Well, at least it looked great.
Ghost in the Shell, starring Scarlett Johansson, Pilou
Asbaek, Michael Pitt, Peter Ferdinando, and directed by Rupert Sanders. The film
is an adaptation of the graphic novel and anime movie of the same name. I went
into this film blind never having read or seen the anime. The story is set in a
future where robotics are part of everyday life. Individuals augment themselves
with cybernetic parts to become hybrids of machines and man. Scarlett Johansson’s character, Major, is the
first complete robotic hybrid where the entire body is machine and only the
mind is human. Ghost in the Shell tries to look at the complexities of what
makes people human while also telling a mystery of where Major came from. The
film unfortunately doesn’t succeed in doing either.
Let’s start with the positives for the movie. The film looks
absolutely stunning. Ghost in the Shell’s design is nothing short of brilliant,
and it’s what got me to go see the movie from the trailers. The city scape with
the holograms all around the city looks fantastic. The movie has a very 80’s
futuristic vibe, probably because original graphic novel came in 1989. It looks
somewhat like Blade Runner, but it has more of an empty world. The starkness of
the world ends up being another issue. There are hardly any people in the
world. There are a few street scenes with Major walking around with a good
number extras, but when there is an action scene on the street, or when she goes
to an apartment building it is empty. There are zero other people on camera
except those participating in the scene. This leads to the feeling of a dead world,
instead of one populated with people. It goes back to the movie being an actual
shell itself. Maybe this was the point the filmmaker was trying to make, but if
so it didn’t come across well.
The action in the film is another bright spot. Scarlett Johansson
is no stranger to action, and she does well again here. Here performance
overall is good, but the character development in the story is a problem. With
the lack of character growth, the good action isn’t enough to be engaged in the
movie. Each piece of action is exciting, but there isn’t enough to offset the
lack of pacing. The character Aramanki who is the lead of section nine seems
interesting. He has a great small action piece towards the end of the film, but
it doesn’t mean much for the story because he hasn’t been developed. He apparently
is supposed to be an impressive and terrifying government agent, but there is
little to nothing to establish this fact, other than he is the lead of the agency.
The action he has is great, along with everyone else who is in the film. The
issue is the action wasn’t enough to make the film enjoyable overall.
The goal the story Ghost in the Shell was trying achieve seems
to have missed. If the film was supposed to be just a fun science fiction
action movie with an interesting protagonist it didn’t deliver because there
wasn’t enough action. The movie also takes itself too seriously for this to be
the main purpose of the story. The film seems to want us to examine what it
means to be human, but the character of Major isn’t developed enough for us to
care if she is human or not. Maybe it is in the anime and graphic novel,
because the framework for this concept is in the movie, it just isn’t executed.
One thing which always bugs me in films is the fade to black, and cut to one year
later, which they do in this film after Major awakens in her new body. After the
jump in time she is suddenly an amazing operative going on missions. They could
have shown some struggles and training scenes which would have given some
development of how she adjusted to her new body. Instead we are dropped into
what her life is like with no context of how she got there.
The story overall is strangely paced and not put together
well. Again, maybe for those who know the source material it made more sense,
but for a person jumping in it didn’t There is a scene close to the start of
the story where Major takes an action and others object to it. They object, and
yet they don’t really try to stop her and the scene is strangely shot and
acted. It seemed like there should have been more resistance to her attempting
the action, instead of the jilted, wait stop no don’t do that which ends up
happening in the scene. There are many instances of this in the film were an
event should be meaningful for the story, but the lack of buildup or the
execution is lacking. There doesn’t seem to be any heart or soul in the
movie. There is a good story in this material, the framing for it is in this film.
The movie just forgot to execute on the actual substance.
Ghost in the Shell while fun to look at and
entertaining when action is happening was a letdown overall. I can’t imagine
fans of the original source material being happy with this result, and I don’t
think those who aren’t will appreciate it either. The film is not worth seeing,
but if it’s on cable for free you might try to wade through it. The movie could
have been good because of the content being discussed, but it missed the mark.
I think I’m going to check out the original anime to see how it’s executed.
Comment and let me know what you thought if you saw Ghost in the Shell, and
what is another good anime I should watch since I haven’t seen any.
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