Classic anime brought to life

‘Ghost in the Shell’ swings for the fences

It’s difficult to overstate the influence Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 anime classic, “Ghost in the Shell,” had on the Wachowski siblings’ 1999 breakthrough hit “The Matrix.”

I was unfamiliar with the influence, having seen “Shell” only once before during a brief fling with anime in the mid-90s. So “The Matrix” seemed new to me. It took watching the original “Ghost in the Shell” again, in anticipation of its remake, to reinforce just how much the Wachowskis cribbed from it.

“Jacking in” to a universal network. Arachnid robots that hate your face. “Agents” that can control your actions. Bullet-time-ridden martial arts battles. The idea of digital souls expressed in retro, monochrome-green, cathode ray symbols. It’s all there.

But then “Ghost in the Shell” was always just a William Gibson-esque amalgam of “Robocop” meets cyberpunk James Bond. In the realms of genre cinema, technology, literature, music, and art, cultural appropriation has always, thankfully, been a two-way street.

With his live-action origin-story version of “Ghost in the Shell,” director Rupert Sanders (“Snow White and the Huntsman”) blurs the line between faithful aesthetics and simplified adaptation. 

Major (Scarlett Johansson) is a cyborg super-agent for Section 9, led by Chief Aramaki (Takeshi “Beat” Kitano), one of a group of competing counterterrorist organizations tasked with policing a dystopian neo-Japanese megalopolis where almost everyone is either a cyborg or festooned with cybernetic implants that can be hacked to control their actions and memories. 

When rogue cyborg Kuze (Micheal Pitt) begins knocking off the scientists behind the Weapon X-style program that created Major, the ruthless head of Hanka Robotics (Peter Ferdinado) commandeers Section 9 to get to the bottom of it all. 

Major teams up with her trusty sidekick, Batou (Pilou Asbæk), and what begins as a mission to assassinate a corporate terrorist leads the puppet soldiers down a rabbit hole to the truth of their own existence.

While diehard fans might take umbrage with changes that alter and rearrange the often convoluted plot of the original into something more digestible for American crowds, “Ghost in the Shell” is a semi-faithful adaptation with its heart firmly in the right place.

Sanders, from a script by Jamie Moss, William Wheeler, and Ehren Kruger (“Transformers”), transposes the stylized anime to the real world, the densely packed skyline of Hong Kong digitally enhanced to the 2029 future, through which his camera sweeps and loops, recreating iconic shots (the building dive) and whole set pieces (the water battle) with respectful fidelity. Between his visual dexterity, stunning FX, and the detailed production design from Andrew Niccol regular Jan Roelfs (“Gattaca”), the look of “Ghost in the Shell” is a slickly state-of-the-art stunner. The score from Clint Mansell and Lorne Balfe wraps it all in an atmospheric aural landscape that reinforces the Blade Runner vibe of this world.  

It would have been nice to see someone like Rinko Kikuchi in the role of Major and I do sympathize with the whitewashing argument—to a degree. There are certain realities that go with making a 100-plus million dollar action movie, one being the need for a bankable star. Between this and her Black Widow, Johansson is one of the few women succeeding in the rarefied realm of ass-kicking action stars. While I’ve never found her to have much range, she sells the fight sequences with concussive grace, and confidently inhabits the character. 

A hell of a lot more fun than I expected, “Ghost in the Shell,” while not a home run, certainly swings for the fences.

For more from Joe, read his review of ‘A United Kingdom.’