Before I start ranting about how much I hated this movie, lets make something clear:
Yes, I confess I'm a big fan of the comic book and the animated movies and series. From the beginning I didn't like the idea of the live-action adaptation because I suspected the complex topics of the original were going to be dumbed-down in favor of big spectacle and digital eye-candy. I knew there is no way they would translate the complex mix of philosophy, metaphysics, religion, scientific speculation and social commentary of the comic into a movie. But I was hopping for a watered-version that retained some of these elements, or at least their flavor.
Second, unlike many fans out there, I didn't have a problem with the ethnicity of the main character. The original heroine has a Japanese name, but visually she didn't look any particular race, she was a robot with eyes and hair that changed from black to blue to purple across different media. So I didn't have a problem with the actress, she looked good for the part. She could have done a good job as the Major if there was something to work with other than skin-tight rubber outfits and lame dialogue.
I swear I was trying to give this life action adaptation a fair chance.
I tried to watch this movie with an open mind. I made a great effort to keep watching even when the first few minutes of the movie were already an indication of what would follow.
Lets start by the beginning. The first piece of dialogue manages to insert the title of the movie into an explanatory sentence. The meaning of "Ghost" and "Shell" are spoonfed to the audience by the first character who opens her mouth right after the introductory credits. I had to make an effort to keep watching after that cringe moment.
In my whole life I have walked out of movie probably only two or three times. The previous cases were because of extremely tasteless topics that rubbed me the wrong way. In this case, it was just pure "I don't give a shit how this ends". And technically I didn't walk out... I took a nap.
I was wrong about one thing: the dumbing of the original concept. They didn't dumb it... they dumped it. The whole concept of the manga and anime was deleted and substituted by a generic, typical Hollywood popcorn b-movie plot with only tiny splashes of the original's existentialist themes here and there.
The main thing that ruined this movie is they left out the central core concept that defined the comic and animated movies/series. "Ghost in the Shell" was about a society where everyone, from the ruling elite to the humblest laborer is cybernetically enhanced. Everyone has some level of electronic implants in their brain and body. Practically everyone on Earth is a cyborg in the comic. Some characters are just brains in boxes with wheels.
In the universe of the comic this has been embraced by society for long time, it's accepted as normal to the point people without cyber implants are seen as freaks.
Being a human brain inside a robot body is not a novelty in the comics, there is an extensive industry and even a black market dedicated to it.
At some point in the comic it is mentioned the heroine is seventy years old and only a fragment of her original brain has survived thought many years of changing robotic bodies like they were clothes (the details of her origin change a few times in the animated series but it is always retained that she has been a cyborg most of her life and happy with it)
In the movie they discard all that.
They made her "the first of her kind". Her body was damaged and she was rebuilt as an android (without her consent) and she wakes up with no memories of her former life... so basically they made a bad remake of the bad remake or Robocop.
The rest of the movie is just a totally predictable "I was wronged by evil people and now I must find the truth and get revenge" bag of clichés.
They tried to put the most iconic scenes of the animated movie in this one. The Major jumping from the building and crashing through a window, the part where she chases a suspect and fights him while wearing her invisibility suit, the part where she fights a giant spider-tank... there are versions of those scenes, but since so many elements of the original were left out, their context is now lost. The result is an incoherent mess that feels like they had to write the new story around just to justify these "fanservice" segments.
Without the original story these parts make no sense. For example, the whole jumping from a building wearing thermal camo and crashing into a room scene in the original was an assassination mission. Here the context is different, now she is actually coming to protect the guys in the room, so we have to guess she just didn't feel like using the door.
Many of the characters in the comic and animated series are in the movie, some of them well incarnated by component actors, but the story around them is worthless drivel.
So it was like the infamous "Star Wars Christmas Special". All the guys you know and love are there, but they look out of place within that embarrassing farce.
I don't really remember how much I saw. I just lost interest in watching further somehow after half of the movie. I dozed during the third act and woke up to see the ending and closing titles. I know it's not fair to judge a movie I didn't watch entirely, but something tells me it didn't turn good when I was asleep.
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6 years, 11 months ago
25 May 2017 09:33 CEST
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