a GHOST IN THE SHELL musing

I finally saw the original animated film GHOST IN THE SHELL only a month ago, and was quite impressed with its take on technological morality, considering it was released 1995. It delved deep into those questions and asked them in a satisfying way without giving answers to let the audience steer the conversation. This new live-action iteration attempts to raise the same questions, but doesn’t comment on how technology in the past 22 years has changed the topic or further the discussion past the animated film’s. When it tries to, it ends up being cliché, trite lessons that we’ve seen before. Other than that, this movie is damn beautiful.

There are plenty of shots faithfully composed and reminiscent of the 1995 movie, and the actors do a good job of portraying their respective characters’ physicalities. Scarlett Johansson does a hell of a job being a believable robot/machine/cyborg person, and can unexpectedly do blank slate faces real well. Most of the other characters don’t have much of an arc, but they don’t need to, since this is about Johansson’s character, Major. They add a new dimension to Major in this movie, and it is actually very emotionally affecting, since the actress who portrays an additional character is so natural.

The cast is pretty serviceable, nothing new of great substance is added, but everything is shot gorgeously. The rare action sequence isn’t interesting much at all, and cheap thrills are relied on to keep that audience member who’s looking for an action/thrilling movie on their feet. In the end, it adds up to a compelling futuristic shallow moralistic mystery.

RATING: DIDN'T WASTE MY MONEY

(Refer to my rating system HERE!)