Ghost in the Shell (2017)

Official trailer

Ghost in the Shell is the live-action adaptation of Masamune Shirow’s manga and the later animated films and television series. Rupert Sanders directed. Jamie Moss, William Wheeler, and Ehren Kruger wrote. Scarlett Johansson plays Major Mira Killian, a cybernetic counter-terrorism operative whose human brain has been transplanted into a fully synthetic body.

Pilou Asbæk plays Batou, her partner. Michael Pitt plays Kuze, the antagonist whose own cybernetic body has been failing and who has been hunting executives of the Hanka Robotics corporation.

Takeshi Kitano plays Chief Daisuke Aramaki of Section 9.

Juliette Binoche plays Dr. Ouelet, the scientist who designed the Major. Peter Ferdinando plays Cutter, the corporate antagonist. The plot follows the Major’s investigation of Kuze and the eventual revelation that she was originally a Japanese teenage girl whose memories the corporation that built her body erased.

I had a better time with this than its reputation suggests I should. The city is gorgeous, Johansson is committed, and Kitano walks off with every scene he’s in. My reservation is the same one most people have: it looks like Ghost in the Shell and thinks like a standard action picture, and after the 1995 film that’s a real step down.

The film made approximately one hundred and seventy million dollars worldwide on a one hundred and ten million dollar budget. It was a commercial disappointment given the studio’s expectations. The reviews at release were mixed to negative. The film has divided opinions across the years.

Some viewers consider it a visually accomplished but narratively shallow adaptation. Other viewers, including viewers familiar with the source material’s complex publication history, consider it a competent contemporary take on a property that’s been continuously reinterpreted since 1989.

The Visual Identity

The film’s principal achievement is the production design.

Jan Roelfs and the visual effects team rendered the future Tokyo of the source material with heavy fidelity to the manga and animated films while extending the world for a live-action format. The skyscraper-scale holographic advertisements. The wet, neon-soaked streets. The skyline that combines traditional Japanese architecture with extreme cyberpunk verticality. The optical camouflage suits. The augmented bodies of the characters. The visual world is the foundation of the film and is the element that’s aged best in the years since release.

Jess Hall shoots the city in wide compositions that let the audience take it in. The opening, with the Major on a hotel balcony in a thermoptic suit, is the sequence I’d point to if somebody asked why this film deserves an 8. It’s held in long takes that let me follow the action without fragmentation, and it looks like the thing the source material had been reaching for since 1989.

The Casting Controversy

The casting of Scarlett Johansson as the Major was the subject of real controversy at release. The source material’s character is named Motoko Kusanagi, a Japanese woman. The film initially names its character Mira Killian and only later in the runtime reveals that she was Motoko before her memory erasure. The casting was widely criticized as whitewashing. The defense was that the source material has explicitly addressed the artificial body’s relationship to its original occupant since 1989 and that the Major’s identity has always been philosophically complicated.

The third-act reveal that the Major was originally Japanese is the film’s structural response to the casting controversy. The reveal is partly successful and partly defensive. The defense is that the film is making an argument about cultural identity and bodily form. The criticism is that the production used a non-Japanese actress in a Japanese role and used the plot to defend the casting choice retroactively. The casting decision is the film’s most-discussed external context.

Both readings have merit, and I still come down on the critical side. The late news that the Major was Motoko all along underlines the casting complaint, and I winced at how neatly the script tries to fold a casting decision into the plot and call it theme.

The Source Material

The Ghost in the Shell property includes Masamune Shirow’s original 1989 manga, the 1995 Mamoru Oshii animated feature, the 2002-2003 Stand Alone Complex television series, the 2004 Innocence animated sequel, the 2013 Arise animated film series, and multiple later productions including the 2017 live-action film and the 2020 SAC_2045 Netflix series. The property has been continuously reinterpreted for over three decades. Each version makes specific choices about which elements of the source to emphasize.

The 2017 live-action film makes specific choices that some fans found objectionable.

The deep philosophical engagement with consciousness and identity that characterizes the 1995 Oshii film is mostly absent. The procedural action that characterizes Stand Alone Complex is present in modified form. The visual world is closer to the 1995 film than to the manga. The film is an adaptation of an adaptation of an adaptation. Pure fidelity to any single version of the source was structurally impossible.

The missing philosophy loses me a little. The 1995 film left me chewing on what a self even is, and this one hands me a corporate villain, a conspiracy and a tidy answer. I’d trade some of the shootouts for five more minutes of the Major wondering what’s left of her.

Is Ghost in the Shell worth watching?

8/10. A visually accomplished cyberpunk film that works as a sensory experience and comes up short as a philosophical adaptation. The production design is exceptional, Johansson commits to the role and Kitano’s Aramaki is the performance I enjoy most. The casting controversy will keep shaping how people see it. I’d give it the 8 for the city alone, and the thin ideas are what keep it from climbing higher. Watch the 1995 animated film first, then this one, and let them do different things with the same source.

Frequently Asked Questions