Review of Ghost in the Shell (2017) by Gallick — 02 Apr 2017

I am an avid Ghost in the Shell fan, so my experience was always going to be overshadowed by the anime that came before. But I did not expect such cinematic splendor and costume/set design.

Story: Dead -It is dead because it chopped up story from the previous movies and tried to Frankenstein them together, whilst adding in new backstory that only made fans cringe. There was no life there, Rupert should have tried to move forward with new content instead of trying to play it safe like Star Wars Episode 7.

Characters: Dead -The life that was brought into the anime characters was lost here. There was an attempt to give "The Major" and emotional core that amplified her so called "Ghost". However in reality (Anime) the majors ghost was not highlighted by any emotions whatsoever, only her observance as to the lack of said feelings. Her philosophical and analytical nature was what gave her the notion of a "Ghost". So in a sense, they restructured the very definition of who the Major was.

Batou attempted to be a good buddy like he was in the anime, but he never really had the chance, the story moved too quickly and his connection was lost. I think the Major had too much baggage going on to allow anyone else to show themselves.

The side characters (Section 9 crew) were all just background fluff and didn't even matter, which is good because I don't think I could handle any more characters being misrepresented.

Aramaki was alright, I think Kitano was just used for novelty purposes, and these days he is just like a Japanese Harrison Ford, grumpy and only around for the money.

Set Design: -Alive. Alive in every way, the world they used was full of cyberpunk goodness stripped right out of the heart of the anime. Every detail was accounted for and it truly was the highlight of the entire film. I will include the background characters and extras into this as well, they were all very much apart of the world and the state of society was quite evident.

Sound: -Alive, but misplaced. The music was fantastic, but never seemed to show up on time, it was always late for the party. Even the music for the into sequence(for the anime) didn't arrive until the credits. For them to leave out the song was advertise with the new intro out of the new intro.......there are no words.

I like this movie a lot, I will be picking it up on 4k Blu-Ray asap, because I am only going back for the beauty of the cinematography and CGI. The story in this movie will be forgotten and left out of all the ancient tomes of the Ghost in the Shell universe.