*Spoiler Free*

This film received a lot of negative press from the moment it was announced due to the fact that the classic Japanese animé now starred Scarlett Johansson as the lead character; Major Motoko Kusanagi – a very VERY Japanese sounding name to give a western actress, unfortunately the movie gave her a completely different name in this, to help account for this fact. This did not go over too well with fans. I myself am a fan, not the movies (I think the first film is a little bit pony, which I know is a very controversial thing to say) but for the TV series; Ghost in the Shell – The Standalone Complex. This was 2 series of twenty-plus episodes lasting 30 minute, which aired in the early-mid 2000s. It was an excellent mixture of action and suspense as the team investigate a web of deceit that actually had you guessing all the way through it. Not only that but it was cleverly written discussing really interesting themes, such as the effects of cybernetic enhancements, and the ability to live on through a machine after the body has died (and then have a bastard 5 – 10 minute segment at the end involving the stupid and annoyingly voiced Tachikoma Spider Tank).
While the film might have touched on some of these moments (creating a mixture of both the original movie, its sequels and the TV Show), it was, at the end of the day, merely a popcorn flick. Most people will go to see this for its action sequence and cool digital effects, which were really good and fit in nicely with the cyberpunk theme, but never quite reaching what made the original (or the TV series in my case) that little bit special.

Anyway, the story of the film was probably the most enjoyable aspect of the film, but only because it reminded me how good The Standalone Complex was and made me want to rewatch it. The antagonist (played by Broadwalk Empire’s Michael Pitt) was also very good. His character helped mold the story into what it was and gave it the depth that you would expect from a piece of work in Ghost in the Shell universe, even if his character’s personal story did fall a bit flat towards the end.
The overall story and even most of the scenes are borrowed heavily from all aspects of the series. I noticed scenes taken directly from the original film, the TV series, and Innocence (the film after the original that is not canon with the TV series, which is, in itself, a sequel to the original), all of which were excellently carried across and didn’t ruin them in anyway. So for that, Ghost in the Shell did very well in my eyes.

Johansson I thought was okay as the Major, however I never truly believed that she had grasped the deep character that she was suppose to play. I felt the film makers had mainly cast her to wear a tight fitting bodysuit and splash about in a CGI intoxicated fight sequence. She was good enough in the role of a well-trained soldier performing kickass wall-running and shooting manoeuvres, which is something we have seen her do many times before, but for a consciousness trapped and confused inside the body of a machine with no history of her past, reprogrammed as a killing machine, I didn’t feel as if she really captured the magic of the Major, but of course this could be down to being a big fan of series and so someone with no knowledge of it would enjoy her performance a bit more.
Anyone who has seen it would know that the Major is only one of the main characters. Togusa, the only character who does not have any major cybernetic enhancements – effectively making him the only real human character, was in the film (I am pretty sure anyway), but he is nothing but a background character who only has a few lines of dialogue. Of course I understand that in less than two hours it is difficult to include everyone, but being a major character in the series, most of the time the protagonist, it is sad to see him sidelined.
The only other two characters worth mentioning are Batou and Chief Aramaki; both important characters from the series that I felt were well represented in this, so there is no faults there. Both characters engage in some enjoyable scenes, both dialogue and action based.
The other characters were just nobodies that disappeared into the background and could have easily been cannon fodder. Saito was always my favourite, but other than one little scene, I don’t even remember him being in it. As with Togusa, mentioned above, I do not blame the film-makers for this. They did what they could with the limited amount of time they had, and chose to focus on the Major, which is what I would have done if I had written the film. If they had chose to go into detail into every character, then it would have been terrible.

The action sequences were well done. Whether they were a shoot-out in a geisha tea-house or a brawl in a body of water beneath shanty retro-futuristic looking apartment buildings (a scene taken and copies brilliantly from the original movie) the fight sequences did what they needed to do; defeat the bad-guys and do it as Matrix-like as possible (which is ironic as the Matrix drew inspiration from the original Ghost in the Shell).

This might read like I really did enjoy the film, but I stand by my earlier comment that at the end of the day it is nothing but a throwaway popcorn flick that you will watch once and then never watch again. A lot of people told me that they were disappointed with this, and so I decided against rushing out to the cinema and watching it. Although I believe that if you have heard a lot of negative stuff, or read negative reviews, then you go into the film with the mindset that it is going to be rubbish. I was the same with Batman V Superman. I had heard nothing but bad things and then when I finally got around to watching it, I didn’t mind it (upon reflection it was bad, but not as bad as everyone made out). This is exactly how I felt with Ghost in the Shell. It had little nods towards the original, as well as the sequels and TV shows that followed it, as well as having decent actions sequences and cool fight scenes that linger in your cyberbrains for a short while afterwards, but eventually they become small lines of code in a script that becomes forgettable in time.

While it is not going to set the world on fire, fans of cyberpunk (such as Blade Runner) and other similar sci-fi action films (like the Matrix or Equilibrium) would get a kick out of seeing Ghost in the Shell, even some of the fans of the series would enjoy watching it for the most part, even if for the most part they would be comparing it. With the bar set low, the only way is up, and with that mindset you will quite like the Americanised reboot of a classic animé. Just be glad that the Spider Tanks don’t talk.