Visually beautiful

ThIS movie had a tricky task from the start. It’s a beloved Japanese franchise that has spawned numerous manga, TV series and even films in its own country, and while it has had Western translations and adaptions, this was the first go at a full feature-length live action film.

A lot could have gone wrong with it, and it didn’t get off to the best start by completely whitewashing the cast, even reportedly using digital effects to make Scarlett Johansson’s protagonist Mira Killian ‘more Asian’ to counter these criticisms … which inevitably led to further vitriol.

Still, Rupert Sanders’ film is respectful and successful as an adaptation that strives to capture the same intellectual conversation about identity, ownership and consent that are presented in the source material.

The best thing Ghost in the Shell has going for it is that it doesn’t strive to be a frame-for-frame remake of Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 anime film of the same name. Instead, it draws on elements from the wealth of original stories. In doing so, Sanders captures the Ghost in the Shell aesthetic and experience and is able to translate the tone for a modern audience.

In this take on the story, we meet Killian when she is being brought in to get her cybernetic body (an excuse to get a glorious recreation of the iconic shelling sequence). Events then jump to a year later when she is an active member of the government-run group Section 9. While on a mission, she encounters a mysterious terrorist hacker named Kuze (Pitt) and begins to experience glitches that seem to hint at a bigger mystery surrounding her.

Johansson has a challenging role in Killian, and she works hard to have her stand apart from her enhanced human counterparts, holding her body in a different way and walking with intent. As a cyborg, she’s not concerned about how she looks or how people interpret her; she’s all business. Pitt’s Kuze is similarly stylised to be set apart from his human and enhanced counterparts, and he presents an interesting foil for Killian.

Aside from some Johansson’s excellent performance under the aforementioned fan pressure and some thrilling action sequences, the film falls fairly flat. It too often dials itself back to simplicity. The villain could and should have had more depth to bring some of the movie’s themes to fruition in the ending, and Killian’s struggles with identity didn’t get the sort of emphatic conclusion they needed.

The plodding second act tries to get deeper into these problems and glitches she is contending with, but it handles it sloppily and you feel every minute of its two-hour runtime.

The film’s biggest problems lie in its finale, though. For all that it focuses on more intellectual themes, the film doesn’t stick the landing and isn’t clear on what its actual message is. Many of these unsubtle talking points show a lack of faith in the audience understanding what is going on, and the ending is a bit too cut-and-dried after some of the messier conversations it brings up.

Story problems aside, Ghost in the Shell is visually beautiful. It’s bold science fiction, envisioning a fully developed futuristic Neo Tokyo-like New Port City that at once is faithful to the source material but also takes it one step farther.

Comparisons to Blade Runner’s immersive, dirty future are a compliment, and some of this movie’s best scenes are simple world-building when characters are walking the city streets, catching up with vendors and feeding street dogs. This is a world that feels real and lived-in instead of cold and unpopulated as some other science fiction films have struggled with depicting.

As an adaptation of an iconic and beloved source material, Ghost in the Shell understands what makes this franchise special and does a good job translating that to the big screen.

It looks great and doesn’t feel like it’s just copying the anime and manga’s aesthetic, instead capturing what makes them stand apart to begin with.

The story stumbles quite badly, though, which may put off newcomers to the franchise. 

Showing in: Cineco, Seef II, Wadi Al Sail, Saar and Novo.