506: Ghost in the Shell

[Henry Faherty]:\nTwo thirteen. Let's get to Ghost in the Shell, the live action film, which came out in twenty seventeen, directed by Rupert Sanders, stars Scarlett Johansson, Pylo Azbek, Takashi Catano, Juliette Binoche, Michael Pitt. And the synopsis is, \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nin the near future, major Myra Killian is the first of her kind, a human saved from a terrible crash who is cyber enhanced to be a perfect soldier devoted to stopping the world's most dangerous criminals. I'm not a big anime fan. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but there's just something about a lot of the shows, especially, that I have trouble really getting invested in. So I don't have a deep knowledge of that aside from what I hear from friends and coworkers. \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nBut Ghost in the Shell \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\njust seems to be the one that has always interested me the most, and I've watched, I think, all the movies and then some of the shows. So when it was announced, this movie, I was very excited. I love Scarlett Johansson. Rupert Sanders had just done Snow White and the Huntsman, and he just did The Crow most recently, which I've not seen yet. But I really like Snow White and the Huntsman, and I enjoyed this one a fair bit as well. First off, the movie looks amazing. Rupert Sanders just has a great eye, which really connects with me. I'm not sure exactly the reason even, but I think all of his movies look fantastic. He can do the darker gothic stuff like Snow White, and then he can do the very colorful ones like Ghost in the Shell. \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nBy far, the biggest strength is Scarlett Johansson. I understand that the whole whitewashing thing, it's not great. But, obviously, speaking about it realistically, this is a hundred fifty million dollar Hollywood film, give or take. So \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nend of the day, you're having to cast people who are giving this one more of a chance purely from a financial level. I know it sucks, but it is what it is. Hollywood is always gonna do that. Everything from her physicality to walking very robotic like, that easily could've become very goofy and taken you out of it. But while it's very it's noticeable how she walks and how she moves her arms and, you know, going left, right, that sort of thing, I think it's as authentic \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nas it could be. If she were not in this or if they had a lesser actor, it would have been a disaster. What sort of makes the movie suffer, talking negatives for a minute, I don't mind like, I in theory, I like that it is only about a hundred minutes. It's a tight, linear, no nonsense narrative. But I feel like if you're doing a live action film of this huge world, maybe even make it two hours because there's so many ideas going on in this that as opposed to, let's say, Blade Runner twenty forty nine, where that one is almost three hours, maybe too long, for some people at least, they spent the time to really talk and explore the concepts that they were bringing up. Whereas in this, it feels like every scene, there's some new concept, whether it's dealing with AI and humans or reality or technology. It's really brushed by. Because, I guess, maybe they \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nI don't know if they just had to devote all the money to those visuals or to Scarlett Johansson. I don't know. But I feel like that part of the movie makes it feel much more shallow. Like, it's never gonna be to the lengths or the heights of Blade Runner or \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nsome of the other or, like, H. E. R. Or Ex Machina. Like, it's not gonna be \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nto me, it's never gonna be a five out of five film, which is okay. \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nCasting otherwise, though, I know some people don't like it aside from, like, if we're putting aside the whitewashing thing for a second. One of my favorite parts aside from Johansson is Michael Pitt as Kuzey, the villain. The scene when Major and Kuzey first meet when the traps are in that cybernetic cave and we first get a glimpse at him. That character design, that performance, that sound work is amazing to me. The look of the body where some parts are exposed, and you see the wires, the long hair, the glitchy, stuttery speech. And then even though it doesn't go as deep as it could, the motivation of him being someone who was experimented on and then thrown away is a very good human motivation to somewhat relate to him. Because \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nyou can only imagine what it would be like for you, and, obviously, he would be angry. Maybe, yeah, you shouldn't become a terrorist, but \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nhaving his anger and that frustration \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nand that severe trauma and wanting to have revenge on all those people, that does make sense for someone in his position. The opening credit design or sequence is very impressive and very much calls back to the original movie. The action sequence that starts with Kuzei hacking the garbage men, I love that it doesn't feel the need to explain that. It just shows, alright. These people are hacked. Let's move forward. The interrogation of that garbage man when he's in that glass cell and Major comes in, then suddenly, Kuzei hacks the guy and starts speaking through him, and it's a very unnerving, unsettling visual and sound design yet again. Now gotta talk about the whitewashing stuff more in-depth. \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nSo from what I get from the movie or how they tried to explain it is Major was not originally a white person, but then when Major was severely injured and disfigured, they replaced her with what would be the body or face of Scarlett Johansson. And so it's not like saying, you were a white person living in Asia. It was this is the body that we had, and therefore, she has a mother that is not Caucasian. \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nI think if you're gonna do it one way, I guess that's a way to do it that obviously, people were still very offended by it, and I'm not gonna say that's a good way to do it because it's end of the day, it's whitewashing. The score is very solid by Clint Mansell and Lauren Balfe, two great composers. The third act, because of the runtime, it does feel short, too short even. I don't find that the actual pacing of that scene feels rushed, But especially when I saw it for the first time in theaters, I was thinking, wait. It's already over? Like, that's it? Because the action sequence is good. I like that final sequence with that big robot that is in the original one as well. And there's the moment that she is pulling on the top of the robot and her fake skin is tearing into wires, and that still looks great both in this one and the anime. Still, it goes by so quickly that it's not super satisfying because it is just a good versus bad fight, and that's it. And the movie has a very short epilogue and game over. That's it. So \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nthe third act would, by far, be my least favorite because it feels like what shallow ideas or what ideas were touched on in the first two \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nare there's no time for that in the third act. \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nThe ambush on Aramaki, the leader of Major or the boss. That's a very visceral part of the film when the shooters have those black masks on, but then he ends up taking them all down. \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nVeering off a little bit for a moment and talking about AI movies as a whole and the ones I'm talking about, \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\none thing that I personally connect with and really enjoy and seek out about films dealing with robots, AI, whatever, is that it usually delves into something dealing with identity, reality, outcasts, being misunderstood, loneliness. \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nAnd that's something that I just immediately connect with more often than not, and I appreciate and I get more emotionally connected to as well. This one, I know a lot of people don't like it at all, but despite the story issues and other things, Scarlett Johansson's performance and that character of Major \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\ntrying to figure out who she is, always being that \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\none person in the world who is like her or almost, I guess, in terms of Kuzei, she finds out, but really being very alone and having to go through the world and through her life feeling always different because she is, actually. She's not just feeling different. She actually is different. Overall, it's one of the better, more mainstream sci fi films of the last seven or eight years. I can go back to it. It's always entertaining. It's always insightful. So that's a win for me. \n\n[Henry Faherty]:\nThat is a heavy four out of five. \n\n