Here’s How a ‘Ghost in the Shell’ Sequel Could Totally Happen

I am new to the franchise and I was bored. The story here is an obscenely familiar smorgasbord of action-movie borrowings. “Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche) explains to her that only her brain survived some awful event or other and that it’s now in an artificial body, and Major then joins a counter-cyber-terrorism group called ‘Section 9”, hangs out with colleague Batou (Pilou Asbæk) and receives sometimes-psychic commands from boss Aramaki (as played by “Beat” Takeshi Kitano, the only person here speaking subtitled Japanese). Let us know what you think. There are moments where that works, especially in the physicality of Johansson’s walk and posture, but she never quite captures a believable balance. It’s impossible to discuss the movie’s troubled treatment of identity politics without spoiling some big reveals, but before we get into those, there are plenty of other things that make the live-action remake a disappointment. And while the film does look great-in an art style equally reminiscent of Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, and The Matrix that makes and otherwise dark and gray cyberpunk future pop with color-there just isn’t much reason to see this version of events unfold when they are merely replications of the source material. Some gunmen break in and start shooting, and Major arrives to fight them. Gone is the stranger-in-a-strange-land appeal of the Major’s efforts to navigate humanity; in their place is a bland, generic backstory that aims for tragic but keels over somewhere in the vicinity of laughable. At least that is the story she has been told. He keeps ranting that Major is a valuable investment, but if that’s the case, why wouldn’t Hanka want to study her and keep her safe as opposed to sending her out to where she’ll be shot at on a regular basis? Dr. Ouelet is very proud of Major, nearly maternal. After a bit of preamble about the creation of Major (a stunning display of CGI), we see her in action as she dives off a hotel roof and crashes into a party that has been taken over by terrorists. Where she is a robot with a human brain, he is a human with mechanical parts. The skit was about a perfume called “Complicit, the fragrance for the woman who could stop all this, but won’t”. It’s entertaining as a pretty action movie but really nothing more than that.

Thankfully, the film doesn’t focus just on that, as there’s a seemingly evil entity that’s slowly killing off scientists who worked on a secret project for the company bent on giving humans cybernetic bodies that will last for ages. That is a lot of changes, without even getting into the controversy of a largely non-Asian lead cast in this manga-inspired story set in futuristic Japan. “You can get really hands-on, there are really cool animal encounters, and you can support the conservation programme”.

The casting of Scarlett Johansson initially drew controversy because her hair and makeup appeared to try to make her look Asian. Rather, her brain belonged to a young Japanese woman, an anti-technology activist named Motoko Kusanagi – which just so happens to be Major’s name in the original manga and anime series.