The producers of this week's new Ghost In The Shell film must really believe nobody has seen its source material. That's the only way to enjoy this live-action reboot: oblivious to 1995's original anime film or its manga comic-book precursor. Scarlett Johansson runs around futuristic, CGI-filled worlds in a skin-tight outfit. She shoots guns, kicks faces, and beats the bad guys. Not bad.
But this pedestrian action movie looks nigh unbearable through the lens of the original series. Every bit of social commentary and science-fiction mystique that made the Japanese film and books so stunning has been wrung dry. Respect for the viewer goes into the garbage, replaced by an obnoxious, paint-by-numbers plot of good versus evil. And while I went into my screening ready to laugh off rumors of cast white-washing, I left the theater aghast at how blatantly that issue figured in the final product.
Major disappointment
When Ghost In The Shell reached theaters in 1995, it was one of the sci-fi film genre's only iconic combinations of high-action setpieces and "how tech influences our lives" plots. That, of course, changed once The Matrix entered the film lexicon, but Ghost In The Shell really nailed it first—and as an anime, it never quite reached the heights of popularity it deserved.
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