Đánh Giá Ghost In The Shell

The Hollywood update of the classic ’90s anime ignores the original’s deeper sci-fi themes lớn deliver forgettable action.

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When Mamoru Oshii’s anime film Ghost in the Shell debuted in 1995, it was a genuinely revolutionary vision that took stochồng of an over-industrialized, hyper-connected, & slowly deteriorating world with strange matter-of-factness. Ostensibly an action film, it lingered in the culture more because of the philosophical ground it broke in talking about the ways human identity intersects with computers, and the limits of our understanding of what it means khổng lồ be sentient. It’s a brilliant piece of sci-fi that has its tendrils in countless works of movie futurism that followed, from The Matrix to Avatar.

Now, somewhat belatedly, Ghost in the Shell has gotten a Hollywood remake: a big-budget, live-action epic that retains much of the original’s visual look and basic plot principles, with an American star (Scarlett Johansson) playing the heroic Major, a cyborg secret agent fighting future-crime in a dystopic world. But the film, directed by Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman), wildly misses the mark on everything that made its forebear interesting. It’s been clumsily translated into lớn a simplistic tale of corporate rebellion và individual freedom that tries khổng lồ distract from its generally vacuous story with oodles of competently choreographed, but uninspired, action.

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Given the extent khổng lồ which Ghost in the Shell’s themes about the increasing unions between human & machine have sầu permeated Hollywood science-fiction, that this remake has no grasp of those ideas feels particularly baffling. Sanders’s Ghost in the Shell is a flimsy copy of a copy, one that recreates some of the anime’s set-pieces nearly shot for shot, but then pares away nearly everything else that made the original a classic.

Johansson’s Major is a quasi-Robocop who works for “Section 9,” an intelligence agency patrolling an unnamed future thành phố. As viewers are told in the film’s opening montage (which sees her shapely form being purpose-built in a lab), the only “human” part of her is her brain. The rest is a humanoid cybernetic shell, a kind of flesh-colored bodysuit that can turn invisible (if she sheds her clothes, which she does anytime she goes into lớn battle). The Major is heralded as “the future” by her creators, a robotics company called Hanka; she’s a post-human triumph in a world where most people have sầu already begun to augment their bodies with cyborg add-ons.

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The Major, along with her sidekicks Batou (a gruff Pilou Asbæk) và Togusa (Chin Han, whose character is crucial in the 1995 film but mostly sidelined here), is investigating a mysterious cyber-villain called Kuze (Michael Pitt). Meanwhile, her trùm Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano) seems khổng lồ be running interference between the government and the corporate entities invested in the Major’s performance as a super-soldier, though any other details are left to lớn the viewer’s imagination.

Sanders & his screenwriters (Jamie Moss, William Wheeler, and Ehren Kruger are credited) try lớn keep things as simple as possible, which somehow only makes them more confusing. The particulars of the Major’s world are never explained, outside of some throwaway lines about the proliferation of cybernetic modification. In kiến thiết, this future-thành phố resembles a scrubbed-up Blade Runner, a CGI festival of glass skyscrapers and 3D billboards, covered in superhighways. Kuze’s evil mission is simply lớn take out the leaders of Hanka Robotics, which he does by “hacking” the brains of robots and people khổng lồ carry out his assassinations.

There’s not much nuance at work, & Johansson’s extremely flat performance doesn’t help matters, though she’s likely doing as much as she can with the material she’s been given. Her character is an intentional blank slate, a living weapon designed with few memories of the past. Obviously, there’s more for her lớn learn, and some various rote twists along the way, but the message of Ghost in the Shell never amounts to more than “shadowy military-industrial corporations are not khổng lồ be trusted.” It’s an insidious move sầu that seeks khổng lồ lamely justify the Major diving into endless bullet-storms against her largely anonymous enemies.

As a remake of a Japanese film that retains its futuristic setting và most of its characters’ names (but features white actors in the four leading roles), Ghost in the Shell ostensibly had the chance khổng lồ delve sầu inlớn the tricky politics of identity and how it might evolve in the future. But a third-act twist attempts to confront Johansson’s casting in a way that ends up feeling awkward, misguided, and vaguely insulting khổng lồ Oshii’s film, summoning the specter of its original protagonist in an effort to lớn explain why the Major’s “shell” might look lượt thích the American actress.

After most of the movie’s runtime has been devoted to lớn visual spectacle in lieu of any deeper philosophizing, this addition lands with a clunk, offering far too little và too late khổng lồ explain why this Frankenstein trùm cuối of a remake exists in the first place. Sanders’s efforts to lớn balance a certain faithfulness to lớn the original with a degree of innovation never quite add up. To new viewers, Ghost in the Shell will likely come across as an incoherent work of forgettable sci-fi; to existing fans, it could range anywhere from baffling to lớn offensive sầu.