Review of Ghost in the Shell (2017) by Barronofdune — 04 Apr 2017

First off: I don't care about the whole ScarJo casting thing. The point of The Major was always that she had an artificial body of unspecified race, and going by pure aesthetics SJ is not a bad lookalike.

No, the far more offensive thing about this movie is that it was made at all. Just like with the crapfest that was the recent Beauty and the Beast, studios don't seem to understand that for animation the art style is a huge part of the storytelling, so a live-action remake (replete with tons of greenscreen CGI, ironically) is all but guaranteed to be a soulless husk of the original. And so it is.

I don't want to go on a huge rant about the original, which is legitimately a classic even if some people get a little too overexcited about its supposed thematic depth ("what if people were... robots?"). It came practically out of nowhere with an incredibly original vision and gorgeously detailed animation that Western audiences had never really seen before. This new movie pretty much takes the overlay of that and copies some iconic scenes (shot-for-shot in some cases), but turns it into just another bland Hollywood sci-fi action outing.

Just watch the original. It holds up well and will still be enjoyed decades from now. Meanwhile I'll be amazed if anyone even remembers the ridiculous ScarJo version in a year.