Review of Ghost in the Shell (2017) by Newrandomage — 30 Mar 2017

This was not the movie that was promised, sure, but it is far away from being a bad movie. Let me establish this from the get-go: Ghost in the Shell 2017 tries to integrate scenes from the 1995 anime Ghost in the Shell movie with good intentions, but some of them come out as interesting references while others are infuriating evidence that shows those scenes are there just to be cool and appeal massive audiencies. The story isn't based on the original film but on the manga, which makes it even worse.

The environment looks fake, both in form and looks, the city doesn't really make sense most of the time with bizarre and unrealistic houses and settings that were not there in the original story, and all the technology presented in the movie is used as an excuse to show special effects that sometimes are unnecesary and just make the experience worse.

That being said the script could have been executed in a poorer way, altough isn't perfect and really far from what the 1995 movie could offer, both on depth and meaning but it won't dissapoint the biggest part of the audience. Scarlett's performance prevent some scenes from being cringeworthy, Pilou Asbæk makes a really good Batou against all odds and Takeshi Kitano's performance is really good too despite the fact that his character making no sense.

Ghost in the Shell tries really hard to not fail at what it does, it has unforgivable mistakes but that shouldn't take away that most people won't even notice them and will be impressed by the special effects. A weak 6 for me. It could have been worse.