.
There’s a definite disconnect: The tech-boosted folks have lost some of their humanity, while memories of Major’s pre-robotic existence are coming to the fore. “You are more than a woman,” Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche) tells her cyborg charge, though Major still yearns to learn more about her past — a path that has her questioning everything.
Ghost admirably raises themes of identity, amorality and what makes for a life worth living, though too often reverts to unsatisfying action set pieces before digging too deep.
More impressive is the Asian-influenced city with giant dog holograms, massive and blindingly bright billboards that Times Square only wishes it had, and large digitized fish swimming at eye level among its denizens. Jess Hall’s cinematography is a wonder that creates a realistic take on Japanese anime, and the esoteric idea of hacking is ingeniously brought to horror-movie life using faceless black bodies creepily and mindlessly attacking Johansson.
The screenplay definitely switches things up from the 1990s film, yet music cues and certain scenes borrow heavily from the previous Shell works. And that makes the fact that non-Asian actors are shut out of the prime-time parts even stranger — only Japanese acting legend “Beat” Takeshi Kitano is an integral player as Section 9’s chief.
Johansson’s role in particular has been a continuous point of whitewashing backlash, and Ghost manages to double down on those concerns. Add the killer robot geishas, and it’s not a good look.
Between Lucy and a bunch of Marvel movies playing Black Widow, Johansson doesn’t need to prove her action-movie bona fides — she can wail on dudes and break out a flying takedown with the best of them. It’s both compliment and detriment that her Major is too robotic at times: A certain sterility is wanted, but her character lacks the needed humanity to connect with audiences, though a relationship she kindles near the end at least leads to an emotional climax.
Not that it satisfies the deadly dull slog before it. All in all, Ghost
in the Shell is in desperate need of an upgrade: The interface might be cool, but the inner workings just don’t compute.