Ghost in the Shell (2017)

[hotsake]

This film wasn't terrible and stands as a decent Sci-Fi film if judged on its own but it just doesn't compare to the original anime. The animated film explored what it means to be human and asked at what point do we stop being human if we replace ourselves with machine parts. This film however is content to recycle the same themes that most American sci-fi films have being using since Blade Runner. Mix Blade Runner, The Matrix, Frankenstein and Robocop then remove the depth and you have this film. Setting aside the experimenting on humans against their will aspect you see that the film hit you with the same old scientists trying to create the next step in human evolution and turn it into a weapon. In the original film there is nothing special about people getting a mechanized body the Major is not the first of her kind that kind of thing has become common in fact being fully without enhancement has become the oddity. Had the performances been better I would have had an easier time over looking all the normal Hollywood cliches, evil corporation, turning innocents into mechanical weapons, simply being human/ having humanity automatically makes us better, having the characters changing themselves due to necessity rather than by choice, etc. But as I stated earlier the performances are all flat and lifeless. Even Beat Takeshi seems to be sleep walking through his scenes. Scarlett Johansson tries to do something by making her movements robot like and always standing/posing strangely. But this doesn't work because she is not Robocop she is in a swift, fluid moving, graceful mechanical body. The other big downside is the poorly done recreation of famous scenes from the anime movie and the overuse of slow motion during the action scenes. What we have here is a standard Hollywood story dressed in an anime skin nothing more nothing less.