Review of Ghost in the Shell (2017) by Jesseperry — 08 Apr 2017

I have seen all 3 GITS movies 1995, Innocence and SSS, the Arise series, GITs SAC season 1 and GITS. I actually own them all as well except for Arise which is free on Netflix. The 2017 live action film faithfully portrays the original 95 film story line with plot twists thrown in so I wouldn't get bored. If you consider that the film has been more accepted in Asia then here, it is apparent that the whitewashing argument is more politically motivated than genuine concern for Asian actresses livelihood and questions of ethnic portrayal. Enough said on that.

On it's own, the live action film is an interesting story even if it does not possess a very deep plot. Honestly, it would not be interesting to uninitiated audiences to expound on these plot intricacies anyway. I often found myself playing back the dialogs in both voice and translated subtitles just to understand what was going on in the movies and TV series. The visuals and translation of concepts to live action is without question, stunning. Just to piss off Ridley Scott fans I am going to go ahead and say it approaches Blade Runner levels of brilliance in visuals. Certainly, 30 years of technology and advancements give any Sci-fi film the edge these days. Yes, Prometheus looks amazing but aside from the Engineer cave scene there is just not that much going on there technologically speaking. I digress. I enjoyed the film and it touched on the deeper plot themes to give hints to the initiated what was going on. Sanders copies the original 1995 anime, but hey, Abrams did the same with the first and third Star Treks. I think the GITS film is great and hope its' box office failure doesn't prevent the studio from using this film as a take off point in exploring other stories in the GITS world that include other characters like Borma, Saito (who cameoed), Paz, not to mention the Tachikomas.