Ghost in the Shell

Rupert Sanders’ Ghost in the Shell is a live action remake of Masamune Shirow’s manga and Mamoru Oshii’s animé film of the same name. The story of Ghost in the Shell (or GITS for short, which has a totally different meaning in the UK) takes place in a cyberpunk world where technology is the dominant force and cybernetic enhancements are the norm. The story revolves around Motoko Kusanagi, otherwise simply known as the Major, a cyborg in the (mandatory) employment of the secret police department Section 9. As a cyborg whose brain resides in an otherwise robotic body, the Major sets out to eliminate international conspiracies and terrorist threats while dealing with the fragmented memory of her past life. While the manga had a somewhat light-hearted tone, the well-known 1995 animé adaptation found itself with an ontological theme in some rather talkative scenes, not helped in the original English dub by Mimi Woods’ dry monotone.

Scarlett Johansson (known by some of her fans as ScarJo, which sounds like the nickname of a pirate) takes the role of the Major. There was a controversy around casting Johansson in the role of a character who was originally Japanese, but we will not discuss that at great length in this article (see Cyborgs, Race & Animé Adaptations). Recently, marketing for the film released a Ghost in the Shell internet meme generator, and non-fans of the source material used it to mock and shame the film, Johansson, and other actors who have been previously associated with ‘whitewashing’. Yet no one ever brings up Samara Morgan from The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002) or Chris Adams from The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960). Frankly the whole racial controversy has proven tedious and pointless. Essentially, this is an American remake of a Japanese source, Johansson being cast was to compensate for the film’s prolonged time in development, and the majority of Japan doesn't have a problem with it.

Never ask people to meme your things for you.

Scarlett Johansson’s portrayal of the Major, known in this version as Mira Killian, is not unlike that of the animé. The Major is a stoic type. Johansson’s performance is unexpressive, which is intentional considering she’s supposed to be a robot. One thing you’ll notice is how little Scarlett blinks. Seriously, those eyes are huge. That’s not to say she’s emotionless; she just performs through subtle facial expressions, appropriate to the character, and is not without attitude. It is an improvement on her performance in Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014) where the character’s lack or loss of emotion was conveyed through monotone. Then again, there’s not very much about the character to like, at least not for a while. Her exchanges with her partner Batou (Pilou Asbæk), and later with animals like Batou’s stray dogs and a mysterious cat, represent most of the very few times the character acts human.

Batou is the closest to a saving grace in the ensemble of this movie. He has his friendship with Mira, he is serious but sympathetic, and Asbæk, while not as tough sounding as Richard Epcar, does emote where allowed, such as the scene where he is injured. Elsewhere, the cast is mostly lifeless. Togusa (Chin Han) is practically void of personality and contributes nothing to the story, unlike his animé counterpart who was a useful part of the team along with Batou and the Major. If an assassin were to put a gun to his head, why should one be concerned for him when he has no impact on the story or the audience? Then there’s the villain Cutter (Peter Ferdinando), our typical ruthless corporate scumbag with no depth. Uninteresting.

Leading the team of stoic faces at Section 9 is Chief Daisuke Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano, a.k.a. Beat Takeshi), who does vaguely resemble the character’s temperament from the animé. The confusing thing is Aramaki is the only major figure in the movie that speaks Japanese whereas everyone else speaks English. Yes, Sanders meant to make the setting an “international world”, hence the multi-national cast, but having them converse in several languages at once only serves to take the audience out of the movie. And then there’s the mysterious cyborg Kuze (Michael Pitt), our not-Puppetmaster for the film. It’s hard to know if this is supposed to be a sympathetic villain or not. His speech is hard to understand, as he tends to mumble and his cybernetic voice skips, he keeps to the shadows, acts uncomfortably and is relatively expressionless. And, whereas the Puppetmaster’s goal in the animé was to achieve the characteristics of a living being to compliment the sentience it had developed, Kuze only wants revenge. For a world full of brain augmentations, that’s quite uninventive.

There are a lot of callbacks to the source material, like the hacked garbage men and the cyborgs with the fingers that transform to type at super speed. They recreate the opening sequence of the animé almost shot for shot (with an alternative, almost completely instrumental version of the Japanese wedding chant that accompanied the scene). In fact there are quite a few scenes done that way. Such as the scene with the Major and Batou on the boat, and the iconic part where the Major tries to tear into the spider tank, morphing her muscles and damaging her own body under the strain, although if the filmmakers were going for an existential theme then they may be missing the significance of the muscles becoming more masculine, or of giving nipples (which the remake removes) to a cyborg who can’t reproduce. If the trailer drew you in with the promise of lesbian kissing, prepare to be disappointed. Honestly, the scene in question is more about Mira envying sensation because her cyborg body lacks the sense of touch. Still, the scene is abruptly short, and if it’s supposed to be a story about identity, why not show the Major exploring her sexuality? It feels like the filmmakers wanted to have these sorts of themes, but the film doesn’t take the time to explore them in any way that informs the plot or protagonist, at least not in any thought-provoking way.

These scenes are put in a different order too, and thus they don’t serve the purpose of the scenes they mimic. The boat scene, shown relatively early in the animé, was used to show one of Kusanagi’s interests, she and Batou enjoying the perks of being cyborgs, and Kusanagi venting about her identity. Here, it’s simply a junction from the previous scene to the next. Most damningly shot-for-shot of all is the fight scene where the Major takes down a mind-hacked criminal while she’s invisible. The cinematography and choreography is almost exactly the same. One of the shots, a close-up of the invisible Major’s head from the point of view of the opponent, doesn’t work in live action because they linger on the shot seconds too long, meaning the guy would have plenty of time to react. And the funny thing? She actually turns visible again before she finishes him off! Yes, it’s meant to be some kind of dramatic reveal and it lets Johansson show a little anger while she’s taking him down, but it doesn’t make sense for her to give up her best advantage in the fight.

As a cyberpunk movie there are interesting visuals. The effects like with the geisha robots, cyber-enhanced people, spider tank and hallucinations, and the costumes, including cybernetic implants, are well made. Admittedly, some parts of the CGI stick out like sore thumbs, like when Kuze holds a piece of Mira’s face in his fingers – and why is the section of her face that he takes off shaped like that? Some of the sets greatly resemble that of the animé, like Mira’s apartment and the buildings around where the invisible Mira fights the hacked assailant. In some cases though, the visual aesthetic can hurt one’s eyes. Not to complain that some of the environments are darkly lit, but the use of colour and soft or neon light can take one out of the tone this film is supposed to have. Now, one can admit that the use of neon lights is just typical of cyberpunk aesthetic and intentionally uncomfortable. The massive holograms filling the city’s skyline are an eyesore, and sometimes you can’t help but look at the gadgetry and think, what does this technology do? Why do cybernetics surgeons have holographic sound bars on their goggles? Did Skrillex design them? And this is a small point, but why are Batou’s dogs computer-generated? It’s a basset hound, not an alien.

Plus, there are no exploding heads anymore when the Major takes out her targets. Why not go all out? The film takes all the grit out and goes for a slick look instead. The action scenes aren’t all that engaging anyway. Not for lack of action, but perhaps because the audience can have so little investment in these characters. Another reason is because some are just laughable. Take for example when a gang of thugs is shooting machine guns at Batou, who is hardly even moving, and all the bullets miss him. Apparently the Yakusa have worse aim than the Stormtroopers from Star Wars!

The pacing of the film is quite disappointing. The editing lacks structure in a lot of places. In the first action scene, for example, one location jump too many reveals the entity behind the attack and betrays any sense of mystery the animé had. The film is not as atmospheric; the editing and pacing is too frequent and the music tries too much to be dramatic.

Speaking of a lack of mystery, ambiguity in regard to the Major’s identity goes right down the drain. The film actually reveals who Mira was in her past life. I’ll give you a hint: she was Japanese. This is just adding insult to the injury of not giving your existentialist subtext the focus to make it important. It’s far too easy. It goes against anything clever the animé devised. And the worst part of it is, after all defenders of the casting have said to debunk the cries of “argle flargle blargle: racism”, the issue is compounded when Johansson’s character starts referring to herself with her Japanese name. Was this revelation done in response to the backlash of non-fans of Ghost in the Shell? It’s a robot body, yes, but at the same time it’s almost like the filmmakers are confirming that they put a white face on a Japanese character! This whole non-issue has served only to diminish whatever enjoyment of the film one might have had!

Even forgetting the ordeal that has lingered around this film like a bad smell, the live action remake of Ghost in the Shell is plain disappointing. Even if one may have liked the representations of Mira and Batou, at least when they’re around each other, most if not all of the “characters” are a bunch of forgettable sticks in the mud with little to no reason for the audience to get invested in them. The plot is weak, the tone is generic, and its intended ontological themes prove ultimately pointless. There are too many questionable things such as choices in the aesthetic and story that take the audience out of the experience. It’s a real shame that the project has struggled for seven years to get into production, only to be met with ridicule and leave an uncharismatic impression.