Review of Ghost in the Shell (2017) by Dane H — 26 Jul 2017

This is a great example of a Hollywood studio trying to copy the general aesthetic of a classic anime movie with no regard for its story, its characters, or its central message. It effectively makes this movie a hollow shell of what it could have been. Like many clever critics have pointed out, it's ironically as if there's no "ghost" (soul) in the shell of this movie.

There are some acting problems and some really bad lines, even during the big reveal where (SPOILERS) it turns out that the Major's memories are false and that they've been made up by the doctor who made her. It's not impactful at all because none of the characters were developed properly.

Besides this, you can get some great insight into why the people who made this didn't care about the source material by all the ridiculous digital effects they added in. Few of them have a rhyme or a reason, most are just blinky lights for the sake of being blinky lights. This is completely divorced from the original 1995 Ghost in the Shell, where everything was done with purpose. It's clear the Hollywood writers who tried to copy the 1995 original had very little understanding of why the original became so popular.

One great example of how the writers don't know how to handle the source material is the scene with the hacked garbageman. In the original 1995 anime, they explore the hacked garbageman and his false memories, how the memories of his wife and his kids were fabricated, and how almost everything he thought he knew was a lie. It's tied into the movie's philosophic message of "If our bodies can be fabricated, and so can our memories, what makes us human?".

In the 2017 version, they have him babble a bit before he kills himself by breaking his neck. It's so unexpected and ridiculous I nearly laughed out loud when he did it. There's no rhyme or reason to the things happening on screen, and no reason to care.